Articles based on peer-reviewed research — with real references — on the effect of these practices on the brain, the nervous system, and emotional wellbeing.
When the mind wanders, the brain consumes energy in a network called the Default Mode Network. Meditation reduces that activity in measurable ways. Here is the evidence.
The vagus nerve is the direct link between your breathing and your nervous system. A long exhalation can lower your heart rate in seconds. Science explains why.
Neuroscience research shows that music simultaneously engages emotional, reward, memory and attention networks. What happens in the brain when we listen to music is more complex — and more interesting — than a simple automatic response.
Understanding why we react in a certain way does not always produce change. Research suggests that integrating bodily experience may deepen emotional regulation.
An oncological diagnosis activates chronic stress responses that affect the immune system, sleep quality and treatment tolerance. Emotional regulation is not supplementary — it is part of the process.
The vagus nerve connects the brain to the heart, lungs and gut. Its tone determines the organism's capacity to recover from stress. And it can be trained.
A live performance introduces elements not present in the same way in a recording: human presence, temporal variation and adaptation to context. Research suggests relevant effects on wellbeing — and there is much we are still learning.
What happens in the brain when the mind stops ruminating
There is a neural network that activates every time your mind is not occupied with any specific task. It is called the Default Mode Network (DMN), and it is responsible for thoughts about the past, the future, worries, self-judgements, and mental rumination.
In other words: when you think you are "not thinking about anything", you are actually thinking about yourself. The brain never fully rests. And that constant DMN activity is correlated with higher levels of psychological distress.
A study published in PNAS (Brewer et al., 2011) compared the brain activity of experienced meditators with people who had no meditative experience. Meditators showed a significant reduction in activity in key DMN regions — specifically the posterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex — even when they were not meditating.
This suggests that regular meditation not only calms the mind during practice, but produces lasting structural and functional changes in how the brain processes self-referential thought and rumination.
In a review published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2015), researchers Yi-Yuan Tang, Britta Hölzel and Michael Posner identified four neural mechanisms through which meditation produces its effects:
Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, researcher at Harvard Medical School, published one of the first studies to document structural changes in the cerebral cortex associated with regular meditation practice (NeuroReport, 2005). Long-term meditators had greater cortical thickness in areas related to sustained attention and sensory perception.
Britta Hölzel, one of the leading researchers in the field of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), showed together with collaborators that just eight weeks of consistent practice can produce measurable changes in grey matter density in the amygdala — the brain structure central to the fear and stress response — and in the hippocampus.
A study published in PNAS (Lutz et al., 2004), conducted alongside neuroscientist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, found that long-term meditators were able to generate high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Gamma waves are associated with processes of cognitive integration, sustained attention and global awareness.
The findings suggest that meditation does not merely alter the content of thoughts, but also the way in which different brain networks communicate with one another. More recently, Judson Brewer has explored the relationship between meditation, the Default Mode Network and the reduction of mental rumination, showing how contemplative practice can diminish activity in brain networks associated with self-referential and repetitive thinking.
This is one of the most significant aspects of contemplative practice: it is not simply about "relaxing", but about gradually training the brain to interrupt automatic patterns of mental identification.
The science of the vagus nerve, heart rate variability, and why a long exhalation can change your state in seconds
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body. It extends from the brainstem to the abdominal organs, passing through the heart and lungs. It transmits approximately 80% of its signals from body to brain — not the other way around (Berthoud & Neuhuber, 2000). It is one of the main communication pathways between the body and brain. The majority of the signals it carries travel from body to brain, constantly influencing physiological and emotional states.
Breathing is one of the most accessible ways to indirectly influence vagal activity and the state of the autonomic nervous system.
During inhalation, the sympathetic nervous system briefly accelerates heart rate. During exhalation, the vagus nerve releases acetylcholine — a neurotransmitter that slows the heart. This beat-to-beat variation is what is measured as heart rate variability (HRV).
A review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Gerritsen & Band, 2018) proposed the respiratory vagal nerve stimulation model (rVNS) as the central mechanism explaining the benefits of contemplative practices. The main conclusion: breathing slowly, with exhalation longer than inhalation, is among the most effective — and most accessible — ways to stimulate the vagus nerve.
Heart rate variability (HRV) has become one of the most studied biomarkers in psychophysiology. A high resting HRV is associated with:
A study published in Scientific Reports (Sevoz-Couche & Laborde, 2022) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on voluntary slow breathing, concluding that it reliably increases vagal HRV during practice and in the period that follows, regardless of the specific technique used.
A review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Zaccaro et al., 2018) documented that slow breathing techniques produce measurable changes not only in the autonomic system, but also in cortical activity — specifically in the insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the prefrontal cortex, regions central to self-awareness and emotional regulation.
This is especially relevant: breathwork is not just "relaxation". Slow-breathing practices appear to influence brain networks involved in self-regulation, interoception and the stress response.
Neuroscientist Stephen Porges proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theoretical framework describing how the autonomic nervous system would evaluate safety or threat in the environment subconsciously — what he termed "neuroception". According to this framework, when the nervous system detects safety, the myelinated vagus nerve (ventral branch) would activate a state of calm, social connection, and emotional openness. This theory remains a subject of active debate in the specialist literature, with recent publications questioning some of its neuroanatomical postulates.
Conscious breathing, especially the prolonged exhalation, is one of the most direct ways to signal to the nervous system that the environment is safe — bottom-up, without the mind needing to decide it first.
Why sound reaches where words cannot — the neuroscience of emotional response to music
When you listen to a piece of music that moves you, something happens before you have words for it. Research in neuroscience shows that music engages simultaneously networks related to emotion, reward, memory and attention — processing that unfolds at multiple levels and at different speeds.
These processes are observable through functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies.
A review study published in Frontiers in Psychology (Hou et al., 2017) documented that music simultaneously activates subcortical and cortical structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest the involvement of reward and emotional processing circuits, though the causal relationship between neural activation and subjective emotional experience is complex and continues to be studied.
The amygdala — a structure central to emotional relevance detection — appears involved in the response to music even under conditions of reduced attention, though the exact mechanisms and their generalisability vary across studies.
Research published in Nature Neuroscience (Salimpoor et al., 2011) demonstrated through functional neuroimaging and direct dopaminergic measurements that listening to emotionally intense music is associated with dopamine release in the ventral striatum — the structure involved in reward circuits associated with motivationally significant experiences. Blood and Zatorre (PNAS, 2001) had already identified brain correlates of peak emotional responses to music, including measurable physiological changes such as chills and heart rate variations. Stefan Koelsch (Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2014) subsequently systematised these correlates, identifying the involvement of the amygdala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens.
These findings are consistent with what clinical experience has observed: music seems to facilitate states of openness that are sometimes difficult to reach through verbal intervention alone — though the exact mechanisms require further research.
A meta-analysis published in Psychology of Music (Peters et al., 2024) systematically analysed studies on the use of music as an emotional regulation strategy. The review included eight randomised controlled trials with 441 participants and highly diverse interventions, which limits the generalisability of the results. With that caveat, the findings suggest:
A review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Dan et al., 2025) identified the prefrontal-hippocampus-amygdala circuit as the common target of musical interventions in neuropsychiatric disorders. This is precisely the circuit disrupted in trauma, chronic anxiety, and patterns of emotional hyperactivation.
According to the authors, music interventions might modulate this circuit, offering a pathway that does not rely exclusively on verbal or cognitive processing — though the exact mechanisms remain under investigation.
The gap between insight and change — why understanding is not always enough to respond differently
You have had that moment in therapy. The perfect insight. The connection between your childhood and your current pattern. The understanding of why you react the way you react. And a week later, you reacted exactly the same way.
It is not because the insight was false. It is because understanding something does not necessarily mean having learned to respond differently.
Research by Norman Farb and collaborators (University of Toronto) published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2007) documented that the brain has two distinct modes of processing itself: a narrative mode (mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex, which generates the story of who you are) and an experiential mode (mediated by the insula, which registers what the body feels in this moment).
Many psychotherapeutic approaches work effectively at the cognitive and relational level. In recent years, however, research in affective neuroscience and interoception has increasingly pointed to the importance of including the bodily and autonomic level in emotional regulation. Many automatic emotional patterns involve implicit and autonomic processes that are not always easily accessible through conscious verbal analysis.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (Northeastern University), in her constructed emotion model, has proposed that emotions are active predictions generated by the brain on the basis of prior experience and current bodily states — not fixed automatic responses to external stimuli. In this perspective, interoception becomes a central input in the construction of emotional experience.
Neuroplasticity — the brain's capacity to reorganise its synaptic connections — requires repeated activation of the circuits one wishes to modify. An intellectual understanding briefly activates cortical circuits. An embodied practice — involving body, emotion, sensation, and movement — simultaneously activates more circuits and consolidates them more durably.
A review by Bremer et al. (Scientific Reports, 2022) on mindfulness meditation documented that meditative training increases functional connectivity between the default mode network, the salience network, and the executive control network. This integration of networks is precisely what enables emotional understanding to translate into different responses.
Interoception — the capacity to perceive the body's internal sensations — is one of the factors most strongly correlated with emotional regulation. Research published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (Critchley & Garfinkel, 2017) shows that people with greater interoceptive awareness have greater capacity to recognise and modulate their emotional states.
Antonio Damasio (University of Southern California) described how bodily signals influence decision-making and emotional processes through what he called "somatic markers" — bodily states associated with prior experience that guide emotional responses even before explicit cognitive appraisal.
The practice of somatic meditation — which specifically trains attention to the body — increases activation of the insula, the cortical region central to interoceptive processing. This may support functional changes in the networks involved in self-regulation and bodily awareness.
A diagnosis changes the body. It also changes the nervous system. This is not metaphor.
When an oncological diagnosis is received, the autonomic nervous system may respond as if to a survival threat. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis releases cortisol on a sustained basis. Heart rate rises. Sleep fragments. Capacity for concentration diminishes.
These responses are not weakness or lack of positive attitude. They are the predictable result of a physiological activation maintained over time. When this state of activation is prolonged over time — known as allostasis — some observational studies suggest it may be associated with immune alterations, inflammatory processes, increased pain sensitivity and reduced tolerance to treatment side effects. The magnitude and direction of these effects varies across individuals and studies.
The study by Spiegel et al. published in The Lancet in 1989 was the first to show that participation in structured psychosocial support groups was associated with significantly greater survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer. The specific mechanisms remain an active area of investigation.
It is worth noting that later, larger studies — notably the Goodwin et al. (2001) trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine — did not replicate the survival benefit Spiegel observed. This does not invalidate the original finding, but it does place the direct link between psychosocial support and cancer survival within an open scientific debate. What multiple studies do show consistently is that emotional wellbeing, psychosocial support and quality of life during illness are linked — and that this link deserves clinical attention. At Atma & Dharma, we do not use science to sell certainties. We use it to guide our practices with honesty.
Along these lines, a controlled trial by Bower et al. (2014), published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, found that a 12-week yoga programme for breast cancer survivors with persistent fatigue reduced activity of the pro-inflammatory transcription factor NF-κB and increased glucocorticoid receptor activity, compared with a control group. No significant changes were found in C-reactive protein or interleukin-6, suggesting the effect operates at the level of cellular signalling rather than the usual circulating inflammatory markers.
The dominant biomedical model treats the oncological diagnosis as a problem of tissues and cells requiring solutions of tissues and cells. The patient's emotional state is frequently relegated to the domain of optional psychological support, with long waiting lists and variable availability.
But if the state of the autonomic nervous system directly affects immune function, treatment response efficacy and quality of life during and after illness, ignoring it is not a neutral position. It is a position with clinical consequences.
Accumulated research indicates that the most effective interventions for nervous system regulation in oncological contexts share common characteristics: they are of low cognitive demand (requiring no effort of understanding or analysis), they act directly on the body, they occur in environments of perceived social safety, and they have a duration and intensity sustainable during treatment.
These practices have been studied as complementary interventions in oncology settings. A Cochrane review on music therapy in oncology found potential benefits for anxiety, mood and quality of life, though the certainty of evidence was rated as very low for several outcomes. We do not offer them as alternatives to medical treatment, but as physiological regulation and support tools that can coexist with it.
The chronic caregiver also accumulates allostatic load. Studies on caregiver stress show patterns similar to those of the patient: elevated cortisol, immune deterioration, sleep disorders. Caregiver regulation is not altruism — it is also a physiological need of their own.
References: Spiegel, D. et al. (1989). Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer. The Lancet, 334(8668), 888–891. · Goodwin, P.J. et al. (2001). The effect of group psychosocial support on survival in metastatic breast cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 345(24), 1719–1726. · Bower, J.E. et al. (2014). Yoga reduces inflammatory signaling in fatigued breast cancer survivors: a randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 43, 20–29. · McEwen, B.S. (1998). Stress, adaptation, and disease. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 840, 33–44.
It is not the intensity of the event that determines its impact. It is the capacity of the nervous system to recover afterwards.
The vagus nerve — the longest cranial nerve in the body — connects the brainstem to the heart, lungs, stomach and intestine. Its tone, measured indirectly through heart rate variability (HRV), indicates how much flexibility the autonomic nervous system has to respond to environmental demands.
In observational studies, higher vagal tone tends to be associated with greater emotional regulation, lower systemic inflammation and greater capacity to recover from physiological stress. This association is best documented in cardiovascular disease; its prognostic relevance in other clinical contexts, including oncology, is an active area of investigation. Lower vagal tone — observed in some studies in people with prolonged chronic stress, accumulated fatigue or during certain medical treatments — tends to be associated with greater emotional reactivity, poorer sleep quality and greater pain perception.
Stephen Porges, neuroscientist at Indiana University, proposed the Polyvagal Theory to describe how the human nervous system would constantly evaluate the environment for signals of safety or threat — a process he termed neuroception, which would occur below the threshold of awareness. This is an influential clinical framework, though one that has also been debated on neuroanatomical and physiological grounds.
In illness contexts, neuroception is permanently overloaded: hospital environments with ambiguous signals, conversations about prognoses, intermittent physical pain, changes in body image. The nervous system processes all of this as potential threat and maintains a state of vigilance that consumes resources that could be directed towards recovery.
What polyvagal theory proposes — and what research in integrative oncology is beginning to confirm — is that interventions which provide safety signals to the nervous system (calm voices, predictable environments, low-threat music, non-demanding human presence) can modulate that vigilance response without requiring any cognitive effort from the patient.
Heart rate variability (HRV) — the natural variation in the interval between heartbeats — is one of the most widely studied non-invasive physiological measures in psychophysiology. It reflects the combined influence of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems on heart rhythm. Its interpretation requires nuance: current literature questions some overly direct readings of high-frequency HRV (HF-HRV) as a proxy for vagal activity or self-regulatory capacity. That said, higher resting HRV tends to be associated with greater autonomic flexibility, and reduced HRV with lower adaptive response capacity.
Studies in oncological patients show that HRV is significantly reduced during chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment. Guided breathing interventions of as little as four weeks have shown measurable HRV increases in this population, with parallel improvements in subjective perception of anxiety and fatigue.
The plasticity of the autonomic nervous system implies that vagal tone is not fixed. It can improve with regular practice of slow deep breathing, exposure to environments of social safety, and reduction of accumulated allostatic load. This is the foundation of somatic regulation interventions: not installing new resources from outside, but activating the regulatory capacity the body already holds.
References: Porges, S.W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton. · Thayer, J.F. & Lane, R.D. (2009). Autonomic nervous system influences on the cardiovascular system. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33, 81–88. · Kim, D.H. et al. (2013). Effects of mindfulness based stress reduction on heart rate variability in cancer patients. J Korean Med Sci., 28, 1365–1371.
Not all music does the same thing to the nervous system. A live performance introduces elements that are not present in the same way in a recording — and what we know about why this matters is as interesting as what we are still exploring.
When we listen to a recording, the nervous system processes auditory information. When we listen to live music, it processes auditory information plus the presence of a human being producing that sound in real time. This difference is not minor: the human autonomic nervous system is evolutionarily designed to respond to social presence signals, especially those transmitted through the voice.
A live performance introduces elements that are not present in the same way in a recording: temporal variation, the implicit interaction between performer and audience, human presence as a source of sound, and the capacity to adapt to context in real time. Research on music and emotional regulation suggests relevant effects on wellbeing, though we still know far less about which specific elements of a live experience account for those effects. That open question does not weaken the practice — it makes it more honest.
Porges' concept of neuroception describes how the nervous system evaluates the environment for safety or threat signals without passing through awareness. Sound is one of the primary channels of this evaluation: low abrupt tones would activate the threat response (amygdala, sympathetic system); mid modulated tones with human prosody would activate the social engagement system (ventral vagus).
Live music with human voice, in a low-threat environment with small groups, accumulates these safety signals in a sustained manner throughout the session. The nervous system receives, for 90 minutes, acoustic information consistent with a low-threat environment. Some studies suggest this may be associated with observable physiological changes, though specific research on live music as a regulatory intervention remains limited.
A 2016 Cochrane review (Bradt et al.) analysed 52 controlled trials with a total of 3,731 participants and found moderate-quality evidence that music interventions reduce anxiety in people with cancer, with greater effect in live music sessions than recorded. Reductions in pain, heart rate and blood pressure were also observed, though with heterogeneity between studies.
Thaut and colleagues (2015) documented the phenomenon of rhythmic auditory entrainment: the nervous system's capacity to synchronise motor patterns with an external musical pulse. This mechanism, well established in neurological movement rehabilitation, has also been proposed as part of the neurophysiological basis for the bodily synchrony that occurs when a group shares a musical pulse — though its extension to attention and emotional-processing circuits remains an active area of research.
The small group context adds a dimension that research has begun to quantify: co-regulation. When several people are in a state of relative calm, their physical presence — breathing, microexpressions, postural tone — transmits safety signals that modulate each individual's nervous system state. This effect, described in research on dyadic and group physiological regulation, is still a developing area of study and is unlikely to occur in the same way during solitary listening to recorded music.
The combination of live music, human voice and group presence in a low-demand environment is not a sum of separate resources. It is an integrated system of safety signals that acts on the autonomic nervous system simultaneously.
References: Porges, S.W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory. Norton. · Bradt, J. et al. (2016). Music interventions for improving psychological and physical outcomes in people with cancer. Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. · Thaut, M.H., McIntosh, G.C., & Hoemberg, V. (2015). Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: rhythmic entrainment and the motor system. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1185.
If you were a sailing boat, the music of Irene & Davide would be the wind… but not just any wind — a gentle breeze guiding you smoothly throughout the whole voyage. You just need to let go: relax and allow the sounds and lyrics to envelop you completely. Then you will understand resonance, you will feel how your body and mind vibrate in unison with each note, in perfect harmony with the experience.
There's a beautiful connection between Irene and Davide when they are singing. I recall a moment when I was going through an uncomfortable experience in a ceremony and Irene's voice helped me through the process of discomfort and uncertainty to a place of calm and peace. Davide and Irene create an experience filled with intention that allows one to soften and reconnect with oneself.
I have been fortunate enough to work with both Irene and Davide, and it's clear to see how much energy and love they put into everything they do. Their guidance, music and meditations are incredibly powerful and complement one another beautifully. I have never connected with music in the same way before, and have listened to their album nearly every day since our first session. They always create a welcoming and supportive environment that allows you to feel safe and fully immerse yourself in the experience.
If you have already participated in any of our sessions or concerts and would like to share your experience, write to us.
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