It is a whole-body experience that allows for deliberate, deep breaths.
Singing can make people forget their worries and anxieties, even for a while. However, many of them are afraid to do so, mainly because they do not define themselves as musical. Although this hesitation is natural, it can prevent people from expressing themselves in a way that has proven benefits for their mental health.
Singing songs that match the mood or express how a person wants to feel, instead of just listening, allows them to touch more deeply and go through different emotions.
Singing is an experience that covers the whole body and creates the possibility for deliberate, deep breaths. It triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine, which causes increased physical and mental awareness.
Researchers have noticed that listening to music and singing can improve a person’s good mental state and help him cope with feelings of anxiety and sadness.
A study done in 2019 and published in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care looks at how music will affect people who have lost a loved one in the last five years but have not recently taken medication for anxiety or depression and have not started attending psychotherapist.
Half of the participants in the study attended choral classes and socialized for 90 minutes a week.
After 24 weeks, this group of people experienced a stabilization of the symptoms of depression, as well as an overall improvement in their mental state and self-esteem.
According to another study conducted in 2021 by the University of Helsinki, people over the age of 60 engaged in choral singing have better developed verbal abilities than those who do not sing. The study was published in PLOS One.
Despite these benefits, many people have great difficulty singing in places where they could be heard by others. This makes them feel vulnerable.
Singing is one of the many ways in which a person can contribute to good mental health. However, some people do not find it useful or enjoyable and try to unload through other methods such as meditation or long walks.
It is important for everyone to find ways to make themselves feel better.
The results of this study found that there is a decrease in cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. The subjects felt calm, relieved and comfortable after singing, as evidenced by their responses to the questionnaire. This study concludes that singing has both health and psychological benefits in a confined space for older people.
Sound effects
So far, we’ve talked about how your body and mind can rejuvenate when you sing in the bathroom, but we also need to look at the physics associated with the bathroom and see how that makes the bathroom such an interesting place to showcase our musical talent! The acoustics in most bathrooms are essentially ideal for starting a private small concert. For example, most bathrooms have tiles that barely absorb sound. In fact, it means that your voice is reflected back and forth when you sing in the bathroom. This reflection also amplifies your voice, but it’s not just about the volume; magic lies in two other phenomena: echo and resonance.
Reverberation
Because the walls of the bathroom are not at the same distance from your mouth; some of the sound waves travel a little farther and take a second longer to reflect in your ears. In addition, because the walls in the bathroom are usually made of smooth hard surfaces, sound waves continue to bounce more often before fading. So, somehow, your sound lasts longer in the bathroom than in your living room. This effect is called reverberation. You get the impression that the note you sang lasted longer than you kept it. Reverberation also tends to smooth the transition between notes.
In fact, many karaoke systems these days are designed to implement this reverb effect electronically, which can slightly improve your sound as you sing!
Resonance
The performance of your shower will still sound better than the karaoke system, powered by the reverberation technique, because the bathroom has another acoustic property that is much harder to emulate: resonance.
In resonance, the sound waves are arranged exactly in the right way to amplify the sound. During a shower, this often happens because the wavelength of the note is exactly right for the size of the bathroom – in a way that makes the tops of the reflected waves line up. As a result, many of the notes will not only resonate, but will also combine with other reflected sound waves in a way that cancels out some of the sounds. This resonant effect is much more noticeable at deeper bass tones, as they have longer wavelengths, i. there is a greater distance between the crests of the sound waves. Now this effect of amplified and muffled sound is not the same in the whole bathroom. In some places in the bathroom your notes will be a bit muffled, while in other places it will sound great!
