James' World 2

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My grandmother hummed all day long. She hummed while she cooked, while she cleaned, while she worked, and while she rested. Her favorite song to hum: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” but there were others; mostly spirituals, some hymns, and other melodies I never even learned the names of. She was a domestic worker and hummed throughout her long and grueling day, cleaning white people’s homes, cooking their food, raising their children, tending to their elderly. That work is exhausting and invisible, and includes the constant threat of unwanted advances and outright abuse. She had to protect the dignity inside of her because no one was doing it for her. She hummed through all of it. And she hummed herself to sleep at night — a soft, low sound in the dark before she went still.

As a child, I thought it was just what she did. Just her way. I thought it was regular, normal. I didn’t ask why then. But now I know why. And it’s not regular and ordinary; it is one of the most remarkable things I have ever learned.

The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the human body. It runs from the brainstem down through the throat, the heart, the lungs, and into the gut, touching almost every major organ along the way. It is the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system; the system responsible for what scientists call “rest and digest,” which is the biological state of calm, repair, and restoration that counteracts the chronic fight-or-flight response that stress produces. When the vagus nerve is healthy and active, the body regulates stress more effectively, inflammation decreases, heart rate and blood pressure lower, the immune system strengthens, and the mind finds its way back to equilibrium. High vagal tone is one of the most powerful predictors of long-term health and longevity that science has identified.

And guess what? One of the simplest, most effective ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, confirmed by peer-reviewed research, is humming.

When you hum, the vibration of your vocal cords directly stimulates vagal fibers running through the larynx and pharynx. Research published in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback found that humming significantly increased heart rate variability, the gold standard measure of vagal tone, compared to normal breathing. Studies show that within minutes of humming, the body produces measurable changes: decreased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, reduced cortisol, and a 15-fold increase in nasal nitric oxide, a powerful molecule that reduces inflammation and improves circulation throughout the body. Humming also naturally extends the exhale, which independently activates the parasympathetic system. It is, in clinical terms, a full-body nervous system reset. And it’s available to anyone. Best thing? It’s free!

My grandmother did not have a research lab. She had AI — Ancestral Intelligence, which is generations of accumulated ancestral wisdom about how to survive. My grandmother was raised in McCrae, Georgia. I find myself wondering now: Did she learn to hum from her grandmother? Did the women before her hum through their own challenging days; days of domestic work, days of farming, days of enslavement? Humming as survival is very much part of Black American life.

Dr. Mariel Buqué, a psychologist and intergenerational trauma expert, has noted that practices like humming and rocking the body, embedded in Black sacred music and communal worship, were not just emotionally resonant; they were physiologically transmissive, passing down the tools needed to heal across bloodlines. My grandmother wasn’t the first to hum. She inherited it. And she gave it to her children and grandchildren.

We are living through a youth mental health crisis unlike anything we have seen in recorded history, and Black youth are bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. Anxiety, depression, disconnection, and despair are rising in bodies that don’t have the tools to regulate themselves. They have apps, hotlines, and therapy referrals; all of which have their place, but we have largely abandoned the oldest, most accessible, most biologically effective nervous system tools our ancestors left us. And the research confirms what generations of Black grandmothers already knew: It works.

What would it mean to teach our young people to hum? Not as a quick fix, but as a practice; a deliberate, daily act of nervous system care rooted in the same ancestral wisdom that got their great-great-grandmothers through days none of us can fully imagine? What would it mean for a Black teenager, burdened by inherited stress and a world that is not gentle with them, to know that the tool they need lives in their own throat?

I am not suggesting that humming replaces therapy, medication, or the systemic changes required to address the root causes of Black suffering. Ancestral healing practices and clinical care are not in competition; they are partners, and both are necessary. What I am saying is that we have been so focused on building new interventions that we have forgotten to look at what was already working in the bodies of the women who raised us, long before anyone thought it important enough to study.

My grandmother (my mother’s mother) lived to 92 years of age. My father’s mother lived to 105, and she hummed too, from time to time, as grandmothers do. I used to think that was just what older people did. Now I think it was also biology: a nervous system kept regulated through decades of daily humming, a vagus nerve toned by a lifetime of vibration, a body that found its way back to rest each night through the oldest medicine in the world and information we now know: The body heals itself.

Tonight, before you sleep, try it. Close your lips. Take a breath. Let the exhale carry a sound; low, slow, and steady. Feel it in your chest, your throat, your face. Do it again and again. When your children are anxious, teach them this. Tell them where it comes from. Tell them about the grandmothers who hummed and who left us their medicine

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