Birdsong

A couple of recently published studies have shown the calming effects of listening to birdsong. Their sweet melodies can reduce anxiety, reduce depressive symptoms, and reduce paranoia symptoms.

In my several years of working with anxiety, this hasn’t been a common coping skill I recommended, but it will be now. Why? Because it makes much sense evolutionarily.

We used to not be indoors as much as we are now. We used to not be so consumed by technology. Nature was our prominent source of communication of safety and danger. While we may have cognitively forgotten this and moved on to more industrialized ways of living, it will be quite some time before our nervous systems adapt to this newer, modern way of living.

Birds sing when things are safe and calm. While it may seem like a lifetime ago that we would utilize this as a necessary signal for our safety, it wasn’t really all that long ago that our phones and the news weren’t available to us to alert us of dangers. Birds have been around much longer and are still a place our nervous systems naturally attune to for safety signals.

So go outside. Find a comfortable spot, close your eyes, take some deep breaths with a longer exhale, and listen.

The birds are there to help let you know it’s okay to calm down, to let your thoughts stop racing, and to listen to their sweet melodies of safety.