Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Episode summary:
Drew Ackerman, aka Scooter of Sleep With Me Podcast, has always struggled to get to sleep. Even as an anxious kid, worries would keep his mind churning as the night wore on. For our show, he tried a science-backed practice for easing stress: listening to the twitter of birds. He discovered the recordings reminded him of easeful summer afternoons, transporting him to another time and place. The research bears this out: different sounds affect us in different ways. For many, birdsong lowers our body’s stress responses. And for Drew, that helped him get a little sleepier.
Practice:
- Listen to a recording of birdsong.
Today’s guests:
Drew Ackerman You might know Drew as his alias, “Dearest Scooter,” the host of Sleep with Me podcast. Drew struggles with bedtime worries and has a history of insomnia himself, but he’s great at helping others sleep. Sleep with Me is one of the most listened-to sleep podcasts. On each episode, “Scooter” lulls listeners off to dreamland with meandering bedtime stories intended to lose your interest.
Listen to Sleep With Me Podcast: https://pod.link/sleep-with-me
Emil Stobbe is a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany.
Jesper Alvarsson is a professor of Psychology at Södertörn University in Sweden.
Eleanor Ratcliffe is a professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey in the UK.
More episodes like this one:
The Science of a Good Night's Sleep (Sleep Tips, With Drew Ackerman) - https://tinyurl.com/3wrwzrxy
Why You Should Snap Pictures of Nature (Appreciating The Outdoors, with Tejal Rao)- https://tinyurl.com/erwdvwrw
Related Happiness Breaks (a short, guided practice by The Science of Happiness)
Restore Through Silence, WIth Tricia Hersey - https://tinyurl.com/4h8ww8ub
Happiness Break: Feeling the Awe of Nature from Anywhere, with Dacher Keltner - https://tinyurl.com/43v74ryn
Tell us what sounds relax you! You can even send us a recording, we’d love to hear it. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness!
Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcription:
Drew Ackerman My sleep troubles and my anxiety and and almost fear around sleep started when I was in, like, fifth or sixth grade. The biggest battle at bedtime, if we're putting a label on it is against hopelessness, right? That's really what underlines my lack of sleep, and the things that cause my lack of sleep. It's like, this underlying hopelessness that all will not be well.
As a kid, I tried, like, different nature loops you know, streams or waterfalls [water sound], thunderstorms [thunder]. And I guess, I think more popular was like, like more exotic nature sounds, [ambient forest sounds] back in the nineties. I guess it was all or nothing thinking because it was like, this just is never going to work for me. It's not gonna put me to sleep. I was definitely wrong. My impression was mistaken.If you're dealing with stuff that underlying it is hopelessness, there is something hopeful about listening to bird songs.
[birds twittering]
It definitely helped me feel more relaxed and almost a sense of, like, I guess, mild security. Like, "Hey, I want to be here. This is a nice place to be."
[birds twittering]
Dacher Keltner Hi, I’m Dacher Keltner, welcome to The Science of Happiness, where on each episode we share lab-tested practices you can try at home to support your well-being.
Hundreds of studies have shown that being in nature is good for our bodies and mental health. We know that being immersed in nature, or gardening, or going for a walk outdoors, or back packing reduces the stress response, reduces cortisol, helps with the inflammation process in our immune systems. And psychologically reduces anxiety, helps us focus more, and brings us great calm and well-being.
In my own lab at UC Berkeley, and in other labs around the world, we're finding that we can bring nature home with us, and enjoy some of the same benefits. It could be watching a documentary about the Pacific Ocean, reflecting in our memories upon an inspiring sunset that brought us awe, or listening to recordings of birds singing.
That's what our guest, Drew Ackerman, tried doing today for our show, each night before bed to see if it could help him feel more relaxed and at ease in the evenings, with the ultimate goal of helping him fall asleep.
Drew is a self-proclaimed insomniac, and it inspired him to create an amazing podcast about it, called Sleep With Me. If any of you listening have sleepless nights, like I often do, I recommend you check it out.
Some of you may remember Drew. A couple years ago on our show he tried a practice where he wrote in a worry journey each night to help him sleep.
We hear from Drew, and also from scientists who study how listening to birdsong can lead us to feel more calm and content. More, after these messages.
[Advertisements]
Dacher Keltner This is The Science of Happiness, I'm Dacher Keltner. Today we're talking about what happens to our brains and our bodies when we listen to birdsong.
For our show, Drew Ackerman of Sleep With Me podcast tried listening to recordings of birdsong, a new frontier in the study of wellbeing, each evening to help him relax. Drew, welcome back to The Science of Happiness.
Drew Ackerman Thanks for having me on.
Dacher Keltner You know, you've been one of our culture's great advocates for giving people different approaches or remedies to the sleep debt that many of us experience and you've tried all kinds of different things. And you hear these bird songs, like, and you're lying there thinking, "Okay, I'm going to fall to sleep." What was it like for you? Was it strange?
Drew Ackerman It was strange. I did like to try to just pause, and be like, "Okay, well, let's just listen to this and kind of see how it goes.” Without an expectation. And I think that's like one of the first things that I've discovered works. It's like, “Hey, this is not binary. I don't have to decide if it's going to put me to sleep or not put me to sleep. Let's just see how this goes.”
And I don't know my, the effect it had on me was much different than the expectations I brought into it.
Dacher Keltner That's good to hear. The science shows, like, man, you listen to natural sounds, running water, waves, you know, you get calming of the body, elevated vagus nerve activation, less cortisol, less psychological stress. And birdsong, studies show, can have similar effects. And so I just want to kind of get your impressions right now and, and we'll listen to a bird song recording and just give us a stream of consciousness report on what it made you feel.
Drew Ackerman OK.
Dacher Keltner I bet you're a expert at introspection, given all the work you've done with sleep. And I'm curious, what was your stream of consciousness like when you heard that?
Drew Ackerman Well, that's funny you say introspection, because I guess my experience is the opposite of introspection. And that was like what, what kind of surprised me so much was that there is this texture to the audio.And I'm not talking about from a producer's standpoint, but from, I guess like an intangible way that, like, is drawing me in. And particularly that one, it was almost like my brain started to fill in details. Like, what's the humidity like? What's the taste in my mouth? So it was like a gravitational kind of pull of like, “Hey, You're coming to this non specific place. What's it like?” And it's, that's pretty nice, actually, being in my own head, which has no green leaves or chirping birds. My brain is lacking of dew and moss and stuff like that.
Dacher Keltner When I teach students happiness, I often, one of the exercises I do is. You know, it's about savoring and it's like, imagine a place that just feels content and calm out in nature and just vividly imagine it and birdsongs, it seems, took you there.
Drew Ackerman Yeah, yeah.
Dacher Keltner I'm curious about your routine. I know I gather from sleep experts that routines are so important and, walk us through your routine for listening to birdsong as you prepared for going to sleep?
Dacher Keltner My normal routine when the weather's nice is I sit outside and I do like my bedtime routine, which is like a little bit of journaling, a little bit of meditating. And just kind of reflecting on, you know, how my day went. And I was like, okay, when I'm done with that, I'm gonna listen to bird songs.
Then I just added it in as I was getting in bed, just listening to the bird songs and trying different ones out. And there was ones that didn't work. I'm a huge mourning dove fan.
[mourning dove call]
I just love that sound. And it's very evocative of just a sense memory and not anything specific, but just a nice feeling of hearing that they're kind of sounds.
Dacher Keltner You know, like the mind just kind of cranks and reiterates lists of worries over and over. And I think a lot of us know our sleep issues are closely related to rumination. How did this addition of the bird song to your sleep routine affect your rumination?
Drew Ackerman I don't know if I just have one ruminator. I might have, like, a team of ruminators, man. And “Hey, let's come and sit down. Like, uh, let's all sit down here. We've got this nice view. And we're just listening and what, what are, what are you all hearing?”compared to ruminating about, “Oh boy, yeah, you're right. I'm a defective because I haven't folded all my laundry.” “Okay. What about these birds? What do you think about these birds?”
So maybe that idea of, "Hey, this is an opportunity." I think a lot of times the stuff around bed time.
I've never been able to banish the ruminators from my life, and the more I've tried to banish them, or go to war with them, or use their tactics against them, it's failed.
But like, that same attitude of like, "Hey, maybe you're just a little sick, and I could help you along a little bit and kind of show you something different.” That does work.
So it's almost like, instead of hopelessness, this offers us like, 'being' opportunity.
[bird chirps]
"Hey, just like, try out this new type of being, and see how it feels.”
Dacher Keltner One of the animating forces of your work is anxiety around sleep and stress and trying to relax. And, you know, there are nice studies showing that just listening to bird song reduces stress, helps us recover from stress. Um, gets us to think in new ways. Uh, how did you observe this addition of the bird song to your bedtime ritual, altering the stress and anxiety you have around sleep?
Drew Ackerman I guess I see it as something additive. These kind of small things that actually can have an effect, are like little levers I can add to kind of help push my bed over so I can tumble off and roll off it into dreamland. And this is like one more little lever that's like, "Hey, today was not great. I'm still not feeling great about the day. Let me listen to some of this." Because there is a large number of bird songs available is like, hey, turn that critic to a more curious person and be like, "Hey, well, yeah, let's listen to four or five, you know, which one you like better, and then we'll listen to that for five or 10 minutes. It's like making a small decision and just see how it goes.
And I think that's always interesting. We talk about sleep, that most of us sleep in the same bed the majority of time and that that environment can take on such different flavors and feelings of safety and security, like, based on, our thoughts and our feelings. A lot of times it's like, man, if I don't feel good or I don't feel like I'm going to get some sleep, that place is not going to be a pleasant place. It's not going to feel safe and secure. But listening to the bird songs kind of took me there.
We're feeling it physically, immersed in the moment, really. And there's just this richness to it.
Another thing that, and this is kind of hard to explain, but my biggest sense taking away from listening to these was it was most reminded me of sunlight, like in an experiential way.
Like, I don't know if you have this experience or anybody listening does where you just go outside at a specific time of day and it can be specifically tied to a season and the sunlight is just in this very specific way that you can't put your finger on, and it gives you this, or at least for me, it gives me this overwhelming feeling. And part of it is like, not quite nostalgia, but a vague memory probably built up over time of like, "Yeah, I like this. I like this." It just is like, that's what the birdsong did for me.
It's evocative of summer, but not one specific summer memory. It's like, it just hit me in that way. That's a little bit beyond words, but that I can feel and feel good about.
Dacher Keltner Drew, thank you for taking the time to come back to Science of Happiness and try another practice on your sleep journey.
Drew Ackerman Thanks for having me.
Dacher Keltner Up next, we're going deeper into the science of why hearing birdsong can soothe us.
[Advertisements]
Dacher Keltner Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I'm Dacher Keltner. Empirical studies have demonstrated that listening to birdsong can change the way we feel and think …. But why do these sounds have such an impact on us? Shuka Kalantari spoke with scientists to learn more. Here's Shuka.
Shuka Kalantari Thanks, Dacher. First let's try out a little experiment for ourselves. Listen to this:
[birdsong]
Ok. now, listen to this:
[traffic noises]
Shuka Kalantari Scientists in Germany had 295 people listen to six minutes of both of those sounds, one after another.
Emil Stobbe People reported to have less depressive states and less anxious states, and also less paranoid thoughts after listening to the bird songs.
Shuka Kalantari That's Emil Stobbe, he led the study.
Emil Stobbe And depressive states were actually heightened for the people after they have listened to the traffic noise soundscapes.
Shuka Kalantari This was an online study, people listened to the two sounds and then filled out questionnaires reporting how each sound made them feel … he kind of proved what we intuitively know, that the tweets, coos, and chirps of birds are nice to hear … they can make us feel better. But a psychologist in Sweden took this line of research even further.
Jesper Alvarsson We want to check if urban noise environments compared to a nature sound would have some effect on restoration
Shuka Kalantari Jesper Alvarsson brought 40 people into his lab and wired them up with electrodes to measure their skin conductance, the skin's electrical activity.
Jesper Alvarsson So if you start to sweat, you will have more current going between those electrodes compared to if you're not sweating.
Shuka Kalantari It's a good way to assess the body's stress response. And to get them stressed, he gave them a surprise math test.
Jesper Alvarsson So, there was a voice that said, "Now we're soon going to start a mathematical test. Please get ready."
Shuka Kalantari They had three seconds to answer each question.
Jesper Alvarsson And then they started to see equations appearing on the screen. The equations could be like 573 minus 248.
If they answered correctly, they heard a sweet jingle.
If they got the answer wrong, they heard something like this.
Jesper Alvarsson So that test was set up so it would be hard and they would fail often by not computing correctly within the time limit or failing to do it within the time limit.
Shuka Kalantari After the math test they each listened to four minutes of traffic noises.
[traffic noises]
And then 4 minutes of ambient, fan-like sounds.
[white noise]
And finally the sounds of flowing water and birdsong.
[birds chirping]
Jesper Alvarsson the main result was that if you look at skin conductance, there was an increased or a faster recovery if you listen to the nature sound compared to the road traffic noise.
Shuka Kalantari So their bodies were able to recover from the stress of the math quiz faster when they heard the sounds of nature. But that wasn't the case for everyone. Some didn't mind the traffic noise.
Jesper Alvarsson I had a participant that said, "Yeah, this was nothing. Right. I work as a taxi driver and this is like everyday work at day at work. I don't know what the fuss is about. Will you find anything?"
Shuka Kalantari Others didn't like birds, or their songs …
Jesper Alvarsson if you have some kind of phobia for birds, perhaps birds noises isn't that relaxing. You could have fear of water, then water fountains would be horrible. And perhaps you've grown up in a big city where there's noise all the time and, being in a tent outdoors, everything being super quiet would be stressful.
Shuka Kalantari Eleanor Ratcliffe is an environmental psychologist in the UK. She wanted to understand why some people think a particular sound is pleasant and relaxing while others may think it's horrible.
Eleanor Ratcliffe I found that looking only at the more kind of objective things, like the acoustic properties, the structure, complexity, pattern of the bird sound -- that wasn't telling the whole story.
Shuka Kalantari She recruited 174 people from the UK to listen to recordings of birds. They were told to imagine a scenario where they were stressed out, anything at all, and then rate to what extent the birdsong would help them recoup.
They also answered questions like…
Eleanor Ratcliffe Did the sound have any meaning or associations for you? Any memories that it, it prompted?
So what I found in this study is that when people heard these very short clips of bird song, they actually elaborated on them a lot in their mind. They would describe, you know, much richer worlds or environments. They need to be related to quite specific themes and imagery. So green spaces, seasons like spring and summer. Someone would say, like, it takes me back to my grandma's garden. So quite often people were listening to these sounds and going back in their mind's eye to particular places, times, you know, people that were important in their life.
Shuka Kalantari On the flip side, when people associated the sounds with less green environments, like a city — or if the bird sounded unfamiliar, they rated them as being unpleasant or stressful.
Eleanor Ratcliffe It was really this issue of meaning and the kind of the associations or the values that people attach to bird sounds that also had an important role.
So bringing that element of the person back into the environment and, you know, not just thinking, “Oh, I got to get my, you know, 30 minutes of nature a day,” or something, but making it something that's really, really meaningful and, brings some relevance to your own life.
Dacher Keltner On our next episode of The Science of Happiness … we explore how thinking about values supports our wellbeing.
Thanks for joining on us The Science of Happiness, I'm Dacher Keltner. Our executive producer of audio is Shuka Kalantari. Haley Gray is our producer. Sound design from Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. And a special thanks to our research assistants, and my former Science of Happiness students, Dasha Zerboni and Selina Bilal.
Comments