What is the Safe and Sound Protocol?
Can listening to sounds really change how you feel?
Hello dear Voyagers,
Six months ago, my favorite somatics teacher1 featured a listening therapy in her monthly newsletter:
The Safe and Sound Protocol was created by Dr. Stephen Porges, a psychologist and professor whose groundbreaking work has reshaped how we think about the nervous system and its role in healing. Dr. Porges is best known for developing Polyvagal Theory, which explains how our nervous system reacts to stress and safety. His research has revealed how closely our physical state is tied to our emotions, relationships, and ability to stay calm and balanced.
SSP is a listening therapy that uses music to communicate with your nervous system—shifting it out of fight-or-flight or shutdown mode and into a state of safety and connection. Why is that important? Because true healing can only happen when your body feels safe.
Polyvagal theory changed my life, and I trust Sarah, so hearing about this new auditory approach for vagus nerve stimulation perked me up immediately.2 I clicked through to this piece by Emma Clark, half of the team behind the SSP Wellness Center and read the following lines: “SSP music is carefully filtered to emphasize mid-range frequencies—the kind of sounds we associate with safety, like the soothing tone of a calm voice. These frequencies stimulate the tiny muscles in your middle ear, giving them a ‘workout’ and helping your nervous system tune into cues of safety more effectively.”
The description triggered a memory in me. A listening memory.
Going back in time
I was taken back in time to San Francisco, 2008. My old friend and neighbor James Nestor3 was working on a new book and needed volunteers to act as guinea pigs for sound experiments. I raised my hand for the binaural beats experiment. That’s how I found myself joining his sound-curious crew as part of his “HighLab.”
From Get High Now: “Binaural Beats were discovered in 1839 by a Prussian physicist, but they didn’t gain much public interest until the early 1970s when a scientist named Gerald Oster postulated that the brain wasn’t solely affected by the beats. He tested the theory with fMRIs and found that the neurological system as well as other parts of the body responded to the frequencies…Binaural Beats have been clinically shown to physically affect the listener’s body and brain, even triggering the pituitary gland to flood the body with dopamine.”
My experience that evening in 2008 was not transformational, but I did find it relaxing. From time to time, when the term binaural beats was mentioned, I’d vaguely nod at my experience and mumble about how interesting the concept of listening therapy was. That was 17 years ago.
Giving listening therapy a try
This year, hand-in-hand with my newfound understanding of the nervous system, it was time for me to revisit listening therapy. I signed up for a monthly program ($69) with Emma, downloaded the Unyte app, and began my daily listening therapy of 2-3 minutes. I checked in with Emma regularly to set my initial pace and slowly got into a routine.
What does the daily listening sound like? You choose from different style of music. Based on the samples provided, I chose the "Groove” course. I only just now learned was music created by one of the founders of the 90s band Rusted Root. So imagine Rusted Root-like music with a layer of ambient noise laid atop it.
How exactly does SSP work? According to Safe and Sound Protocol: Bringing the science of safety to life from the bottom up created by the Unyte app4 the SSP uses specially filtered music to train your neural network to focus on the frequency range of the human voice. “Think of how a baby or a pet responds to your voice,” the narrator says. “As we learn to focus on the sound frequencies of human speech through the SSP program, the vagus nerve becomes stimulated and the state of feeling more safe and calm becomes accessible.”
Does it work? This is the hardest part of sound therapy. If you’re doing it right, the effects should be subtle.5 For the first two months of my listening therapy, I wasn’t sure what it was doing to me, though I noticed a subtle shift in my desire and capacity to be social. Over time, that has grown more reliable. I’m now four months in and would describe SSP as another tool in my toolkit that I’ve added next to my other favorite mindbody tools: clinical somatics, EMDR, polyvagal exercises, chanting, meditation, and breathing exercises.
Last week, I attended a new kind of sound bath at Alchemy Springs, a sauna and wellness space in downtown San Francisco. While laying on a specially-built platform created by Crescendo Research, I listened to music not just through my ears but through my body. The platform vibrated and hummed, creating “tactile bass” that reverberated throughout my chest and limbs. The closest experience I’d ever had before was when I stood close to speakers at a concert. The difference was that the music in this space wasn’t loud. It was engineered to be felt, not heard. The effects were lovely and somewhat short-lived. I didn’t mind — I know that mindbody science is made up of small, cumulative experiences. If chronic stress creates pain in the body through a series of small breakdowns, think of mindbody support as healing in the body through a series of small “buildups.” What matters is that I’m shifting the feeling in my body. If the shift feels good, even if it’s small, it’s worth it, since that is how the nervous system gets regulated.
If you do start exploring this field, please let me know in the comments space. I love to hear from fellow Voyagers.
Gotta live up to my publicly-shared commitment — no fearing the weird.
There is a financial incentive that the creators of this video have to convince people that SPP works. I would love to be able to find more independent research on this topic and hope I will in the future. If you know of any, please send it on in the comments.
Go on Reddit to hear horror stories of people who listened to 30 minutes of SSP and ended up feeling severely dysregulated.
This is super interesting. My daughter has Misophonia and I have been looking for therapies that may help this.