Change Your Brain Every Day - Your Brain Is Always Listening Overview With Barry Goldstein

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Dr Daniel and Tana Amen walkthrough the pieces on their latest collaboration album with producer Barry Goldstein. The Album is a companion piece for Dr Daniel Amen's latest book, Your Brain Is Always Listening.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are with our dear friend, Barry Goldstein, and we're talking about Your Brain Is Always Listening, the music album, which I believe you guys can find pretty much anywhere, right, that music is sold. It is. Yeah. So we're talking about the effect of music on different people um how it how it really can affect mood and even help um you know how it's used in therapy and it's just so fascinating to me how different types of music affect people differently and we know what kind of music make you makes you angry and well we're talking about me specifically? Yes. We know what type of music

gets you pumped up. Yeah. And at my funeral, I want you guys not to play sad music that makes everybody cry. Well, I think if we play Def Leppard... Guns N' Roses. It'll be weird.

No, it'll be what I want. It's a happier setting well when you want you want to play you want to play um when the saints come marching in yours louis armstrong yeah i love louis nice how about you barry since we're talking about i was i was talking to tan about that i want to play Could It Be I'm Falling in Love by The Spinners, which actually just has always put me in a very happy state, and it's also my wife's favorite song. Well, that's awesome.

It's awesome. So your brain is always listening. So that's the title of my new book. Tame the Hidden Dragons that Control Your Happiness Habits and Hangups. And, you know, we've done other albums based on the work that I was doing, Brain Warriors Way, Music for Bright Minds,

Memory Rescue, Resource, Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, totally. Music fits with that. But none better than your brain is always listening. And you want it to listen to things that help you or things that hurt you and i'm so grateful you did this collaboration with me i mean the truth is barry did all the work uh i just talked through some of the ideas but you take the credit for the billboard but i put that on my resume we've been on billboard's new age chart for 70 weeks or more and um people love this music it's really important they love your skill they love your talent um and it matters so walk us through the different pieces on the album, and then let's talk about appropriate uses for it to help people.

And as you walk us through, like, what was your intention? Like, what is that one of those pieces supposed to sort of help you feel or do? Yeah, absolutely. I feel it is a very complimentary collaboration with us because you have an overview of what you know you wanted to voice through the book. And the whole point is to have a companionship album that works with complimenting your book in an experiential way. So knowing what pieces you wanted on there were very important. And then it allowed me to run with those pieces, you know, because you gave me the focus of where to go with it. So I just want to say, and you, and also the research behind it that you've done within music and the brain, you know, is phenomenal. So doing this together to me is very much so a collaboration. So yeah, when we spoke initially, I know that it was important to both of us to have a piece of music that people can use for anxiety. And, you know,

at where we are in terms of what's going on in the world over the last year, and even moving into the following years, there's been even more reported anxiety, more mental illness around things. And I wanted to give people a tool that when they listen to the piece of music, that they felt like every day was a completely new day, that no matter what went on in their previous day, that they could kind of erase the slate when they put on this piece of music. And I wanted that to, to be conveyed compositionally and thematically and symbolically with that, you know, so it starts off with like wind chimes coming in, and just gentle sparkles, you know, that are symbolic of the sun coming in. And then it grows as your day opens up.

You move into your day with energy and it moves into an expansive day where things are working with you. You're in collaboration with a beneficial universe, not against you. And so I really wanted to convey that and using specific patterns, using specific chord progress patterns, using specific chord

progressions, using specific tones. And that really plays into how our brain interprets the music. And so that was New Day. And its goal is to help you release anxiety. And the next piece is called Thankful. And we talked a little bit about that music for appreciating your life. And again, when I was composing that piece, I was thinking of all the things that I had to be thankful for. And I would listen back and forth to the music and saying, does this convey it? Does this passage feel like that? And so it was also about being thankful is targeting the heart because the heart moves to that state of appreciation. So I wanted the music to also bring you into states of

coherence. So it targets the heart at a relaxed state at 60 beats per minute and enables you to entrain to that. So you're able to synchronize and your heartbeats are more smoother and more orderly as you connect to gratitude. And there's an organization called HeartMath that I'm sure you're familiar with. Yeah, we know them well. Yeah. And they talk about that. If we can move into these orderly rhythms in our heart, how that affects not just our heart, but our brain. And there's more science and research showing that when you move into these states where you're in appreciation, there's a communication going on between the heart and the brain. And actually, when we're in that coherent heart state, our brainwave, a new study has shown

that our brainwaves are producing more alpha brainwaves when our hearts are in these coherence. You know, one way people can test this is if you have an Apple Watch. Apple Watches actually measure heart rate variability, which is the big thing from heart. That's right. It's heart rate variability. So you can actually measure your heart rate variability ahead of time.

And then you can listen to the different pieces of music and see if they impact your heart rate variability. That would actually be a super simple study, Barry, for you and I to do. That's absolutely right. We could probably get 500 people with Apple Watches to just listen to it before and after record and send us their responses. Because heart rate variability is not only a sign of heart health, it's a sign of brain health and mind health. Absolutely.

And a lot of people also using the aura rings for each HRV to measure that as well. So we should reach out to people and have them play that second piece and see what the results are. Because I have people already reporting that HRV has become more optimal in listening to our music. So it would be interesting to do that. Good. And the third piece? Yeah. So the third piece is called Relaxation Bridge. So with Relaxation Bridge, my intention was really for people to be able to hit the zone. And that's a place that athletes describe when they're not in their thinking mind, right? When they just tap into something and time goes to nowhere. And also within meditation as well, if you can listen to a piece of music and say, wow, I think for that like

five minutes, I wasn't thinking of anything. I just went to the zone. So I use patterns using singing bowls. So it really allows you to kind of synchronize to that rhythm and just move into a zone where you're moving into a trance state. So patterns can be very conducive to moving into that zone where you have something to hold on to. There's a distinct pattern, but it's not distracting at the same time. So I was able to accomplish that with singing balls, creating soothing tones, calming melodies in it as well. And I love to add the celestial elements to that also and voice into that because people feel comforted when they hear, you know, when they hear voices in there as well.

So that was something that we've tried that was a little bit different on this album that I remember Daniel, when you listen to you, like I really love the way that you utilize voice on some of these pieces. So and that's the thing, you know, on every album that we're doing, I want it to be different and yet transformational for people so they have different tools that they can use. And for the last piece, we have a piece called Bedtime Bliss. And, you know, again, I think of bedtime. So I think of music as nutrition.

You know, just like meals, we have our morning piece here, which is New Day. We have our piece for lunchtime that you can use that's thankful. You plug them into your day. In the evening, I think of that type of music as kind of like dessert. So something for your musical sweet tooth that just kind of bridges your busy days into more restful nights. Because most of us are going from these high and fast brainwave states, beta, you know, high beta where we're very active during our day. You know, we're still probably on social networks at night and we're looking at some of the YouTubes that we did or we're editing still

because that's what we do. And we're not allowing enough time to bridge. So this piece really works with slowing those brainwaves down. And I suggest that people listen to it about an hour before bedtime. You could just gently put it on in the background and start to make it something that's a ritual for you, something that's sacred, because you need your sleep. It's not just something that you have to do. It's something that you get to do every day. You're going to sleep and you're waking up again, and it's very important that you get your sleep. So utilizing a piece of music as nourishment in this way that you're putting into your emotional body as well that allows you to calm down at the end of your day and say, wow, this is my time that I get to wind down before sleep. Just slow down. And I encourage people to use this, you know, use it for 30 days. Don't just use it randomly and say, you know, wow, that helped,

but I don't know how much. Use it for 30 days because if you're having challenges sleeping it's probably something that has occurred from something that you've been doing habitually for many years right right i love that. use your brain is always listening as a therapeutic program to enhance appreciation and gratitude to start every day with a new day you know we do something called positivity bias training start every day with today is going to be a great day and, you know, sleep and then getting in the zone while I'm typing. Cause sometimes people see me typing. Usually I'm just keeping notes is I'm like, Oh, I need to send relaxation bridge to one of my athletes to help her get in the

zone. So the chatter in her mind isn't taking over but she can leave that behind actually psychological distance is is critical so anyways barry we appreciate you so much thank you for being on the brain warriors way tell people again how they can uh get their copy of your brain is always listening yep it's available on itunes on amazon spotify and apple music and um yeah i i just really love to see the um that we've done together and one last thing is that you can also just have it on in the background because just like you love this title, Daniel, I love it also because your brain is always listening. It actually brings in a different way to listen to music. If you just even put it on gently, you don't have to be actively listening. You can just have it on and you will notice that

something is changing in your environment. So I'm honored to do this work with you. And, you know, obviously our intention is that this helps many, many people out there. So I hope people will enjoy it and share it with their friends as well. And I'm excited to collaborate with you on this. Great. Thank you, my friend. And you're listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. If you learn something, write it down, take a picture of it, post it on any of your social media sites. Leave us comments, questions or reviews at brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Take care. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free

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