INsight/ When Rhythm Matters

Photo by Debora Pilati on Unsplash.

Manila, 20 July 2022 — How to turn up or slow down your energy when you want.

Story

It happened a few days ago. As I was exercising in the park, which is a part of my daily leadership hygiene, I felt a palpable boost of energy rising in me as I adjusted my steps to the rhythm of the music I was listening to in my AirPods. This wasn’t exactly a surprise, because I had purposely selected music with 115 beats per minute. Yet the sensation I felt, of a deep connection pulsating inside my body and mind, was more than what I had expected. 

Music Moves Life has long been a motto in my life. On reflection, the experience in the park reminded me of the energy that moves when we dance to music at concerts, discos, and the like, when we are surrounded by a crowd of people doing the same, together. Yet here I was, walking by myself in a quiet green park and feeling a similar pulsing of energy, and perhaps even more. It was the kind of energy, I realized, that leaders would love to experience often in their work. And I was generating it by myself. What was going on?

To find out more about this phenomenon — which I have repeated several times — I took a dive into the research about entrainment, which is defined as a process where one behavior is adjusted to be in rhythm (sync) with another behavior. Entrainment happens in nature, in organizations, teams, and in people individually. Once you know how it works, you can initiate it by yourself. Not just to ‘turn up’ the energy as I did with exercise to an upbeat music rhythm, but also the opposite, to help you slow down. You might say that entrainment can help you to switch from Yang to Yin energy and back, when you want.

Challenge

Music is a key factor to practice entrainment with. To unpack that challenge, I looked at research involving music. As explained by Daniel Levitin, a psychologist at McGill University, researchers found in 2018 that music “stimulates the cerebellum, a region of the brain crucial to motor control … Connections between the cerebellum and the limbic system (which is associated with emotion), may explain why movement, emotion, and music are tied together.” Levitin’s work built on earlier experiments by Petr Jatala, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, who in 2012 investigated Sensorimotor coupling in music and the psychology of the groove. Jatala defined groove as “the urge to move in response to music, combined with the positive affect associated with the coupling of sensory and motor processes while engaging with music.” 

When we move to groovy music, Jatala explains, “we become aware of its rhythmic flow, and groove is manifested as the kinematic feeling arising from one’s embodied experience of entrainment to the music.” Elaborating on groove, he called it “a pleasurable response to certain musical rhythms that not only compel us to move, but also make us aware of the way that our bodies are moving with the music.” According to Jatala, this groove effect tends to be experienced more with faster music (>100 bpm) rather than with slower music. My experience in the park certainly felt kinematic and pleasurable, with high awareness of the experience. There is more, however. 

More than a decade ago, I also experienced entrainment with an opposite, equally positive affect, when engaging with a variety of musical pieces designed to activate different frequencies in the brain, using a technology called binaural beats. Such entrainment can help the brain to sync with music waves at low frequencies, like those associated with deep sleep (Delta, <3 Hz), creativity and intuition (Theta, 3.5-7.5 Hz), and with relaxation and inner awareness (Alpha, 7.5-13 Hz). These are on the opposite side of the spectrum from the waves associated with fast activities like when we are alert and even anxious (Beta, >12 Hz) and waves used to multitask and simultaneously process information from different brain areas for a concerted outcome (Gamma, 30-44 Hz). So entrainment with music can help us experience both high and low-frequency brainwaves, giving us a sense of life in either rapid or slow motion.

Question

My question for you this week is how you have experienced entrainment in your life and leadership practice, either by being drawn into an energetic experience involuntarily or by actively initiating it as I did by choosing to exercise to upbeat music in the park? 

I look forward to hearing from you about your experiences. It will help us explore more ways to boost our leadership in a variety of situations.