The tradition of singing lullabies goes back centuries - so far that now no one can say for sure when it arose. However, all peoples of the world, all known cultures have this tradition. And the singing of lullabies has always been given a very serious meaning: about a cruel and heartless person, for example, they said that his mother did not sing lullabies …
So why is a simple, soothing bedtime song considered so important that it has been passed down from generation to generation for millennia? What's so special about her?
A little about biorhythms
Before continuing our story about lullabies, let's talk a little about the mechanism of falling asleep. Today, researchers distinguish four main biorhythms of the human brain: alpha - the biorhythm of calm wakefulness, which is activated as soon as we close our eyes; beta - the rhythm of active brain activity, ordinary daytime consciousness; delta - deep sleep biorhythm.
And theta biorhythm is the least studied state of the brain, a kind of intermediate phase between the alpha mode (when a person has closed his eyes, but is still awake) and delta (deep sleep). In this state, critical thinking is practically disabled, and any information, bypassing all barriers, goes straight into the subconscious. It is on this unique mechanism of consciousness that meditation is based, as well as training in sleep, hypnosis and many other amazing things.
Promotional video:
A falling asleep person goes through all biorhythms, starting from the daytime waking consciousness, from the beta rhythm, goes into the alpha rhythm, then into the theta rhythm - at this moment lullabies act on him. And then he goes into the phase of delta rhythms, deep dreamless sleep, where the information received is fixed and processed by the brain …
Learning in this
In all cultures of the world, a lullaby is a song with its own original imagery. In Russian lullabies, a beech and a wolf are found for a child, but with them mom and dad, grandfather and grandmother, and a yard, and a cat, and a horse are certainly named.
Likewise, other cultures have a certain number of characters and events that are repeated in each lullaby, and are often chanted several times during the same song. In lullabies, they must refer to the child - somewhere by name, somewhere in general: a crumb, a baby, and so on, they reproach him for some wrongdoing or, conversely, for something they praise, compare with someone - and so in this way, the baby receives very meaningful information about the world around him.
Lullabies for boys and girls are quite often different. They sing to the girl that when she grows up, she will become a hostess, a beauty, an assistant. And the boy is told how brave, strong and hardworking he will be.
If the mother constantly sings to the child that he will grow up to be good, kind, strong, beautiful, will do what is needed, and not do anything wrong, then she naturally lays a certain program in the subconscious of the baby. And uncritically, without barriers, the information perceived in this pre-sleep state acts on the child, programming his further life path.
One may ask: if a little person learns with the help of a lullaby, remembers the structure of the world around him - why not read him bedtime stories, starting with the simplest and ending with the complex ones, instead of lullabies? However, not all so simple. After all, lullabies have music, and with its help any information is much easier to remember.
By the way, there is even such a direction of teaching foreign languages when words and expressions are sung: memorization in this case increases many times over. In addition, a lullaby is incomparably simpler than any fairy tale: it has fewer phrases, simpler connections between words and a simple story that requires much less effort to remember and comprehend. So you need to grow up to bedtime stories.
One field of berries
A lullaby is also a communication between a baby and a mother, his first experience of communication with people. After all, the child is not just humming something - the mother pronounces words and whole sentences, which is very important. The baby gradually gets used to language as a means of communication between people, begins to distinguish phrases and words in the speech stream.
And in lullabies there are many diminutive-affectionate suffixes, and even the forms of verbs are reduced, softened, new words appear that may not be used in colloquial speech and are used only in lullabies.
The baby, as it were, absorbs various forms of words, repeated over many months and years, and thus begins to perceive the language in a completely different way. An intimate feeling of native speech, as many researchers now believe, arises, among other things, due to lullabies.
Singing amulets and killer songs
Since ancient times, it was believed that the text of a lullaby is a kind of spell. Many scholars have traced the connection between lullabies and conspiracies. For example, among the Khanty people, the mother composes an individual lullaby for each child, they sing it to only one child, and then this song serves a person as a talisman all his life.
This phenomenon is poorly understood, however, as we have already mentioned, it is much easier to influence a falling asleep or sleeping person, including energetically. And if the mother constantly sings songs to the baby with wishes of health, success and happiness, it is very likely that her spell will work.
A completely different phenomenon is the so-called mortal lullabies. They are common all over the globe, although they are rarely sung. In such a song, the child is literally wished to die. For example:
Bayu-bye, byu-bye, Hurry, Vanya, go to sleep.
Tomorrow Vanechka will die, And we will take it to the cemetery.
We will bury Vanya, Ring the big bell.
***
Liu-li bai lu-li bai die now
aunt will make a coffin from aspen boards
mom will sew a dress from a canencore shirt
and sew overlapping
Let's carry we'll bury in black soil
in black soil, the water will run up under you
It sounds, you see, crazy. And, to put it mildly, it does not go well with the teaching and well-wishing function of lullabies. Why did such eerie songs come about? Some researchers consider mortal lullabies to be a kind of euthanasia. They were sung to weak, sickly, unwanted children, thus helping to calmly retreat into another world.
But, given the high infant mortality rate in all centuries, this version looks rather strange. Therefore, scientists believe that mortal lullabies carry a transformational function, programming the child to leave all the bad in the past day and be reborn in the next.
For adults
Usually a lullaby is sung to babies. But it turns out that adults can also greatly benefit from listening to lullabies! In some cultures, these songs are sung to each other before bed. It happens that lullabies are sung to sick family members - and in part this helps to restore health and peace of mind.
In recent years, in many foreign countries, audio recordings of national lullabies have been used as a therapeutic agent. Research confirms that the analgesic effect of drugs increases (they are required significantly less than without lullabies), people begin to fall asleep normally without sleeping pills.
In addition, lullabies are used to treat certain psychological disorders, especially those that come from childhood. Listening to lullabies, a person feels security, confidence, he kind of returns to childhood, but also makes up for the lack of warmth and parental care. At the same time, people are immersed in such a state when the regeneration of the psyche is increased, stressful situations cease to disturb them - and in the morning they wake up in a completely different state.
So, if you are plagued by problems, you cannot get out of the cycle of troubles, play your favorite lullaby, wrap yourself in a blanket and fall asleep calmly. And then you will have good health, excellent mood, and a happy life. After all, lullabies are a means, proven for centuries.
Larisa KUZNETSOVA-FETISOVA