Split portrait of a woman, one half listening peacefully to music through headphones, the other half glowing with vibrant, energetic waves radiating from within, symbolizing music’s impact on the body and mind.

Sound Is a Spell: How Music Rewires Your Body, Emotions, and Identity

Weekly Deep Dive
August 11, 2025•7 min read

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by John Moyer

When I was a freshman in high school, I first experienced a tiny taste of fame… and an early understanding of what it’s like to influence the emotions of an audience through artistic means. It was a foundation for what would go on to be my career in the performing arts.

In the early eighties, my father retired his long standing big band orchestra, but wanted to keep the tradition of entertainment in the family. So he rigged me up with all the latest DJ equipment, and bought a large collection of vinyl records. All the oldies and all the then current pop hits. I officially had my own DJ business at fourteen. 

I recruited one of my best friends, Jack Blazer, to team up with me. Along with wedding receptions and school dances, we had a standing monthly gig with the Mormon Church - my family’s religious faith at the time.

Jack and I were the maestros of the Mormon music scene. We DJ’ed all the Church Youth Dances in the Southern New Jersey area. 

We knew what records to play when. What would get the kids jumping onto the dance floor, and how to dial things down for a romantic slow jam. As romantic as teenage Mormons were allowed to be, that is. No bear hugging during slow dances; and chaperones stood by like Centurion Guards, making sure no raging hormone filled Mormon youth got too close. After all, teenage proximity is a gateway drug.

We were given strict rules about what we could and could not play. Songs like Michael Jackson’s Beat It were banned from our musical playlist.

That song is actually a anti-violence plea. But at the time, some church leader’s best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who heard at 31 Flavors that Beat It was slang for a perverse, carnal and unholy transgression in the eyes of God.

Did our church leaders actually watch the video or listen to the lyrics? It didn't matter. Their minds were made up and they were beside themselves thinking that if we played that song, it would create a sudden epidemic of teenage Mormon boys subliminally influenced to solely act upon their urges.

We mocked those fire and brimstone preaching, fear-mongoring soul-saving adults who were burning our playlists like To Kill a Mockingbird just dropped as an extended 12-inch club mix.

But from my vantage point now - OK, I’ll admit, they meant well. And they had a point. Sort of. Even a broken clock in a Mormon church is right twice a day.

Not when it came to Beat It, however. (Seriously. Just listen to the lyrics.)

But about music’s effect on people.

What Jack and I saw first hand, long before I ever stood in the spotlight as a stage hypnotist, is that sound isn’t neutral. It does alter behavior. It rewires energy. We didn’t have language for it back then. We just felt it.

We weren’t just playing music. We were shifting states. Tuning emotions. Collapsing resistance.

We were teenage DJs, yes. But also accidental sorcerers.

Looking back, it was the first time I witnessed entrainment in real time, the phenomenon where external rhythm syncs the internal rhythm of a group. The science of it came later, with terms like brainwave entrainment, limbic resonance, and vagal tone modulation. But back then, it was just instinct. Spin the right track, and you could feel the entire room merge into coherence.

Sound is a spell.

And I don’t mean that metaphorically. Neuroscientists now confirm what mystics have known for centuries: sound influences the nervous system, brainwaves, and even gene expression.

Let’s start with brainwaves.

Your brain operates on electrical frequencies: delta when you’re asleep, theta when you’re in a dreamlike state, alpha when you’re relaxed, beta when you’re alert, and gamma when you're processing insight. What most people don’t know is that external frequencies can entrain internal states. Meaning, sound can literally guide how your brain fires and wires.

In a study conducted by Japan’s National Institute for Physiological Sciences, researchers found that when participants were exposed to 10 Hz rhythmic audio, a frequency associated with calm and creativity, their alpha brainwave activity increased within minutes. No effort required. Just sound doing the work.

But it goes deeper than the brain.

In 2021, researchers published findings in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications showing that low frequency sonic vibration between 30 and 120 Hz can activate gene expression related to bone growth, neuroplasticity, and tissue regeneration. Translation? Your cells respond to sound. Not just metaphorically. Biologically.

Which brings us to a famous, controversial example: Masaru Emoto’s water experiments.

Emoto, best known for his photographs of water crystals, claimed that water exposed to positive words and harmonious music formed beautiful, symmetrical patterns, while water exposed to hateful words or discordant sound became fragmented and chaotic. While his experiments lacked strict scientific controls, the idea he sparked - that vibration and intention can influence form - was profound. And not entirely unsupported.

A double blind study conducted in 2006 with over 2,000 participants replicated Emoto’s basic idea under more controlled conditions. They found that water samples “treated” with loving intention consistently formed more aesthetically pleasing crystals than the controls. Critics were skeptical. But the evidence keeps pointing in the same direction: intention, vibration, and resonance affect matter.

And if our bodies are made up of 70 percent water? You’re the experiment.

This also explains why music can be so emotionally potent. When you hear a song from your past and instantly feel like you’re back in that moment, that’s a music and autobiographical evoked memory. Studies from Georgia Tech show that music doesn't just activate memory centers like the hippocampus, it also triggers the amygdala, the emotional processing center of the brain. And here’s the kicker: researchers discovered that if a specific song plays while you recall a memory, it can actually recode the emotional charge attached to that memory.

Which brings us here.

If music can rewire memory… if sound speaks directly to your cells… if frequency can entrain emotion before your mind even catches up, then listening is more than passing the time, it’s programming & spellcasting, with your body as the altar.

Most people don’t curate their soundscape, they inherit it by waking up and scrolling into someone else’s vibration. They let algorithms decide their emotional baseline. They replay breakup songs and trauma loops, because familiarity is more comfortable than freedom. Without realizing it, they keep feeding their nervous system the same soundtrack that shaped the pain they’re trying to outgrow.

But sound is a choice. Frequency is identity. And music, when used consciously, becomes one of the most accessible, ancient, and overlooked tools of transformation we have. 

If you prefer to create your life differently, listen differently. Let sound lead your state. Choose music that speaks the language of who you are becoming, not something you’re trying to escape. 

That’s the entire intention behind Upgrades from the Universe, the album Rachelle and I wrote and produced. It’s an album designed to assist in not only vibing higher, but also repattern thoughts that no longer serve us. This album was created to engage the subconscious, rewire identity and embed new beliefs while your body moves to high frequency music.

Beneath the beat, you are literally signaling your cells, releasing old scripts, and aligning to something more coherent.

What started with a Holy Ghost-approved playlist in a Mormon gymnasium evolved into something I was clueless about back then: an understanding that music can be for entertainment, expression and transformation. It can move the body, mind and spirit. It can even move timelines.

The notorious urban legends in the seventies and eighties about rock and pop music got Evangelical Christians to declare there was a Satanic influence in mainstream music. Apparently, that was a belief Mormons and Born Again Christians could agree on.

Well, if music can steal your soul, then it can also get your soul to transcend and soar. We believe we did that with Upgrades from the Universe.

So yeah, turn it up. To reprogram. To become. To resonate with a stronger signal.

Album Cover for Upgrades from the Universe

Upgrades from the Universe is streaming on all music platforms. You can also download the album directly from our Bandcamp Platform as a way to support our work here with Daily Consciousness.

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Suggested Resources

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