The Daily Boost (published weekdays) is one of the newsletters of The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai. We Rafters ride the river of life buoyed by music, poetry, and other arts, plus water-drops of wisdom. Most everything here is free, but patrons (paid subscribers) get some special perks as a gesture of gratitude.
Humming can help us heal.
Therapist Resmaa Menakem focuses on healing racial trauma. He developed humming meditation as a way to return to our bodies on the journey of healing trauma.
(I’d suggest that humming can also be a way to return to our bodies on the journey of creative living. Being aware of the body is so important!)
This humming practice sprang from Resmaa’s memories of his grandmother, as described in his book My Grandmother’s Hands:
My grandmother was a strong and loving woman. But her body was frequently nervous. She often had a sense that something terrible was about to happen. It was an ancient, inherited sensation that rarely left her—a traumatic retention.
She would soothe that sense of impending disaster in a variety of ways. When she was in the kitchen, she would hum—not a steady tone, but entire melodies. Her humming was never soft and intimate, but loud and firm, as if she were humming for an audience. As a small child, if I knew the song she was humming, sometimes I would hum along with her, and my body would experience safety and settledness.
Give it a try?
If you’d like to try this humming practice:
Sit down a quiet, private, comfortable place. Place one hand on your belly.
Hum. Not from your throat or chest, but from deep in your belly.
Hum strong and steady. Push the air out of your belly firmly, not gently.
Stop to breathe in, then return to the hum.
Experience the hum in your belly. Then sense it in the rest of your body.
Continue humming for two minutes.
When you’re done, reach your arms upward. Then, slowly and gently, feel your body with your hands, starting from the top of your head. Move slowly down your neck and along your chest, then below your waist, then past your knees, until your arms are fully extended downward. What, if anything, do you notice?
(My thanks to Resmaa Menakem. Video and background information via Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.)
The Gentle Nudge
ANYTIME: Lay a blessing stone here. (Learn about our blessing-stone practice at this link.)
THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)
THIS SUNDAY: “Calming the Heart” patron bash with James Crews (Zoom, December 15, 6PM CT). Details here.
THRU 1/31/25: Write a cento for a midwinter cento celebration. Details here.
Oh boy does this mirror my daily do…I sing more than hum, actually, frequently , every day.
It calms me, I enjoy singing & it’s very good for our vagus nerve as well.
With things being what they are in our current world, I am singing more than ever 🎶
I am usually humming or singing the whole day. I think I do it as well to ground myself - I had never thought about it that way. Somehow if I can sing, I know I can make it through the day. Thank you Phyllis!