Latest / She Survived: Stories of Courage, Recovery & Reinvention / Close Your Eyes: How Music Heals a Frayed Nervous System | She Survived
Transcript
- You’ve been holding your breath for three years, haven’t you? Let me show you how to put it down, just for four minutes and thirty-two seconds. I want you to imagine, just for a moment, that your eyes are heavy. Not sleepy-heavy, but tired-heavy. The kind of weight that comes from processing the world in high definition, all day long, every single day. We live in an era where seeing is doing. We see the news, we see the notifications, we see the reflection in the mirror that doesn’t quite match the person we think we should be. Our visual cortex is working overtime, filtering, judging, planning, reacting. And by the time evening rolls around, your nervous system isn’t just tired; it’s frayed. It’s like a guitar string tuned too tight, vibrating with a tension that has nowhere to go. I know this feeling. I remember sitting in my kitchen after a particularly brutal decade, staring at the wallpaper pattern, trying to find a flaw to criticize because anything was better than facing the silence inside my own head. My eyes were open, but I wasn’t really seeing. I was just enduring. If you’re listening to this with your eyes open right now, I’m going to ask you to do something radical. I’m going to ask you to close them. Not to sleep. Not to escape. But to listen. Now, I know what you might be thinking. 'Gloria, closing my eyes while listening to music? That sounds like something my grandmother did, not something a modern woman does.' But let me tell you, there is some serious neuroscience happening here, and it’s beautiful. When you keep your eyes open, even slightly, your brain is constantly allocating resources to process visual data. It’s scanning for threats, for faces, for text, for movement. It’s a low-level hum of anxiety that never truly turns off. But when you close your eyes, you remove that primary channel of input. Suddenly, your auditory cortex—the part of your brain that processes sound—lights up. It becomes the star of the show. Studies have shown that when we engage with music while blocking out visual stimuli, our brain waves slow down. They shift from beta waves, which are associated with active thinking and stress, to alpha waves, which are linked to relaxation and flow. You aren’t just hearing the music; you are letting the music wash over you without the interference of your visual judgment. It’s like turning off the lights in a room so you can finally see the stars. The exhaustion you feel? It’s often just sensory overload. Closing your eyes gives your brain permission to stop performing. Let me share a story about my own brokenness, because I don’t want you to feel alone in this. About five years ago, I lost my voice. Not metaphorically, but literally. After years of shouting over noise, over men, over the chaos of raising kids and running a business that kept failing, my vocal cords gave out. A specialist told me it was psychosomatic tension. My body had shut down the only tool I knew how to use to fight back. For weeks, I couldn’t speak. I felt invisible. And in that silence, I discovered music in a way I never had before. I would sit on the floor of my living room, press play on an old vinyl record, and just lie there. With my eyes closed, I could hear the creak of the needle, the breath of the singer, the subtle shift in the bass line. Without my eyes to distract me, the music became a physical thing. It touched my skin. It vibrated in my chest. It healed parts of me that words never could. I realized that I had been using my eyes to armor myself against the world, to look strong, to look busy, to look together. But when I closed them, I allowed myself to be vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, I found peace. You don’t have to be strong all the time. You don’t have to watch everything. You can just listen. So, how do you begin this practice? It’s simpler than you think, but it requires intention. First, you need to choose your soundtrack wisely. This isn’t the time for upbeat pop songs that make you want to dance or lyrics that demand your intellectual attention. This is the time for instrumental music, or vocals that are soft and melodic. Think of strings, piano, ambient textures, or nature sounds mixed with gentle harmonies. The key is consistency and familiarity. Your brain needs to recognize the pattern to signal safety. If you try something entirely new, your brain will stay alert, trying to decode the unfamiliar. Find a playlist that feels like a warm blanket. Then, find a place where you won’t be disturbed. Your car, your bedroom, a corner of your living room. Put your phone on silent, but keep it close enough to control the volume. Set a timer if you need to, but I recommend setting one for ten minutes. Long enough to settle, short enough to feel manageable. Lie down or sit comfortably. Uncross your legs. Drop your shoulders away from your ears. Unclench your jaw. These small physical adjustments signal to your body that the workday is over. The performance is paused. Now, press play. I want to warn you about the resistance you might feel. The first few times you try this, your mind will scream at you. It will say, 'You’re wasting time,' 'There’s laundry to fold,' 'You should be checking that email.' This is the productivity demon whispering in your ear. It’s terrified of stillness because stillness exposes us to ourselves. When you close your eyes and listen, you might feel emotions rising up that you’ve been suppressing. Sadness, anger, grief. That is okay. Breathe into it. Let the music hold those feelings for you. You don’t have to fix them. You don’t have to analyze them. Just let them be there, suspended in the air between the notes. I remember crying during a simple piano piece once, sitting on my bathroom floor. It wasn’t sadness exactly; it was relief. Relief that someone else, through their art, understood what it felt like to carry the weight of the world. If you feel nothing, that’s okay too. Sometimes the absence of emotion is the gift. You are simply resting. You are allowing your nervous system to downshift. Trust the process. Trust the music. Trust yourself enough to stop striving, even for ten minutes. As you continue this practice, you’ll notice changes. Not dramatic, overnight miracles, but subtle shifts. You might find that you react less sharply to stressful events during the day. Your baseline anxiety might lower. You might start noticing the sounds of the world more—the wind in the trees, the laughter of a stranger, the hum of the refrigerator. When you restore your ability to listen deeply, you restore your connection to life. We spend so much of our lives looking at screens, looking at problems, looking at expectations. But life happens in the spaces between. Life happens in the breath, in the pause, in the note that hangs in the air before fading into silence. By closing your eyes, you are reclaiming your inner landscape. You are saying, 'I am not just a consumer of images. I am a creator of meaning.' You are honoring your humanity by acknowledging that you are not a machine designed for endless output. You are a creature designed for rhythm, for resonance, for rest. And music is the language of that design. Let it heal you. Let it remind you that you are whole, even when you are quiet. This episode is a letter to you, my dear friend, because I know you are carrying so much. I know you are tired of being the strong one, the capable one, the one who always knows what to do. It’s okay to be broken here. It’s okay to admit that you need a break from the visual noise. So, I invite you to try this today. Before you cook dinner, before you scroll through social media, before you collapse onto the couch, give yourself ten minutes. Close your eyes. Put on headphones if you can, or just let the speakers fill the room. Listen to a song that makes your heart ache in a good way. Feel the vibration. Feel the release. And when you open your eyes, take a deep breath. Notice how the world looks different. Maybe it’s softer. Maybe it’s clearer. Or maybe it’s just quieter, and you are finally ready to hear yourself again. You have survived every bad day so far. You will survive this one too. But you don’t have to survive it alone. Let the music hold you. Let me hold you. We are in this garden together, tending to the roots, waiting for the bloom. Until next time, breathe into it. Take care of that beautiful, weary heart of yours. I’ll be here, listening, whenever you need to come home. Bye for now.