Rhythm. Rhythm in music. Rhythm in words. Rhythm in patterns, on the floor, in wood. Rhythm appears in the sinuous movements of dance; sounds out from fingers dancing on piano keys; reverberates in the staccato beats of hand clapping hand. Hidden, our hearts beat rhythms, and our breaths, lulled into meditative depths, inhale and exhale at about 0.1 Hz, while our brains cycle with the earth at the Schumann Resonance frequency.

Rhythm wires our being. Physicians work with psychologists to understand and use rhythm’s power to unhook dysrhythmic stress from our hearts and brains.

When a cardiologist talked to me of music rhythmically entraining the breath to relax and de-stress, I thought of brain biofeedback, audiovisual entrainment, and beta music.

Brain biofeedback stimulated my alpha waves from the lower frequencies they had dropped into after injury back into the higher, healthier frequencies.

Audiovisual entrainment (AVE) brought my brain out of somnolent delta waves into relaxed, focused attention of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) brainwaves.

Beta music’s beat enhances beta brainwave production, the problem-solving and thinking brainwaves suppressed by my brain injury.

I learned about these healing rhythms from psychologists and a physician who works with a psychologist. No independent medical doctor—no neurologist or cardiologist—mentioned this aspect of the human body as a way to understand and to heal........

© Psychology Today