From Resonance to Regulation: How Waves Shape a Healthier Mind

By Jackie Henrion | You Make The Culture

When I was five, I started taking piano lessons at Greenwich House Music School in New York City. My teacher, Miss Polak, was stern but brilliant. She taught me to recognize intervals and chords by ear before I ever learned their names. I didn’t know it then, but I was being trained to hear patterns in motion—to notice when sounds were in resonance or dissonance.

Later, I studied the mathematics behind harmonics and discovered that what had once felt like pure intuition was, in fact, grounded in structure. Music, like life, depends on how things relate and resonate. But then came the shock: modern music, with its unpredictable dynamics and emotional dissonance. It stirred something else in me. I began to understand that meaning emerges in the tension, not just the harmony. And that we can develop the internal strength as a kind of mental muscle to transform what we experience to something more harmonic.

As a songwriter and host of the radio show Songs-Voices-Poems on KRFY 88.5 (still broadcasting Sunday evenings in Sandpoint, Idaho), I explored how words and melody can transmit such life lessons—how we can learn to live more integratively by listening closely to the rhythms within and around us.

That same lesson echoes in two powerful ideas that have shaped how I understand health and humanity:

🧠🌊 You Are a Process, Not a Thing

From physics: Geoffrey Haselhurst, Philosopher/Mathematician, the author of the Wave Structure of Matter (WSM,) says matter isn’t made of solid particles, but of standing wave patterns—vibrations in space forming temporary centers of energy. In other words, we experience solid things as matter, but at a quantum level, we are vibrational. Our body is a accumulation of minute pulses that strive for harmony.

From psychology: Daniel J. Siegel defines the mind as the embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. In his therapy practice, he observed that dysfunction and distress can be eased by our focus of attention to small, internal sensations. Thus deriving information—in order to allocate our energy. In this way we increase our power to regulate ourselves.

Both suggest the same radical truth:

You’re not fixed. You’re flowing. You’re not a thing. You’re a rhythm.

This means you are meant to change. To evolve. To integrate.

⚖️ Integration Is the Key to Harmony

In physics, coherence occurs when waves align.

In the mind, integration happens when differentiated parts—thoughts, sensations, relationships—connect and collaborate.

When they do, we feel:

• calm instead of chaos

• clarity instead of confusion

• connection instead of isolation

This is the essence of self-regulation: bringing your inner symphony into tune.

🛠 Practices to Retune Your System

These are more than habits. They’re technologies of coherence:

Practice. How It Helps

Mindful Breathing. Calms the nervous system and restores rhythm

Journaling. Turns scattered thought into coherent narrative

Attuned Conversation. Creates resonance between minds

Movement or Music. Recalibrates body-mind flow

Nature Time. Aligns us with universal, organic patterns

None of this is woo-woo. It’s wave science. It’s neurobiology. It’s art. And it’s in you.

🌐 You Make the Culture

Just as waves ripple through water, your inner world affects the larger one. The more integrated you are, the more integration you offer others—through your relationships, your work, your attention.

The personal is planetary. And your ability to self-regulate is a revolutionary act. In fact, for my participation in a public event on June 14, 2025, I'm making a sign that reads: "If you search in your soul and your intellect, you will join us."

So tune in. Listen. Recalibrate. You’re not a solo. You’re a part of the music of everything.

✍️ With resonance and rhythm,

Jackie Henrion

You Make The Culture