Have you ever noticed how music has this weird power to completely change your state in an instant? One moment you're going through the motions and then Boom! A certain melody just catches you off guard and suddenly you're feeling everything. It's like different songs hold different keys to unlock different parts of us.
The right sound at the right moment can crack you open. It can give you chills or transport you to a memory so vivid you can almost smell it. I took my toddlers to the Santa Barbara Zoo last weekend. Solo parent trip with two and four-year-old boys because apparently I enjoy chaos. Well, picture this. I am juggling snacks and water bottles and sunscreen while my four-year-old announces that he needs to pee.
right now. And my two-year-old decides the lion enclosure fence looks climbable. My neck was so tense I could barely turn my head. Parent mode in full survival swing. Well then we passed this random older gentleman playing a wooden flute near the white-handed gibbon exhibit. Not part of the zoo, just some random street musician who set up shop and decided to spread a little joy.
And something weird happened. The chaos just paused. Those simple notes cut through everything. The mental checklist. The constant vigilance. All of it. And not just for me. Both of my boys. My breathing slowed down, my shoulders dropped. For maybe 30 seconds, I was just there. Present. Connected to something I hadn't even realized was missing.
Moments like these aren't just feel-good moments. Your entire body, down to your cells, exists as vibrational patterns. New quantum biology research shows that we're basically walking symphonies. Each system humming at its own frequency. Scientists have caught cells talking to each other through vibrations, not just chemicals. It's a whole language happening inside you right now.
And when those frequencies sync up, you feel clear, balanced, healthy. But when they're scrambled, that's when the physical and emotional crap hits the fan. External sounds literally reprogram your internal rhythms. That's why a chaotic, noisy target run leaves you drained. while the right playlist can reorganize your scattered brain into something resembling sanity. Most of us have no clue this is even happening. We're unconsciously tuning.
or mistuning ourselves all day long through our environments and especially through what we listen to. We're walking around letting random frequencies dictate our internal state without even realizing we have a choice. Ancient cultures were onto this centuries ago. Those Tibetan singing bowls and aboriginal didgeridoos, they weren't just cool sounds. They were precision tools for shifting consciousness and healing.
They knew what modern science is just catching up to. Think about it. We're having profound experiences with sound all of the time. That song that makes you cry every time you hear it? The voice of someone you love that instantly relaxes you? The particular sound of waves that somehow resets your entire system? None of this is random. Your awareness itself acts like a frequency control knob.
when you're scattered and reactive your internal vibrations get messy but when you're present and focused they harmonize And that's why five minutes of real listening can reset your entire nervous system faster than an hour of trying to calm down. And I've seen this in my kids too. When they are in full meltdown mode,
Trying to reason with them is useless. But putting on specific music sometimes upbeat to match their energy before slowly bringing it down or sometimes immediately soothing, can completely shift their state within minutes. Here's what happens when we ignore this vibrational dimension. We give up our power. We let whatever random frequencies are around us dictate our internal state.
we miss using the most accessible tool for transformation that's literally vibrating all around us. The most powerful technology for well-being isn't in a new app. It's in becoming fluent in this vibrational language that's been playing through humanity since we first banged rocks together and called it music. So what if your playlist could actually be medicine? What if the sounds you surround yourself with daily were consciously chosen to support specific states of being?
What if you could learn to use music not just for enjoyment, but as that precision tool for presence, connection, and aliveness? Today, our guests are Mort and Sarah Sherman. They're a father-daughter duo, which gets me a little jelly, honestly. But they're also the authors of Resonant Minds, the transformative power of music, one note at a time. Sarah is a classical pianist.
And no, I will never be mature enough to say that without a slight chuckle. And founder of Mozart for Munchkins. While Mort brings decades of experience in education and mindfulness practice. And together they've created a practical approach for using music as a tool for transformation.
In this episode, you will learn how to create your own frequency medicine for different emotional states, practical techniques for using music to strengthen neural pathways for focus, creativity, and emotional regulation. And how to use the science of entrainment to create deeper connections with others through shared musical experiences. I'm fascinated by the mind-body connection, especially how our gut health affects everything from our mood to our sleep.
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When you study Shakespeare, we study the words. And for so many people, it's difficult. The language is to break through the barriers. But his writing is full of music. Or in science, you know, when we look at science and the idea of groove. and the neuroscience of music and how it affects us as people, why not bring music into the science classroom? Or when you go beyond that into church, we know that church and spirituality go hand in hand.
And so there's that opportunity over there. And, you know, we can go on and on about the opportunities and what we've done with music, in fact, some ways counteracts the possibilities of music as being an integral. of our lives. Turn up your frequency with Mind Love. Bite-sized brain hacks for seekers, dreamers, and doers. It's time to give your mind a little love with your host, Melissa Monti.
So what made you decide that music would be such an integral part of your legacy and life story? Well, that's a good question. I gotta let Sarah pick that up. but I'll take the prerogative as her father. It's always been part of our adult life, but it was not part of my childhood. And there was this moment, in fact, we call it in the book, we call this the mindful spark. And that question, Melissa, is at the core of why we wrote this book, is that how do you create those moments?
mindful sparks, those moments where music becomes important. Sarah was raised in a house where music was an integral part of who we are as a family. One of our kids loves like hip hop and country music and just it's really eclectic. Sarah became a classical musician. Our oldest daughter is a little bit more eclectic, but she moved to South Carolina.
this point her life is being structured and and pushed in a different way but but you know the story of sarah to me is just so fascinating about That question, that mindful spark, that musical moment where, you know, it was... part of you and and so i also i want to prompt you the research that she's done that there's this huge majority of people in the country and in the world
who use music. And so we want to get to how do you create music, how do you use music as a lever for mindful action? But Sarah, like music in your life, go ahead, take it away. It's such a good question, Melissa. Some of my earliest memories are falling asleep to a pink transistor radio, you know, which dates me a little bit. But I remember falling asleep to classical music and watching the red.
what are they called? LED lights flop through and change. And so it was always something I loved, but I don't know if I necessarily knew what that meant until I was much older. My sister was taking piano lessons.
sisters. My middle sister is only 20 months older than I am. So of course I had to do everything she did. And after all her piano lessons, I used to go into the room where she had her lessons and play whatever she was learning during her lesson. But I would play it with... my nose I would play it with my toes I would you know try with my elbows and it really pissed her off because it just came easily to me Thank you. And I don't know if...
As a kid, I loved it, but I didn't know what that meant. And so it was something that my parents helped me really shape my life around. I started taking regular lessons. I was competing by the time I was in middle school, probably even younger. really careful to make sure they didn't push me to practice, but it was always something that I loved. And so I would sit down and I would, I would practice, I would do my work. And so it was something I.
have always grown up loving something I've always done. And I think it was by the time my daughter was born, I was still performing. And when you ask about what makes that mindful action with music or bringing the two together, I think a lot of us do that anyway without necessarily realizing it. And what we try to do in the book is to put that intent or the purpose behind why we...
select music. Some of us already do that when we go for a run and we select a soundtrack. Or if we're in a yoga class, somebody's selecting that music for us to create a certain ambiance. And this idea of the... book merged with music and mindful action came because I started a concert series called Mozart for Munchkins when my daughter was just four months old. I was still performing regularly as a classical pianist and she was going to all my concerts. My husband was.
wearing her in one of those snuggies and since you have two young kids I know that you're familiar with them. And she was the only baby there. And there was one concert in particular. I don't know how well you know classical music, but I was a soloist with an orchestra with the Chelsea Symphony. I was playing a Shostakovich piano concerto. And to me, that was a big deal.
performer to be a soloist and have the orchestra behind me and I invited a lot of new parent friends and they all canceled what if my baby needed to cry to cry during the concert or they were hungry or needed a diaper change and I understood but I was disappointed it was a big moment for me as a performer and so I noticed a gap
around New York City where there wasn't anything to allow kids to be kids, but to be exposed to real music. Real music in the sense of Bach, Beethoven. I'm classically trained, so that's what it was at the time, and it's evolved a lot by then. And so that mindful action merging with music came as something, well, if we want to get our...
audience members to maybe have a moment of calm. We're going to play a piece of music to do that. If we want to create a sense of community, we're going to play something to move everyone around. It started with MindUp, the Goldie Hawn Foundation in 2021, maybe 2022. We collaborated with United Federation of Teachers and MindUp to create MindUp for music, which is using the four pillars. MindUp and applying music to complement each of these pillars of mindfulness, focus, neuroscience.
emotional awareness and positive psychology and so we created these soundtracks where we worked with teachers and with students to support all of that and from there It's just grown into the book, into what our everyday lives are surrounded by. Great. Melissa, before you ask a question, Sarah, real music? Could be Simon and Garfunkel, could be Taylor Swift. It's not just classical music.
Oh, I know that. I said, like, as a classically trained, that was my seedling, though. I get it. I just want to be really clear that we're not elitists and snobbists. It's music for everybody. And you bring what we call, you fall back to the familiar, the familiar playlist of your mind, and you can build on that. So for somebody, Taylor Swift might be familiar. For somebody else to be back for me, I grew up.
with Simon and Garfunkel. My wife loves Carol Kane. So wherever that familiar is, is the point of the book, is that you used to use that as the lever, as the spark for improving your life and those. around you. Music is really important to me too.
grew up, I was in choirs for a long time, but I also started playing the piano. I started with the flute, hated it, started playing the piano. At this point, I believed I was the kid who quit things because I did. I did gymnastics and dance and I did it for like a year.
and i'm like who can wear these leotards moving on and so i was just always quitting things but then i found piano and it was the first thing that i stuck to and i ended up doing some program called certificate of merit and getting some scholarships and and So I'm a little elitist, but when I say elitist, I'm thinking millennial music is so much better than today's music. Like, bring back Ludacris and... nirvana i don't know like i can't get into whatever is trending on tiktok these days but
I also was the generation of Napster where I was like sitting there waiting for multiple people to seed a song so I could get it. And it would sometimes take 11 hours because it was unknown. I was creating all these playlists. So I love that. Melissa, I...
I got to tell you a story that just happened the other day. My wife and I tried to talk to our grandson and to our daughter when they drive to school together in the morning. And we were doing a podcast last week and I was saying something like, what music, Ethan, do you listen to?
And he said, well, listen, let's be really clear. It's not classical, even though you guys love classical. And it's not country, even though my dad loves country. And it's not the 80s and 90s, even though my mom loves that. He said, I listen to indie music. And again, it's not when you're, my wife and I said, what is indie music? So we had to go online and look up indie. And then we spent the morning listening to it because it was important to our grandson, Ethan.
Just as Sarah would listen to, it drives me crazy what our grandchildren, what her children listen to. And she could tell you some of the language they use as they ask for the music. But Melissa, that question about, you know, that you're a millennial, you know, and that makes difference for you. But we want you and others to open your minds and listen to the music and listen to what the kids are saying or what you're...
neighbors are saying, and learn and grow and respect because it's important to them. For sure. My four-year-old's first favorite song when he was two, for some reason, I actually... was like humming this song in my head. And then he started singing Karma Chameleon. And I was like, are you really saying that? Because this is like two-year-old accent. Karma Chameleon. And I'm like, he is saying Karma Chameleon. And then he started to sing it and we had to play it.
all the time. His next favorite song was Wrecking Ball for some reason. I don't even know how he got exposed to it, but then all of a sudden I was listening to Miley Cyrus over and over again. But then we went through a phase of, it was a lot of Blippi songs, which are great. And I remember thinking, before I had kids, when I was pregnant with my first, I thought,
I'm not going to be the person who just listens to toddler songs all the time. I want to expose them to real music, you know, but then I saw the joy on their faces. So I let it be. But just a couple of weeks ago, I said to my husband, I was like, Nope, I'm bringing back good songs. I want them to have this because.
I remember being jealous of when I was a teenager of my friends who really grew up listening with their dad, listening to classic rock. And I could just tell they had some appreciation that I didn't yet, which is why I went so deep in the Napster world. illegally downloading all the songs. And so... I'm curious, though. Nobody else did that, Melissa. You're the only one I've ever heard. Only one, only one. I know. I got real into it, though. That's all I was doing after school. And so what is.
Like when you're thinking about why this is so important to really develop this appreciation of music, bring it into our lives and experience it in maybe a deeper way than we're used to just listening to it in the background. What is the benefit of that? So this idea that we talk about a lot in the book that I find really important is the idea of active listening versus purposeful passive listening. So both...
are really important. When we are active listening, think about when you're listening to somebody talk and you need to retain that information to have a dialogue. And we can select musical pieces and have them. an activity or some type of mindful action to go along with that piece, whether it's listening purposefully in a group setting when we do workshops and saying, hey, let's listen to the lyrics and see if you can extract something from it. Or there's a piece I like called The Rain.
prelude by Chopin and to say, hey, can you hear that raindrop? Can you act? And so in doing something that is a guided activity with a piece of music, a prescripted guided activity, we're helping to create focus and attentive listening. which then helps in dialogue. It helps our cognitive functions. It helps even our executive functions. On the flip side, when we talk about purposeful passive listening, that's the music that you have on the background.
American listens to three hours of music a day. Younger generations are up to four hours and that's a staggering amount. But how much of that is background? noise, background music that's not listened to with intent and how much of that is, hey, I need to change my mood. I'm going to put on a piece of music to help with that. And when we purposefully passively listen to a piece of music, that's a mouthful.
um we activate something called our default mode network and that is really important because that is where we are creative that's where we've solved problems that's where our mind is at rest but it's where we have all these connections happen And we can put on a piece of music and have it kind of wash over us. And some activities I like to do are we paint what we hear. We draw what we hear. Maybe you write a poem. Maybe you just listen.
and have a kind of wash over you and that's when we talked about musical selections earlier it could be classical it could be taylor swift it could be sigur ross it could be indie music or ludicrous really whatever resonates with you and the whole point is that my music isn't everyone's music, but we can choose musical selections to help activate these different parts of our mind. And the more that we learn how to activate these.
parts of our mind to help us focus or to help us become creative the more natural it comes to us and we know how to then hey i'm really stuck on this i need to just take a moment and reground myself and i'm going to put on a piece of music
if it helps my mind calm down. So maybe I can come up with a solution or, hey, I'm having a hard time focusing. Maybe I'm going to put on this piece of music and I've worked to create this positive habit with this piece of music so that I can actively listen and focus. on what i need to do or the task at hand
Your question is really, I think, at the essence of our work. So I just want to build on your really important, insightful question and what Sarah said. This is not a book about music appreciation. In fact, in some ways, it's not even a book about music. We titled it Resonant Minds, The Transformative Power of Music. So it's that idea of music is that lever.
for creating more resonant minds. And let me give you a very specific example from kind of what you and Sarah are talking about. I would bet that you have a playlist, whether it's for your kids or for yourself or for your family or for your husband. And that playlist... gives back to you what's familiar you could almost know by heart what songs first what song second and you go through it and and
People are dependent upon their playlists. Some of those playlists, if you use some of the commercial products out there, are...
already formed. They're not able to satisfy your particular needs as a millennial or mine as a little bit older than a millennial or your kids, you and Sarah, you know, the same generation of having children. So the question is, If commercial products drive us towards the familiar and regurgitate back to us what is already familiar, how do we expand that playlist to respect?
to one another to become better people through music. And Sarah's point, I love this research she did about the time that we spend as humans, whether it's passive or actively listening. How do we build on that? How do we make that as that moment, that mindful spark to go beyond just listening to music, but in the dopamine question, Sarah, or the other, the behaviors of executive functioning that.
Music allows us to access. What I know about the default mode network and the importance of stimulating that area of the brain, which even meditation can really get into the default mode network, but it's... The brighter that area is, the more we're used to using it. It actually is the area that helps us understand who we are and process emotions.
I'm always bringing attention to these things because we're like, oh, but it's just music or it's just this. But it's like, what a beautiful, enjoyable way to stimulate this area of the brain that expands so much. into how you relate to your life and to other people and that understanding of ourselves. I mean, so often we're, we're. searching for books on how to improve our relationships and and how to network better or you know be a better parent
that starts with understanding who we are and our place in that relationship so that we can bring our best selves to it. And so even that alone. is motivating to me to engage with music in a deeper way, which is something that I used to do when I was younger and I was just noticing how often it is the background for me.
It's funny that this conversation is happening because, again, I mentioned how just the other day I mentioned to my husband, we need to bring music into the kids. And I was like, I want them to see us dancing in the kitchen like we used to. And so I turned on my songs.
That too, the dance for me, always helps me tune into the deeper layers of the music because I'm not swaying my hips to the lyrics as much. I'm hitting those deeper beats and then I'm noticing this little sound that makes me, you know, do the little... squiggle thing. Did you get this on video? Always. We have a ring camera in the living room. What do you think is one of the common misconceptions people have about music's role in our lives? Music is...
fun, right? We all think of it music as fun, but I think the idea of purposefully using music, again, some of us do that anyway, but the idea that we can use music as a tool, so to speak, to help us make our everyday lives more easeful. what you said about the default mode network and meditation and helping us have a deeper understanding of ourselves. Not everyone can sit still and meditate, but music is...
something that can help people get to that idea and to that presence. And so I think the misconception with music is beyond this enjoyment. It's really something that is a tool to better our everyday lives when it's used with purpose and intention. And that's a point we really try to get. through in the book is that it's accessible we all have our phones or our devices or any all these things at our fingertips that we can
Pull up a song almost at any point in the day. And so let's use it. Let's use that to our advantage. Again, Melissa, I'm just really loving your questions. And you just triggered all these notes that already are emerging from your questions. We went to a symphony in our county about a week and a half ago.
And it was really that moment that Sarah writes about that we write about in our book. You know, if you go to a symphony, and this would probably happen to you, if you have a cold, and you have to take out like a... throat lozenge or something, and you crinkle the paper, everybody looks at you and you feel guilty, right? It's that quiet moment. Well, we write about Mozart's perspective about music, and Sarah could talk more about that in a minute, but...
So much of what we've done with music has made it uncomfortable for people. Isn't it great that 2% or 3% of the world listens to music? I mean, to classical music. No, it's not great. Or let me tell you, as a superintendent of schools for 25 years, I think back of all the opportunities and possibilities I should have embraced about music. For example, social studies. Wouldn't it be fascinating if we included in social studies the music of the times, if we connected the music of the people?
to the story of the people, to the history of who we are as people. And there's just so many examples. One of my favorite or two of my favorites is Amazing Grace. George Washington knew Amazing Grace.
grace because it was in the hymnal of the times and almost everybody i could see your face light up melissa when i mentioned amazing grace almost everybody we know could sing amazing grace and almost every president has used that one way or another Barack Obama's president sang it in South Carolina. church. And Sarah could talk about how FDR used music in the 30s. So that's an opportunity. It's a possibility. Or in literature, how many people have heard the music of Shakespeare?
you study Shakespeare we study the words and for so many people it's difficult the language is that to break through the barriers but his music his his writing is full of music and and so his literature across the world or in science. You know, when we look at science and the idea of groove and the neuroscience of music and how it affects us as people, why not bring music?
into the science classroom or when you go beyond that into church we know that church and spirituality go hand in hand and so there's that opportunity over there and you know like we can go on and on about the opportunity And what we've done with music, in fact, some ways counteracts the possibilities of music as being an integral part of our lives. This idea of building playlists and having music accessible and having an essential part.
part and integral part of our life is again that lever for broader way and we have squandered our opportunities with music because in some ways we have said stay away so sarah do you know that mozart quote that I mentioned? Do you want to just give Melissa a taste of what Mozart said about his music? Oh, yeah. So I'll be paraphrasing terribly, but the idea of it, I know passionately. Mozart wrote a letter when he was premiering one of his symphonies to a friend, and it was about...
the way the audience perceived the piece. And he talked about it like there was this, I'll use the musical terms and explain them. There is this piano in the violins and you could almost hear. it was silent in the concert hall. But then at the end of the movement, when there was this giant crescendo, everyone cheered in the audience with this burst of applause, just like I knew they were going to.
That moment captures that Mozart didn't want the audience to sit still. He thought it was really neat that when the music got quiet, the audience got quiet. But when they were excited, like the music was supposed to create this feeling of excitement, the audience got... excited with that. And so how amazing that, you know, this is how many hundreds of years, almost 300 years ago, and 250, give or take.
We have a classical composer that almost everyone knows, Mozart, who wanted to have this type of reaction to the audience. And I think that's beautiful. And I'm not saying that every single concert hall today has to have people cheering up the crescendo.
and decrescendos when it gets loud and soft, but the freedom to really feel the music and interact and to... experience it um then feel like that the idea of I have to sit quietly with my hands folded and be in my best behavior like with your kids would you feel comfortable taking to them to a classical music concert it's
You're feral. No. Well, you can bring him to a Mozart for Munchkin's concert any time. But you should. I know. No, I want to. I'm getting really inspired. And I'm reminded of there's two moments that I think about a lot when I am. either overstimulated or all of a sudden I feel my mind judging like that's not supposed to happen. There's two moments. One is...
I was doing ayahuasca once, and the woman actually said, you know, people might be making sounds, and if you're getting annoyed, use that as your work. And I use that in my daily life, especially with my kids, because they can be quite... I can get quite overstimulated and they're two little boys. And so they're loud and doing a lot of things all the time. And then the other one is a book I read on meditation where someone talked about how.
In his training, he was challenged to sit in Times Square. And when he could find the depths of the meditation in Times Square, then he knew that he had gotten there. And those two things kind of brought together. were what came to mind when Mort was talking about the crinkling paper in the symphony. Because what I would do now, the place that I'm now, is I would probably have the moment of like, shh. But then I'd be, I'd sit there and think.
What if I could integrate that sound into the music? Because this moment is a note. This moment is music. And what does it look like when I accept it all at the same time? My word for the year for this year is resonance. And so that's why I was so drawn to your book, because the last couple of years I kept bringing back expansion because I just felt like that in my life. And I was having babies and all this stuff.
But now I'm coming to a place where resonance to me is a way of being. And when we really understand our own resonance, we can make decisions that... increase our frequencies and expand that resonance beyond ourselves. And so that's why I'm so attracted to this idea of using music as the bridge between us and the ways to connect us in a way because we there's science to that listening to the same song you can see people's heart rhythms even synchronizing and it's just
Music is just so beautiful, and I think it's sometimes underappreciated. So thank you for bringing this work to the world. Yeah, we want to come back and talk about the crickling of the paper and creating your own music in a little bit. Sarah's working with somebody called Shara Sedaroff, and we'll talk about AI and the possibilities of actually doing what you're describing or dancing around the kitchen table or kitchen living.
room and recording it so many possibilities out there through music but there's one Another piece with the meditation. Sarah and I worked really hard on this image, and it's in the book a couple times. It's the conductor with the raised baton. And part of the image we want is that person who could meditate quietly amidst all the turmoil of a train station or a Times Square or wherever one might be.
conductor has that moment of silence. I love a piece, part of the book is where we talk about the silence between the notes, that moment of quieting. People don't often know how to do that. But yet we see examples time and again. I remember watching Michael Phelps a couple of years ago at the Olympics. And he had his headphones on. And then you could see him on the blocks before he went into the pool. And every swimmer does that. They put their hands down.
the side they shake it off and they're really quiet and yet human beings through the music because michael phelps was listening to music to center and to focus himself before he went out went out what he went eight gold medals that year eight olympic medals that last year, there were those moments. You nailed it perfectly. where we need to figure out how to quiet ourselves, whether you're a runner, as Sarah is, whether you meditate daily, as I do with my wife, or whatever it may be.
So it's not just the music itself, but it's the silence between the notes. It's that raised baton of the conductor before she lowers it or waves it, and then the orchestra or the band. I mean, Taylor Swift. I just think the world of her, not only because she's a great musician, because she resonates with her audience. She has figured it out.
how to deeply connect with the people who love her music. And I think that's why she's so wildly popular, is that even when it was pouring and raining, she went out and performed and stood in the rain and played. That resonates. So what you've just described in terms of the resonance about it, the meditation, the connection, there's a lot of science to that. You know, if we were, there's something about, you know, your kids' songs that you were saying, Melissa.
If we were to start singing, and there's a few we're going to put some earworms in your head, some phonological loops, Melissa, then we could say, you know, let's think of a song like You Are My Sunshine. Or we could think of... Something from Sesame Street, sunny days. Or we could think of Mr. Rogers. Music is always there. It's right before us. It's how do we use it then?
And to take it beyond those phonological loops, to connect to ourselves, I like what you said, and to others. We're going to take you on the road with us, by the way. By the way, Melissa, because what you just said before was so wonderful. It captured our book perfectly. I am the girl that's always creating songs about anything. I have like nine songs about diapers. Some of them are rap. Some of them are. you know, classical toddler, change your diaper. We change your diaper now. I love that.
Well, I do want to go back to what something Melissa was saying about resonance. And because you've mentioned a few times wanting to bring more music in your household. And something we said earlier about. accepting all types of music. And because I think sometimes it's hard to figure out at what point, how do we know which songs to play for our kids? Everything resonates differently for all of us. Like you said, what was the song you were saying your four-year-old was really into?
ball right now he's really into a chain smokers song so i'm kind of a little more excited So what we do, and what you mentioned habits also, and we haven't touched on that yet. And there's this whole cycle on how we can utilize music to create these positive habits. But before we even get to that, it's how do we...
open our ears to accept each other's music or to at least see what resonates with your four-year-old. I have a six and an eight-year-old. So what resonates with them? You know, for my daughter, some days it's party in the USA. My son really likes blinding.
lights and the flaming lips um sometimes he really likes fart songs and we often go in a circle so it's my daughter's turn then it's my son's turn and we try to listen to each other's music no matter what it is so even if we're hearing the fart song do you know they even have the william tell overture
in a fart version, which is awful, but your four and two year olds might appreciate it. And then you're introducing them to classical music at the same time. So the idea is that even though I don't want to listen to that. That drives me crazy. But even though I don't want to listen to it, listening with my children to their musical selections is a bonding moment. And so when we bond or listen to music together.
We'll get to dopamine later because I like using that in a different context. But when we listen to music in this way together, it releases oxytocin, which bonds us, right? We know of the oxytocin, the parents singing their child a lullaby, which is also equally important. But then when we let our children... children play their musical selections whether we like them or not it's opening up our own perspectives to
see where they are, maybe learn something about them. And then vice versa. We play it where if they're playing their songs, they have to listen to mine as well. And I'm not expecting them to want to play my songs when...
I'm not around, you know, if I'm in another room or something, but that they recognize the type of music that's important to me in that moment. My daughter now knows, we'll go back to Taylor Swift. If I'm in a bad mood, she'll say, please shake it off and we'll dance it out together because she knows that boosts.
my mood. And so you can create these positive habits as a family to support each other, not just ourselves. And I think there's something really beautiful about the way you can use music as a connection and family. I'm so glad you're saying this right now because I just realized I clicked into doing something right recently. As I mentioned, because that was the thing. I was like, I have been listening to your music because it makes you so happy.
it's important for you to listen to my music and not just so you appreciate my music, but so you get used to appreciating other people's music. And so I wanted them to be exposed to that, but also... I'm always singing around the house. I love to sing. And one time, and my kids have loved it, but then now they're getting to an age. And one time my toddler, my four-year-old.
before he was four I was like mom stop singing and I was like you never tell someone to stop singing singing is a gift to the world and I have a wound from when I was little I loved singing when I was little I wasn't very good at it I think my mom was getting annoyed and when I was like
three I was like can I be a famous singer when I grow up she's like I think you need some work and from that time on and she's the most loving mom like she's still appalled that she said this and that I remember it but she said she was probably having a moment
Anyways, she, it took a really long time and I've healed singing out loud with my husband because I would like do it quietly. And he's like, you have a good voice. Let's bring this out. And so it's been, now I just kind of belt it out. Well, it was funny because. just the other day my Two-year-old is like too loud when I was singing. And all of a sudden my four-year-old turns to him and he says, Maeve, you never tell mama to stop singing. Music is a gift to the world.
I remembered what I said like a month ago. It was just the most heartwarming moment. I was like, I'm teaching them something. Oh, that's so beautiful. Sarah, did you hear the accent that Melissa just used? It sounds like when you talk about Marlowe. Yeah, I think the two of you could talk about four or five. Oh, the baby accent. I love it so much. So I'm curious when you think about like what other ways do you use music? Because it's such a. powerful.
way to stimulate different emotional states like I have my sad playlist when I need to get it out I just sink right in the most depressing music in the world but how do you how do you recommend to use it or to do use it to consciously shift states or yeah yeah before we answer that you just raise a question about parenting and you know we've all been good or bad parents we do the best we can but one of the best parenting
books I ever read is Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan there's a section in there and this was written a while ago Amy Tan has a brand new book out which is wonderful about birds in the backyard but Amy Tan wrote about when she was a kid, she was very talented in chess. and was on the path to getting a number of chess championships. And her mom made her practice, sit down and practice. And one day she was so angry at her mom. Her mom was like,
A tiger mom, you know, practice chess, practice chess. Amy Tan writes about knocking over the chessboard and falling out of love with chess. And Sarah talked about before, as parents, we didn't say, sit down and practice, Sarah. In our heads, we wanted to. And Sarah's mom and I even talk about it to this point. How hard do you push? What do you say?
say and I think what you raised before telling your story is the question of motivation and parenting and how do you find that balance and can music be used in a very different way than Rather than saying, you don't have a voice. Nobody is tone deaf. Nobody out there doesn't like music, right? It just doesn't happen. We have all these bad pejorative terms about it. Your story is very revealing. And I think. We should come back and do a whole other episode on parenting through music.
But you really hit something that's been important to Sarah about. Sarah, I don't want to speak for you. Yeah, I can. I'm your dad. But this whole question of how Mozart for Munchkins was created, it's about... Opening up music as families, as parenting and touching the soul and the heart through music. So I love your story, and I ignored your question because I wanted to go back and just tell you, go back and read Amy Tan and the Joy Love Club, just that one portion, and you'll say, ah.
I got it. I understand. Yeah, I haven't read that one yet, which is rare to have a book that comes up that I haven't read these days. But I am hauntingly self-aware. And so I've gone through. Just what do I want to instill? I want my kids to have a deep appreciation of all of their senses. And music is just such a big part of my life.
I know the power that it has and connecting. I've had so many different phases with music from classical piano to doing copious amounts of drugs at festivals. I don't know, but it's all been wonderful. I wouldn't do some of it again, but I'm glad I did it once.
I meditate a lot and I love... healing frequencies and I can feel and so sometimes I'll just look up like I want to feel this which frequency should I tune into and YouTube has that or insight timer has that and I can feel my brain changing and plus i have all of these like brain training devices like the muse headband or the sensei brain trainer so i can see the difference that it's making but i'm going through a phase of trying to
Well, since last year, trying to meditate more in silence just so I can make sure I'm not reliant on the music. But I went back to music this week and was like, oh, it's so much better. It feels like a massage or ASMR. I'm deeply touched by sound. Love that. A few things I want to touch on with all of that. The meditation part, but you asked something earlier, so I want to make sure I get to it and kind of how we use music.
to help alter our moods or also you mentioned habits and one of us mentioned dopamine at some point so i'm going to bring it back to that because i feel like you can't really talk about habits and motivation without talking about dopamine and this idea of you know Um,
The way we think of music, and sometimes my dad mentioned a phonological loop, and it's when we have a tune that goes in our ears, and we all have moments of songs that creep into our brain at any times of day, wherever they come from. But we can purposefully use music.
to create these attachments or these associations. And so if you think about when you brush your teeth, you don't always know how to brush your teeth. I mean, right now you're teaching your kids how to brush your teeth, but eventually it goes from your explicit memory, something that you're kind of learning how to do and you're...
actually focus on how am I doing this to your implicit memory? So then it just becomes this automatic process. And so how can we use music to help guide us on our everyday lives? For me, again, I'm going to go back to classical music, but it's Bach. I love listening to Bach cello suites. And it's been years now that when I play Bach, I sit down and I work and it's become this habit. And I think because, or I know from the science and the research, I'm not a neuroscientist, but I
I have done my due diligence over the years, that when you come back and you have a positive routine, it releases dopamine. And so the more that I've listened to Bach, where it started as this conscious thing, hey, I'm going to put this on to enhance my focus.
on whatever task I'm doing to this implicit memory, this automatic. When I hear Bach, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to sit down and do work. And I've created this habit. And from doing that over the years, my children actually know how to do that also. If I'm playing loud music and my... son needs a moment he says hey let's play boccello suites and it's something that's happened and i
encourage all of us to use it on a daily basis to find what resonates with us and to find that song or whatever it might be in that moment, whether we need to focus and what tune can create this positive memory attachment. with dopamine release from going from our explicit to our implicit memory to, hey, now our body releases this naturally because we've used it repetitively over time for that.
mood boost or that endorphin rush whatever it might be so we can consciously use music to boost ourselves at any time throughout the day whether you need to sing your sad music whether you need to get up and move around and dance it out like we all need to do sometimes. And so the music enhances all of these moments in our everyday lives and we can use that little boost. It's so interesting you're saying this because a while ago I read Dopamine Nation by Ann Lebke and she talks about
There's a lot of insights about dopamine that I hadn't learned elsewhere. And one of the primary ones was around how your brain will. create an equal amount of pain after you get a big dopamine hit. And so it like forces your brain to recalibrate. That's why a lot of times when you...
binge a Netflix series and then you stop, you feel a really big low. And so I was thinking as I was reading this, I was like, but I know you get dopamine from music. Do you still have that? And what I learned when I was researching this was that It can. It can if you're listening to the same kind of music all the time and you avoid silence with this music. But one way to avoid it is actually by switching up tempos and genres. So it's actually good for your brain to...
have a variety of types of music and to go between them. And you can avoid the dopamine crash and instead just use it as a really healthy way to stimulate this necessary area of your brain to build better habits and things like that. That's why I actually have.
my frequency playlist when I want to get into deep work mode I have like multiple sensory things like I want to smell and a sound and then I can just put on my headphones and I get there a lot faster now because I'm triggering it and so I'm really glad you brought that up I love hearing that you have your own trigger to kind of help get you to that state. You know what to put on to help get you into that work mode or whatever mode it is you need to be in.
Yes. Now I just need to teach my kids how to do this also. I'm like, you're in room cleaning mode right now. Are you feeling? That's the cleanup song. I mean, it's a classic and most kids will know how to clean up. I need a recording of you more singing. better than the original. Well, you know, Melissa, you're just triggering remarkable questions and thoughts. This question of parenting that you asked, that we hit before, and then...
What Sarah has talked about, I call the habits of mind, written by a colleague of mine, Ben Akalik and Art Costa. But we've now talked about in the book about habits of life. And so many people with whom we've spoken say, I don't have Sarah's background. I don't even have your silly memory of all these little ditties out there that I've begun singing to you, Melissa. So how do I access it? So I want to talk about the book just for a second.
because we deliberately created the book, which is different than 99.9% of the books you're going to find in bookstores or on the market. And I think that's going to change. I think we're going to set a trend. And I think I'm already beginning to see. publishing world. Sarah said to me in the beginning, and telling the story, Sarah, I think is really interesting about how we got to write the book. But Sarah said in the beginning, I want to create a book that people can come back to.
That it's not read cover to cover and then put on a shelf somewhere. And so, you know, we call that we don't want to creating virtual dust or real dust. We want to make a meaningful, dynamic, interactive book. So here's what one of my assistants said when I was working at ASA, the school. the pretenders association, she said, I don't know all these, these like nursery rhymes that, that my wife knows that sang to Sarah and her sisters.
I would love to have a resource where I could just go and hear what other people are playing, what children are listening to, so I could have it as a resource. So in our book, for every single song we've mentioned today,
100 others, there's a QR code. And it could take you to that song. Just open the page of the book, take your phone, and you could listen to that song while you're reading the book. And then we're also creating this website because we want it to be a real... resource for the world that if you, Melissa, go in.
and say, you know what? Here's what I do when I'm listening or trying to get to that position. Here's the 10 songs I listen to or the sounds I listen to. Let me just share it with you. We'll put it on our website. We want to create a network and we want to create... communities, breaking down
Sarah has a very specific term in the music world of the fourth wall, but I want to create and break down the fourth wall of literature, of books, so that we reach the... audience and engage them in a dynamic interactive way so that i give you 400 things to follow up on by saying all that No, I think let Melissa ask questions and then I'm sure I can speak forever. So I love that.
I have multiple playlists for all of my moods. I'm going to sneak in. Now that Spotify has podcasts and stuff too, I'll sneak in a mind love episode for free guerrilla marketing here. I love it. It's like, this is my brain. state change playlist just number seven is mind love but um We'll put it on our website for you. We'll put it there. And I don't want to knock Spotify or Amazon Music. I just call them commercial products. They give you playlists of the familiar.
And they want to sell products. They want to sell songs. We don't want to knock that. We want to build on that familiar to expand what you're listening to and how you interact with others. Have you ever considered questions like Does the role of intuition play in the way we interact with music? I don't know why that song's coming up, but I'm just, I'm always drawn to kind of that spiritual side that like our natural inclinations. Does anything come up when I ask that question?
Well, we have the science to back a lot of that. And I like to think of it as musical inertia. So the music has this feeling in this direction of where it feels like it's supposed to go. There's a story. I don't know if you've. There's a joke in the classical music world that when you wanted to wake Beethoven up, you would go and stop. And he would wake up because.
It wasn't finished. And how dare you not play that last note? And it's so uncomfortable. And so there is this natural musical pull in music that we all feel. The research... goes back to even show, we have a section in the book on this as well, that babies, infants that are just months old already know where the natural feel or pulse of music. So if they've done research that have the neural synapses.
going through and if you're playing a repetitive pattern and the baby the infant hears it and it's familiar i can't remember the exact amount of time once that rhythm is changed or altered The brainwaves change because they have an expectation of what's supposed to come next. And when you pull away from that expectation of that sound of that beat.
It shows. And so this predates the language of a baby being able to actually say something, but they know what to expect on sound, which is so fascinating. And then going back even further, when we think about Neanderthals, we have proof that show that music predates language like we, formable language. The first instruments were made out of the hip of a vulture bone, and they were like these ancient flutes.
They used to have music, whether it was these flutes, whether it was rhythmic drum circles that even predates language. So when you talk about music and. I forgot your exact question now, but that music is inside all of us and that it has this expectation with us. And the research is really booming. There's this field called the neuro arts that is really.
done a lot in the last few years to put artist practitioners with neuroscientists to figure out the why. Why is art so essential to us as beings? Because it's not something that's just now. goes back for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years on why this is so essential to all of us as a being.
I just interviewed a woman named Amy McNee that's made it her mission to bring back art, even messy art, and to call yourself an artist. And we shouldn't be gatekeeping that. So I completely agree. And it is... I am so fascinated by ancient wisdom, the things that we used to have. I also really love a good conspiracy theory. And you want to know my favorite one? My favorite one is around the... World War II bells that were destroyed. So the Germans destroyed over 175,000 bells. And the...
Mainstream narrative is that it was used to create ammunition. But the conspiracy narrative is that these were healing bells. And a lot of what we see, we believe to be our ancient churches now. If you actually look, you can see in the patterns in the window. it's the shapes of that music notes make if you like put it on a table of sand and the spots where the big bells were and so the conspiracy analysts believe it to be
these healing centers, that they were actually healing centers. And then when big pharma and the elites of the world started taking over, they destroyed them all so that we wouldn't be able to be in tune with our power. Favorite conspiracy theory in the world. I want you to send it to me later. It's just right for me. It's right in the middle of my heart. I want to go back and give you a bad dad joke for the day based upon what Sarah was saying about B.
Beethoven? So, do you know what Beethoven's favorite fruit is? What? Sarah? Banana-na-na. Banana-na-na. man i didn't know i didn't have the inertia you know what song has the inertia for me dun dun dun dun dun it's the juvenile back that ass up i can't not listen to the whole song if i hear that first beat drop you know what i mean But that's also these memories that have attached on to you. And I bet you...
Like, do you have a moment when you hear that and it brings back a memory to when you first heard it or why all of a sudden that you have that? Yeah, I'm like grinding up on some teenage boy, you know, like middle school. Like, that's all we know how to dance is we just stick our asses. out and we just bounce them because it's all we really can do. We didn't have rhythm long enough.
that's the song that comes up i can actually picture one of my best friends from middle school emily just like looking back and she's like waving her i'm doing the dance right now for those who can't see but for those who can't see i'm a dad And Randad holding his eyes and ears. Oh, no.
Well, thank you so much for bringing this deeper understanding of the power of music to the world. There's so much that we didn't cover. I always have about 100 questions ready so I can go between where the conversation flows. And there's like 98 we didn't get to. For listeners that are interested in learning more about you guys, connecting with you, reading your book, seeing your other offerings, where's the best place for them to connect?
I think several places. So the company I mentioned, Mozart for Munchkins, is based in New York City, but we also do programs in other cities. So you can find us on Instagram or MozartforMunchkins.com. The book is, like we said, it's a live book with playlists. So if you want to check that out, you can visit residentminds.com as well. And there are also links to purchase the book through Amazon, Roman and Littlefield, Barnes and...
Noble, most major retailers. What did I miss? Did I miss anything, Dad? I think you hit it, but you just do a search engine for resident minds, a transformative power of music, one note at a time. And that last part, Melissa, one note at a time, it's not like there's going to be this great groundswell of change.
We recognize that change is incremental. And that one note at a time piece is something that Sarah and I spent a lot of time thinking about. So if there's other folks who want to write to us, you could find our emails and any one of the sources of Mozart for Muchkin website. or our website or others out there. Happy to continue the conversation with anybody who wants to. And I do love leaving listeners with one...
action item or thought experiment. If they were going to do one thing this week to bring some of this into their lives, what would that be? I was thinking about both of you as parents and dancing around. Sarah and her mother and her sister were dancing around, holding wooden spoons, making believe that they were their microphone. That's it. That's it. Holding their microphone, singing.
R-E-S-B-E-C-T. Find out what a B is to me. Yeah, that's it. So if there's one thing, use music to connect and to free and have joy in your life. And following up on that, I think this idea I was reading last week of many experiments in our own lives. You know, how do we create a habit? And we can't expect to make all these changes at once. And so when we talk about...
utilizing music, experiment. So create these mini experiments for yourself and find songs that resonate with you. And it might take some time to find the song that helps you focus or find the song that helps make you want to get up and dance. release some endorphins. And so to approach this idea of utilizing music in your everyday lives, as many experiments for now till you find what really resonates for you.
All the links from this episode will be at mindlove.com slash 395. Your challenge for this week is to create your own resonance playlist. Pick three emotional states that you cycle through regularly. Maybe it's focus. creativity, calm, and then find music that helps you access each one. Don't overthink it. Just trust what your body responds to, not what you think should work.
actually use your playlist intentionally for seven days straight. And notice how differently your system responds when you match your soundscape to your needs instead of just letting random frequencies dictate your state. I actually have a frequency playlist that I play every time I'm time blocking and getting into the zone. And so different sensory inputs can get me into that state a lot faster.
There are times when I really want to get in the zone where I actually use smell with a specific scent, where I will tap a specific part of my hand and all of these begin to trigger the same neural pathways. So give it a try and let me know how it goes. And speaking of special things today, today, April 1st, is actually my dad's birthday, which feels really fitting for an episode featuring Sarah and Mort Sherman, an amazing father-daughter duo.
There's something so beautiful about how family relationships shape our connection to music and storytelling. And that's actually what I want to mention today. Story Love starts in just two days, on April 3rd. So if you've been thinking about joining, now is absolutely the time to reach out. And I might be able to squeeze you in, but spots are nearly gone.
You know, across 500 episodes of Mind Love, every single intro starts with a story that pulls you in. And if you've been a regular listener, you might have noticed how my questions are intentionally ordered to take you through a journey of understanding. That is not by accident. I actually put a lot of time into that. So if you want to learn how to do that for yourself, whether it's just to process your own story or to use it in your business.
I can confidently say this is the best program to help you understand and create quickly. So reach out to me for info on Instagram at MindLoveMelissa. You can sign up for the Morning Mind Love at mindlove.com or text the word morning to 33777. Thanks for giving your mind a little love today and I'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning into Your Higher Frequency with Mind Love. Head to mindlove.com for a free gift to keep your vibes up until next week.