The Mindset Mentor - How Humming Can Change Your Life

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you're out there and you want to create the perfect morning routine, you can go to the perfect morning routine.com right now. And you can get my free guide and video and checklist of exactly how to create the perfect morning routine for you based off of science. So once again, it is the perfect morning routine.com.

Today, I'm going to be talking about something kind of odd. and it is how the simple act of humming can change your entire life. Because have you ever caught yourself humming without really thinking about it? Maybe you're in the shower. Maybe you're driving. Maybe you're just on a walk alone. If you have, I want you understand what's happening is that your brain and your nervous system in that moment are doing something incredibly sophisticated without you even realizing

it. You were unconsciously de-stressing yourself. and setting your body back to normal. And when you hum, a few things happen. You activate your vagus nerve. Your body releases nitric oxide. Your brain waves actually change and your emotional regulation pathways activate inside of your body. And so today we're going to go really deep into what actually happens, not just like, oh, humming will relax you. We're going to talk about your neurology around this, your biology around it, your nervous system regulation. And why? even just 60 seconds of humming can literally change your internal state multiple times a day if you need

it to. So if you've listened to this podcast before, you know I talk about doing breathwork every single day. I recommend doing breathwork as much as you possibly can. And when you breathe out, I always recommend humming on the exhale. Let me tell you where I got this from. So when my wife was pregnant and she was like deep into pregnancy and she was in pain, she was in her third try, semester, she started humming. It was just like a natural, intuitive thing. And she started talking about how it relaxes her and how it makes her whole body feel so much better. And, you know, I believe that pregnant women are in touch like more than any other people on earth. And I was like, I'm going to do some research and see what this whole humming thing is about. So I did a ton of research on it. And, you know,

I've been doing it since that moment when I realize how great it is. And I'll tell you how great is today. I have been doing it with my son since he was born. And what's wild is that sometimes he'll sit on my chest. He started at about 18 months to sit on my chest. And he'll actually hum himself when he's just hanging out, just sitting down. And so I want to talk about what's happening in your body when you do this. And first I want to start with the brain, okay? When you hum, you're doing something very specific neurologically to yourself. You're creating rhythmic, self-generated sound. And your brain loves rhythm. Why is that? Because rhythm is one of the fastest ways to stabilize neural firing patterns to synchronize different parts of your brain regions and to actually reduce

the chaotic signaling, aka anxiety that's happening inside of your brain. There's actually research using EEG scans showing that vocal toning such as humming and chanting increases alpha waves in your brain. Alpha waves are super important. They are associated with relaxed alertness, creativity, and also meditative states as well. So basically, it's that feeling of like I'm calm, but I'm also very focused and very present. That's what alpha waves are. And here's where it really starts to get deeper when you look at it. Humming also stimulates the limbic system in your brain.

That's your emotional brain. That includes your amygdala, which is where your fears and your threat detection comes from and includes your hippocampus, which is your memory and emotional context. And so when you hum, you're basically sending signals to your brain that say, we're safe. And the brain responds by downregulating your fear responses. Wouldn't that be nice for a lot of people, right? Reducing your hypervigilance and decreasing emotional reactivity. All of this is really huge when you really look at it because most people are walking around now.

of days, like with low grade threat mode on all day long. Like their amygdala is just a little bit scared and it's kind of like a little bit of fight or flight all day long. And you're just unconsciously trying to protect yourself all of the time. And they don't even really realize it. And so they have this like anxiety that kind of just is a thread from the moment that they wake up to the moment they go to bed. Humming can literally change that for people within 60 to 90 seconds.

Now, if we go into actually a layer deeper into this, humming isn't just a sound. It's actually controlled exhalation. So this is where your nervous system really starts to shift with controlled exhalation. The exhale is everything to your body. Your nervous system has two main branches inside of your nervous system. There is the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight. And there's also your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your calm, your rest, your digest, your heel. And there's a thing that most people don't realize when you look at this is that you don't necessarily just activate calm by thinking calm thoughts. You can, but it takes kind of a long time to

turn that part of your brain off that's going, you know, that's anxious and actually get the part of your brain that's calm. The fastest way to activate calm inside of your body, inside of your nervous system is by simply lengthening your exhale to take control of the body. And so your humming forces that? Because you can't hum without slowing down your breath, without extending your exhale, without creating a steady flow. Like just try it for a second. Try to hum faster, right? You're just going to hum harder is all that you really do. Hey, even better. It's even a harder hum that you're stimulating that nervous system with. So that extended exhale directly stimulates your vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is probably the most important part of this entire thing. It is like the master's

switch to your nervous system. It connects your brain, your heart, your lungs, and your gut. And it controls your ability to relax. It controls your ability to regulate your emotions. It controls your recovery from stress. And so humming creates vibrations in your throat and in your chest. And those vibrations stimulate the vagus nerve mechanically. Not mentally, like thinking about I need to call myself down. It mechanically actually stimulates your vagus nerve. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. And so when the vagus nerve is stimulated,

here's what happens inside of your body. Your heart rate immediately starts to slow. Your cortisol, which is your stress hormone inside of your body, begins to drop. Your digestion starts to improve, and your emotional reactivity decreases. So you literally shift from humming to activating your vagus nerve,

you literally shift from survival mode into regulation mode and your body doesn't care as much of what you think as what you signal to it humming is a signal like think about this for instance right you have to understand like just thinking about it this way no animal that is running for its life in trying to protect itself from a predator is humming while doing it right humming is a relaxation thing. If you think about even just a cat, a cat purring, when does a cat purr? When it is the most relaxed? That is basically the exact same thing. And that stimulates the cat's vagus nerve, which then relaxes them even more. And so another thing that's really cool is when you actually hum is humming increases your nitric oxide production inside of your sinuses by up to 15 times.

Now 15 percent, 15 times. This is based off of studies for the Karolinska Institute. And so nitric oxide is a gas that your body produces that helps dilate your blood vessels. So that helps blood and oxygen and everything move through your body even better. It improves your oxygen delivery. It supports your immune function and it regulates inflammation. So when you hum, airflow vibrates through your sinuses. Nitric oxide releases dramatically into your body, which means that you now have better oxygen uptake. That's really good for you. Better brain function. That's pretty good for you as well. And improve cellular signaling. So in 60 seconds, literally 60 seconds of humming, you're not just calming. You're not just

calming yourself down. You're literally improving your oxygenation in your body. You're boosting your circulation and you're supporting immune health as well. Sounds pretty good to me, right? All right, so let's talk the psychology behind all of this stuff as well, because there's also a reason why humming feels safe for you. Humming actually mimics early developmental regulation. So think about this. When a baby is stressed, what do the caretakers usually do? They usually rock them. That's a rhythmic thing.

They usually hum to them or they will sing to them and use some sort of rhythmic sound when doing this. So think about this, when a baby is in the womb, what do all sounds sound like to them? Muffled sounds. They kind of sound like hums. And so that rhythm from literally being in the womb starts to become associated with safety, with connection, with regulation, because when do we, as humans, through our entire life, when are we the most safe? What are we the most connected?

Usually inside of the womb. So when you hum as an adult, you're essentially self-soothing. And self-soothing is something that we all need to get better at. You're recreating a regulatory pattern from early in life to the point where literally before you were born in the womb and when your mother was holding you when you were stressed out and you were crying and she was singing to you or she was humming to you. You're basically telling your nervous system we're safe. And that allows your nervous system to calm down.

And this ties into something that I talk about a lot is that most people aren't struggling because life is hard. Most people are struggling because their nervous system is extremely dysregulated and they've never been taught how to actually regulate their nervous system. And so humming gives you a way to regulate without needing anything external outside of you. And so the crazy part about all of this though is all it really takes is 60 seconds. You don't need 20 minutes. You don't need to disappear and do a full meditation session or do a 10 minute breathwork session

because your nervous system responds to signals, not time. So if the signal is strong enough, your vagus nerve activation actually starts to happen really, really quickly. Your breath slows down immediately because you're controlling your breath through this, and your brain wave states begin shifting within literally seconds. So 60 seconds can interrupt a stress loop, can interrupt all of the anxiety that you're feeling.

It can stop a spiral for you. And it can bring you back into your body. Because most of the time when we're stressed out, like when we're anxious or stressed, we're either, our brain is either projecting us into the future or we're thinking about something in the past. We're very rarely here in the present moment in our body. And this really matters because most people in this world are trying to think their way out of stress. They're trying to figure out how to think the way out of stress. But your nervous system doesn't speak in thoughts.

It speaks in breath, in rhythm, in vibrational. And so the best part is that you can keep humming even after the 60 seconds if you want to. But it doesn't have to stop your productivity, but you can take 60 seconds and do it. Okay, so let's take all this. I want to make a practical. I want you to be able to use this today. And I want you to be able to use this every day of your life. Okay.

I want you to, next time you feel overwhelmed, next time you feel anxious, next time you feel stuck in your head, next time you feel too many feelings and you don't know what to do with it. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to just close your eyes, remove all of the focusing on the external. Because from what I've read, it's about 60 to 66% of your brain is actually used on the visual. And so if we can close our eyes just for 60 seconds, nobody listening to this podcast is so busy. They don't have 60 seconds. You notice that things are going too crazy outside of you.

You close your eyes. And you just keep your eyes closed. You inhale through your nose and you slowly exhale while humming. We all know how to do it, right? just in the nose, and try to feel the vibration in your chest, in your face, in your throat as much as you possibly can. Do it for 60 seconds, 90 seconds. If you can do it for a longer, there's sometimes where I'm, you know, I have a day where I'm Tokyo drifting into 14 different meetings and all kinds of fires are going on. I'll do it for five minutes straight. And then I'll hop on

on a Zoom call and while somebody else is talking, guess what? They don't even know that I'm doing it. And so I can calm myself, and you can do this as well, many times throughout the day. And what you'll notice when you do this, like, I want you to notice your body. I want you to notice your shoulders drop. I want you to notice how your thoughts start to slow down. I want you to notice how your body feels heavier, but in a good way. Okay? So the thing I want to leave you with is short.

We all want more control over our thoughts. That's why we listen to this podcast. That's why I create this podcast. That's very important to have more control over our thoughts. but we also need to have more access to our physiology because your brain is not separate from your body. Your brain is responding to it constantly and something as simple as humming

is a direct line into your nervous system, into your emotional state, into your vagus nerve, into your biology. And so if your body is an instrument for you, humming is one of the simplest ways for you to try to tune it back into coherence. So your action right now, my assignment for you, my challenge for you is when this podcast ends and you stop hearing my voice,

I want you to take 60 seconds in silence, close your eyes if you're not driving your car, close your eyes, and then just give yourself 60 seconds to hum. Not because it sounds cool and it sounds nice, because you actually want to start tuning in your brain and your body into actual coherence to make you feel better, feel more regulated so that you can show up better for yourself in the rest of the world. So that's what I got for today's episode. If you love this episode, please show it on your Instagram stories, tag me at Rob Diald Jr. And once again, if you want to get the perfect morning routine, you can go to the perfect morning routine.com right now and download

it absolutely free. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.