The Healing Power of Music with Nkechi Njaka
If you have distressing emotional experiences that interfere with your ability to function, consider talking to a licensed mental health professional.
Nkechi Njaka joined us for the second time to speak with Spora Health founder and CEO, Dan Miller, about the significance of music and movement in her life and the role it’s played in sustaining her. As a neuroscientist, choreographer, and mindfulness guide, Nkechi brings her unique perspective to a conversation that touches on the scientific and the immeasurable qualities of music.
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A Conversation on Music
Dan: Today we’re bringing back our guest from the first episode, Nkechi. Super excited to have you back and have you introduce yourself.
Tauwoo and Nkechi hosting RESONANCE
Nkechi: Thank you so much for having me back. It’s so lovely to be in conversations about things that matter most. My name in Nkechi Njaka. I’m a neuroscientist, choreographer, and mindfulness meditation guide in San Francisco. I spend a lot of time thinking about ways in which presence can help us and heal us. And all of the ways we relate to and move through the world, and how we show up in powerful ways. I’m so happy to be here to add to and be in the conversation.
Dan: Last time we talked a little about mindfulness practices and for this conversation I wanted to transition to dive deeper into the role that music plays. Can you tell us more about “The RESONANCE experience?”
Nkechi: RESONANCE is a project that I host with my music partner, Tauwoo, who is a musician based in Oakland. Together we create a guided, immersive experience that’s equal parts music and mindfulness. We’ve been hosting this virtually at Shack 15 at the top of the Ferry building all throughout the pandemic up until 2 weeks ago which was really beautiful. And then we finally transitioned into being able to host this practice with people in the same room with us and that’s been really moving and special. We created the experience simply because music makes us feel. With music we’re able to process profound and complex emotions. We’re able to create and draw upon memories, and discover new thoughts and ideas. As I mentioned briefly before, I’ve taught mindfulness for over a decade, and I’m most interested in present moment awareness and how that allows us to meet ourselves exactly how we are in the moment. One of the things that goes untouched in a typical sitting practice, is this layer of emotion or feeling state. Music holds a lot of feeling in a way unlike any other expression. With music in the practice, we’re able to ride the wave of music and be contemplative about it in the same way we are with nature or sensations felt in the body in typical mindfulness meditation practice.
Dan: I have so many questions. Hearing you talk, I’m brought back to the role that music can play as a forcing function for being in the present. There are known benefits of meditation that help us become aware of the present, but I’m curious how you think about the role music plays in the context of its power to ground us in the present in relation to anxiety disorders or depression in which our minds are looping back to past or future experiences. Does that resonate (no pun intended)?
Nkechi: Absolutely. As someone who has studied mental health, anxiety, and depression, I‘m not sure what the exact relationship is from a neuro-biological standpoint when it comes to music. It is something that I’m really interested in looking at. But I do know that there are research studies that show music has the ability to support our nervous system in the same way that mindfulness can. But I also think that’s a specific type of music. Music can stress us out or help us tap into our rage. And I think music that allows us to channel intense feelings (not stress obviously) can be very cathartic.
There are research groups that have looked at stress responses from bio data like EEGs [electroencephalograms which chart electrical activity of the brain], heart rate, and even stress chemicals found in sweat and saliva to understand how we physiological response to hearing sound. That’s what has inspired me to start investigating what kind of music paired with mindfulness can create calm and allow us to exist in the place for a while. We haven’t run any significant research on our experiences yet, but we are in conversations to be able to do that. We hear from people that have attended that they feel more grounded, at peace, and more connected to themselves and that’s so valuable. Not that there is necessarily a need to quantify that experience, but as a scientist I do feel like that information is really useful. If we feel something, not just emotionally, but physiologically like shortness of breath or hunger there’s a real biological component to that. We don’t need to run an elaborate study to know that we are experiencing those things, but it is cool to be able to measure that and draw conclusions.
Dan: It’s great that folks who are experiencing RESONANCE are having that feedback. Can you talk through what Resonance entails perhaps at the beginning of the pandemic and if that’s changing now that the world is starting to open back up?
Nkechi: Absolutely. The experience of RESONANCE might be better understood if I explain the definition of the word and why we chose it. Basically, it describes the vibration of sound that has depth and fullness. We talk about resonance when we say, “oh, does that resonate with you?” We’re really talking about a sameness or an alignment, but in our case we’re doing it with sound. There’s an idea in meditation that’s rooted in physics that there is a vibration that happens when we’re in the same energetic field and have this alignment with ourselves. On an energetic level, our goal is to arrive to the same place, and that may not be possible without the support of music. That’s our intention with RESONANCE.
It’s a 40-45 minute practice where people are invited to sit and be contemplative with themselves with a very specific musical arc of hang drum, piano, and voice. The songs are original pieces that are organized in a way that they follow a mood along with a guided meditation that I’m verbally facilitating.
There’s maybe 7 pieces of music, some with a vocal component, and some without. We go through a sequence of grounding, breathing, and a practice with the heart as well. The idea is to invite people into a space where they are able to feel. So much of our day is spent moving past our feelings in a way that may not be helpful. RESONANCE is really a destination for that kind of connection.
Dan: Dope- that’s really cool. During the pandemic y’all were producing these sessions in Shack15?
Nkechi: Yeah- we started having conversations with Shack15 in February of 2020. I had been to the space before and just had a vision for what I wanted to do. Tauwoo and I had already worked together and we were curious about what we might create. Because of sheltering in place and not being able to gather with people we took the opportunity to offer it anyways and used the time to dial in our process. We built community and conversation around this practice, and now we’re able to have people join us and it’s really special.
Dan: So now that you’re able to have people, how might folks learn about you and participate?
Nkechi: We can be found on Instagram where you can see our list of events and the experience through the eyes of people that attend. It’s great because the space is so open. You can see the bridge and the city and we’re basically on the water. We also have a website and you can sign up for our email reminders. We host these sessions monthly.
Dan: Transitioning from RESONANCE specifically, would love to better understand why you wanted to explore the incorporation of music into your mindfulness practice. Merging your past as a scientist with this passion of yours, from a neurological perspective is there an easy way for us to understand the effects of music on our minds and bodies?
Nkechi: Since human beings have been around, something that has set us apart from other animals is our ability to process sound. When you think of our other senses, we can close our eyes, but the ear is always open. That’s very curious to me because all senses are obviously complex, but for me sound evokes an emotional response. I’ve always been moved by music which is probably why I’m a dancer- because I’m moved physically and emotionally by music.
Another layer is that the voice was the first musical instrument and that’s closely linked to language. There are layers to what can be communicated through music through the sound itself and through the linguistics. I also really feel that psychologically there’s something with music that’s linked with our reward circuitry rooted in the emotional processing stage of our development.
Dan: What was the first piece of music that moved you in that way? What was it and how has it affected you?
Nkechi: My dad would always tell me that I would sing Tears for Fears as a kid, and I have memories of really loving Tears for Fears and Tracy Chapman. So I obviously had great taste in music.
Photo by Daniel Johnson
But I was recently on a family Zoom call and my younger sister was digitizing our VHS’s and there’s a video of me dancing in the kitchen and singing “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree.” I loved that song and loved dancing to it. It’s a funny video because you can hear my dad stifling his laughter, and my mom is in the frame like, “ok, get it!” I think I even had a baton and it was unclear if I was tap dancing? Those are my earliest memories of music I was really into.
Dan: I hear you. I grew up playing the alto saxophone and piano, and broadly was in a musical family. There were certain rhythms and instruments that grabbed me and some sort of rhythmic response was coming. I don’t know where it comes from and I honestly don’t care. I just know that I enjoy it.
Nkechi: When I think of musical influences over the years I definitely have a type of music that I lean towards in my choreographic work, but it’s not dissimilar to what I was into when I was a kid. Me, as an emotional child, felt connected to that music. And later when I revisited Tracy Chapman’s work, I was very moved by her lyrics, message, and storytelling. But as a 2 year old I had no clue, or maybe I did? Maybe I could understand from her voice the sorrow she was expressing. I tend to be a pretty melancholic person when it comes to emoting, music, and in my work as a movement artist. It all comes from this contemplative, critical thinking, reflective space. “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” is a little bit of an outlier, but even in that upbeat song there is something that still haunts me about it. In the lyrics she’s talking about sentimentality.
“You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing, let’s be jolly”
Dan: Thinking about modalities like music therapy and mindfulness meditation, do you think it’s been marginalized by Western medicine? And if so do you see that changing at all?
Nkechi: I think in the traditional sense of finding a therapist and then calling it “music therapy” I would answer yes, but when I look at different marginalized cultures and peoples, specifically my own culture it’s central. When I look at Nigerian or First Nation people, we gather, we make music, we dance. It’s very much a healing ceremony. I think music and dance are the greatest things we can do and the reason we’re all here.
Of course like anything in the Western tradition, there’s a secularization of things that make it really clinical. I haven’t spent much time in music therapy spaces, but I imagine there’s a really clinical way of trying to get to what our people have known all along. Same with dance, drama and art therapy- it feels very obvious to me that those would be things that would help people. I think I knew that before I even went to school because I loved to dance and sing and it made me happy, and it still makes me happy. It’s still a form of individualized therapy that can be guided or facilitated with another person.
Dan: That’s exactly it. Having that level of understanding, knowledge, and awareness in relation to a discipline. You summarized it really well.
Nkechi: I literally was looking at PhD programs earlier this morning trying to find a program that would blend neuroscience, movement, and even music. When I was in grad school (15 years ago), I was looking at PhD programs and I didn’t have the language that I do now. I did find a neuroscience research group that was looking at music and the biological basis of music with healing applications based on stress response. I’m still so curious about it, even though I chose not to do it at the time I’m still thinking about it.
Dan: So that might be next for you?
Nkechi: I don’t know because that same thing happens every time I start looking. I get disappointed that I can’t find exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t know if I need to find what I’m looking for because I do think that I know the answer, not because I know so much, but because I know that these things have been around forever. I truly believe that music and dance has sustained us as people. Without those things I would die. I think there is something very innate in us that needs that and that is why it’s here, it’s why we do it, it’s just why. It’s been part of our history. I don’t know if I need science to validate that, I’m just very curious. So maybe it’s next, maybe not. I don’t know. It would be cool to study it, but I kind of have been studying it.
Dan: Any final words for us?
Nkechi: If you happen to be in the Bay area, and want to come to RESONANCE, I’d love to have you. I’m super available to respond to any messages so be in touch. Also, always happy to continue the conversation on music and its effect on us as it pertains to healing.
Find More Nkechi:
On Instagram
Her website
More conversations on our YouTube Channel
