Enchantment Means “To sing”
“For the timbre of a human voice, singing a single sustained note carries an abundance of information for those whose ears are tuned to such clues — information about the internal state of various organs in the singer’s body, and the relative tension or ease in that person, the level of aggression or peaceful intent.”
- David Abram
In Spanish, “encantar” means “to love” and a “canto” is a “song.” In this way, to love and to sing are synonymous. The core of the work of enchantment, the way you really know you’re living this practice is if you feel comfortable and secure enough to sing when you feel moved to do so.
Now you might be thinking, “what’s singing got do with overcoming polarization, Chloé?”
Actually, a whole lot. As the quote above from ecologist David Abram points out, if you can sustain a tune, this reveals a lot about the physiological state you’re in. If you can sing, you know how to take deep breaths and you know how to listen. Those are the exact skills required to decrease polarization and conflict in an organization.
The Science of Singing Together
According to psychophysiologist Stephen Porges, singing together is a co-regulating “neural exercise of the social engagement system,” one that calms down the vagus nerve and slows down your autonomic nervous system.
As mammals, we literally need each other to survive and we have something called a myelinated ventral vagus which allows us to give off cues of safety, proximity, and trust to signal connection. Singing together activates that ventral vagus nerve, and leads to tighter social bonding between members of a community. It releases neurochemicals like oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins and induces positive emotions that strengthen social cohesion. ,
If your organization lacks trust, members will experience tons of anxiety, high-cortisol levels and overwhelm; this can easily lead to burn out. Team members can return to a state of calm and productivity by singing. This is the “chant” in Theory of Enchantment.
And if a team sings together on a regular basis, it’s training its nervous system to be flexible enough to return to a calm state when stress, anxiety, and tension take over. Singing is a form of co-regulation that gives you a greater flexibility to deal with high-pressure, high-stakes situations because it trains you to calibrate your own nervous system.
Now, maybe you’re thinking to yourself, ‘wait, I’m not a singer,’ or “Chloé, I don’t know how to sing well.” But the truth is everyone can sing. As humans, singing is our birthright. Charles Darwin and other notable scientists proposed that early humans used musical tones and rhythms to communicate before developing structured speech. In other words, singing is in your DNA.
“This is not hyperbole; I feel like Theory of Enchantment absolutely changed the way I am living life. It has changed the way I interact with all people, even my family, my kids, my husband, my extremely conservative parents, and my extremely progressive friends. It has absolutely changed me personally, not just at work, or with race relations, but with human relations.” - Adam B, student, Sacramento, California
Okay, sounds fun! When do we get to sing?
Our practice is akin to a martial arts class: The more your organization trains, the more belts it earns. But training begins with a simple practice of wax on, wax off: First, learn to listen and breathe and eventually you’ll find you’re able to sing.
1) SPRINT (LV 1): Teams learn to sense and track feelings of tension and relaxation they feel when experiencing stress and when experiencing calm. They track without stigma or value judgment.
2) MARATHON (LV 2): Teams learn to co-regulate by slowing down their vagus nerve — the longest cranial nerve in the human body. This is achieved by learning to breathe from the diaphragm, chanting, and through other mindfulness modalities.
3) BOOTCAMP (LV 3): In a six-week intensive incubator, team members begin their practice. They commit to six-weeks of regular breath work, chanting, tracking, and accountability with a “sparring” partner that helps them develop the muscle memory required to sustain the practice in their organization.
4) SUPERDOPE (LV 4): After embodied immersion is complete, teams can go even further in their practice by exploring the psychology of depolarization in the human condition in our online course.