Your smartphone is similar to smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home - they listen for “wake” words like “Hey Siri” and “Okay Google” all the time. Your voice triggers smart speakers and smartphones Apps installed on smartphones have the ability to record your screen and whatever you type, including user names and passwords. They weren’t able to prove or disprove whether our phones are listening (they found no evidence of recorded conversations), but they make an unexpected finding. It could enable you to get more in touch with your emotions, to connect with a period in your past.The Verge’s article got a lot of press and even inspired more scientific studies to test the secret listening abilities of smartphones.Ī group of researchers from Northeastern University tested the theory. So next time you listen to a song you love, don’t just have it on in the background listen to it mindfully, and maybe even try meditating for a few minutes before you do so. The experience was beautifully cathartic. And I was grateful for those tears, because they represented a form of liberation. This was so acute, so penetrating, that it brought tears to my eyes. But more powerful than remembering those specific moments was the memory of how I felt I was able to tap into that as though it was yesterday. The memories - of dancing in the kitchen with my mum, of BBQs on warm summer evenings, of bouncing on a trampoline without a care in the world- felt so close to me, so full of colour and flavour. The nostalgia was even more palpable, and had a much more emotional quality. ![]() Then, once I felt relaxed and grounded, I put on my headphones, located the perfect volume and put on ‘Easy Silence.’ I focused on the rhythm, the soothing familiarity of the melody, the purity of the singer’s voice. Then I opened up my mind to the sounds in my external environment, mindfully focusing on what I could hear, seeking to receive them purely as sounds, not judging or labelling them. I took a few deep breaths, and focused my attention on the points of contact between my body and the surface beneath me, seeking to anchor myself in the moment. I relaxed my jaw, my shoulders, all the muscles in my body. I lay down on the sofa with a blanket over myself and closed my eyes. The brain latches onto these elements and the song becomes inextricably intertwined with the memory.īut what’s this got to do with mindfulness? Well, it got me thinking: what if we could enhance this profound emotional experience through deliberately seeking to absorb the music in a mindful way? It is the structure of the song that helps us to remember it, as well as the melody and sometimes the lyrics. Music helps because it provides a rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration which helps to unlock that information with cues. A memory doesn’t simply come when you ask it to. But retrieving memory is not always easy they take in huge amounts of information every second, and processing it is a complex business. The parts of the brain associated with memory are the hippocampus and the frontal cortex. Explicit memory is the result of a more deliberate attempt to remember. The sort of memory provoked by music is known as ‘implicit’: a reactive, unintentional form of memory. If I were to deliberately try and remember something in particular from my childhood, I would recall nothing as immediate or emotional compared to when I hear ‘Easy Silence’. Music unlocks a part of your brain which allows you to access memories and emotions which you cannot just conjure from nothing. Music can transport you back to a particular period - or a moment - in your life, like stepping into a time machine. This is an experience shared by everyone. ![]() Not necessarily specific moments, but just a wonderfully nostalgic sense - of safeness, of unconditional love, of contentedness, of freedom to be myself. Whenever I hear the song, ‘Easy Silence’ by Dixie Chicks, I tap into powerful, emotional memories of my childhood and in particular, golden times spent with my family.
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