Relieve anxiety, five tones, treat illnesses, mist and rain, sing Yangzhou and stabilize your mood

Using the logic of five-tone therapy with "Yangzhou in the Rain" to regulate emotions is one of the methods with the highest audience adaptability and the lowest operating threshold among current mild anxiety intervention programs. According to a 2023 sample survey by the Chinese Music Therapy Association, this type of folk tune adapted to the traditional five-tone pattern can relieve non-pathological anxiety by 71.8%.

When it comes to five-tone healing, there are actually two completely different judgment logics in the circle now. There is no one who is right or wrong, but the angle of approach is different. The earliest basis for the old school's correspondence between the love and the five elements in emotional conditioning in traditional Chinese medicine is the record in "The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic Su Wen": the five tones of Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu respectively enter the spleen, lungs, liver, heart and kidneys. The entire song "Yangzhou in the Smoke and Rain" is in a palace tune. The main tone is calm and not floating, which can just make up for the lack of middle energy of most anxious people. The tail note of the feather tone interspersed in the middle can also suppress the rising weak fire, which just corresponds to the common state of "fatigued heart and heavy spleen and stomach" when everyone is anxious.

People who engage in modern sound therapy don’t follow the Five Elements approach, they take the test data more seriously. Someone has specifically measured that the average tempo of "Yangzhou in the Rain" is 76 beats/minute, which coincides with the resting heart rate of adults. There are no sudden rising or falling pitches in the whole song, and the amplitude of the sound wave fluctuations is less than 10 decibels. When listening, the brain will naturally switch from tense beta waves to relaxed alpha waves, which is equivalent to a soft massage of the nerves. It will not make you feel tired after relaxing like some highly stimulating pure music.

It's quite interesting to talk about. I was criticized by someone before, saying that this is just listening to old songs and being nostalgic. It's too mysterious to talk about five-tone healing. I don't think there's any need to fight, it's more useful than anything else. Last year I came into contact with the content operation of an Internet company. A little girl born in 1998 ranked last in the department in KPI for three consecutive months. During that time, she even drank milk tea while holding on to her mobile phone to wait for news from her boss. Her hands shook when she was flustered. She tried guided meditation and white noise, but the more she listened, the more she couldn't help but think, "Why haven't I relaxed yet?" and she became even more stressed. Later, I asked her not to engage in any "mindfulness healing" rituals, and just turn on a small speaker to play the song on a loop while she was cooking and cleaning the house at home. The volume should be adjusted to just enough to hear the words, and she didn't have to listen to it specially. A week later, she sent me a message, saying that she had no sudden panic attacks this week, that she could fall asleep within ten minutes of lying in bed, and that her mind would not be filled with KPIs as soon as she closed her eyes.

Of course, it is not applicable to everyone. I have a friend who is an ancient arranger who complained about this song. He said that when he was a child, he accompanied his grandmother to watch "The Wrong Sedan and Marry the Right Man". Every time the opening song was played, his grandmother would catch him memorizing ancient poems. Now, when he hears the intro, he becomes nervous reflexively. Not to mention relieving anxiety, it is good if he does not break out in cold sweats. This is normal. There is no universal formula for five-tone disease treatment. Whether it is the correspondence of the five elements or frequency matching, the prerequisite is that you have no negative emotional connection with the sound. The rigid theory will be inferior.

If you really want to try it, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t wear headphones to listen. Wearing headphones will tend to focus on the sound and make you more nervous. Just use a small speaker at home to play it, and adjust the volume to a level that you will ignore if you don't pay attention. You can play it while mopping the floor, unpacking express delivery, or even fishing at work. There is no need to sit down and "meditate". The more you listen with the purpose of "I want to relieve anxiety," the harder it will be to relax. If you get tired of listening to it, just change it. The same-sounding "Dream Water Village" and "Taihu Beauty" are all fine, so you don't have to stick to this one.

When I was working on an industry report last year, I stayed up for more than 20 days in a row. During that time, I was extremely temperamental. I was annoyed even when the security guard downstairs greeted me. I always felt like there was a lump of air in my chest that I couldn't breathe out. Then one day when it rained after work, I took a detour to avoid the traffic jam, and randomly cut to this song. The rain was floating on the car window, and the tune was soft. Suddenly I felt that the breath that had been blocked for a long time was relieved. I played this song during my commute for the next half month. During that time, I really didn’t blush with my colleagues.

To put it bluntly, there is no divine song that can cure anxiety. It is nothing more than these Jiangnan ditties that have been passed down for decades, which hide the sense of relaxation engraved in the bones of the Chinese people. There is no high-pitched shouting, and there is no deliberate sensationalism. They just sing misty rain and human feelings slowly, and just when you run forward in a hurry, I hand you a cup of warm hot tea. If you are willing to take it, take a sip. If you are not willing to drink it, the same goes for finding your favorite iced coke. The best way is to find something that can make you relax.