Over the course of evolution, nature has endowed humans with the unique ability to derive pleasure from almost everything. Love, food, and communicating with our own kind trigger the release of special hormones that make us happy. The human body is literally packed with mini-laboratories producing serotonin, endorphin, dopamine, and oxytocin.
Met a good friend you haven’t seen for years? Here is your dose of endorphins. A child casually chirps cute nonsense during dinner? Catch an injection of oxytocin. Tried a chocolate cheesecake in a new cafe? Get a supplement of serotonin. Won a sack race at a corporate party? Hold a cup of dopamine.
But what about the fly in the ointment?
Unhindered access to legal “drugs” produced by our body sometimes leads to severe abuse and can cause physical and mental harm. For example, the bulk of serotonin, which is responsible for emotions and the lack of which leads to depression, is synthesized in the stomach when we eat something delicious or bask in the sun.
Thus, smart nature wanted to teach us to eat healthy food and get outside for a dose of essential vitamin D. Could it have imagined that one day humans would invent super-calorie cakes and fast food with trans fats? If the internal braking system does not work, we will eat sweet and fatty foods without limits, eat away personal problems with ice cream, and give up vegetables, whose natural taste is noticeably inferior to brownies and french fries.
Dopamine addiction can become even more dangerous.
Dopamine is not only the “hormone of happiness”, but also the “hormone of reinforcement” of our actions. It is a reward for effort and risk. Won at cards – reinforced the victory with dopamine. Besides the fact that this hormone leads to more than serious addictions, such as gambling or computer games, in combination with adrenaline, dopamine can even lead to injuries and life threats.
For example, the extreme sport of BASE jumping (jumping with a special parachute from the roofs of buildings and TV towers) has claimed the lives of nearly 400 people over its forty-year history. This is a very dangerous activity, but it pays off handsomely with the amount of dopamine, attracting more and more followers every year, forcing them to seek peaks higher and higher.
There is indeed a huge amount of pleasures in the surrounding world, but those that would be accessible at any age with any level of training, would not require significant financial injections, and would not cause harm when overly indulged in, can be counted on one hand. Newfangled shopping, which a number of psychologists call a good remedy for stress, is limited by the amount in your wallet and threatens with mental disorders like oniomania. Not to mention mindless consumption – one of the causes of modern ecological cataclysms.
In general, a modern person’s choice of pleasure is a constant search for a balance between harmful and healthy, between desire and punishment. Eating a cream cake with a friend in the evening, but doing 40 minutes of cardio on a stationary bike in the morning as a payback for consuming extra carbohydrates.
What joys do not have negative consequences?
Those that appeared at the dawn of humanity and developed simultaneously with it. For example, communication with each other. Have you noticed how much in our society is tailored for communication? Face-to-face business negotiations, multi-hour telephone conversations between lovers, conversations with a psychotherapist that bring relief and help to heal.
One of the oldest forms of communication, which, according to scientists, appeared before speech, was singing. With the help of sounds built into primitive proto-melodic structures, it was possible to convey quite complex ranges of emotions, share information, and express one’s mood.
A little later, music was added to singing, which, perhaps, originally consisted of rhythmic beating with a stick on an empty log paired with sounds made by people. And the dance completed the basis of primitive interpersonal and tribal communications as a logical continuation of singing and music.
Music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems. In fact, our love for singing is, as they say, in our blood, and a large amount of research confirms that dopamine is released when listening to or singing. The fact that music helps to cope with stress or relieve pain is no longer in doubt, and music therapy is actively used in practice. To the extent that karaoke or singing in a choir is used to prevent senile dementia.
When a person sings, their lungs are saturated with oxygen, as in a sports jog, feeding the brain and body with energy, making it easier for us to get rid of a bad mood, easier to work on complex tasks, and maintain concentration and attention for a long period. As a result – improved blood circulation, normalized heartbeat and blood pressure, improved general well-being, disappearance of headaches, and a better complexion.
Microvibrations that shake every cell of the body during singing also have a beneficial effect on the organism. This was noticed a long time ago, because it is not without reason that in almost all meditative and healing practices from the shamanic rituals of the Far East to the rites of the indigenous tribes of Australia, singing served as a means of introducing a person into a trance and healing from a number of diseases.
But the most important thing about singing is that it is accessible to everyone. You don’t have to buy special equipment or save up for years for a new exercise machine, because you can sing in the shower. Singing doesn’t require special skills, physique, and years of training. Even speech impairments will not be a hindrance to participating in a karaoke party, and John Scatman, who suffered from severe stuttering, is the best proof of this.
For children with speech pathology, it is singing that is one of the ways to improve speech and a source of liberation, optimistic mood, self-confidence, somatic stabilization, and harmonization of personality. Moreover, music and singing will become a good way of self-expression when other possibilities are limited.
Singing is that useful and healthy pleasure that offers constant growth and development. There will always be new peaks of self-improvement that you will climb, mastering numerous singing techniques, expanding your range, improving yourself, and performing more complex compositions. You can get out of the comfort of your living room and home karaoke into a karaoke club and test yourself on the big stage in front of a large audience to try the combination of adrenaline and dopamine, just like extreme sports enthusiasts.
Summary
Each of us has access to an endless sea of joy and the highest level of emotions, which are with us from the very first days of our birth and accompany us throughout our lives. We are created to sing and be happy. We sing to share our feelings with the whole world. We sing to tell everyone about the joy that overwhelms us. We sing because we cannot help but sing.
