Humming – Buzzing Bliss to Boost Your Health
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 23
- 5 min read
Alessandra Mantovanelli is a Sound Therapist and Integrative Coach, offering energy and somatic healing, mindful eating coaching, and Psych-K facilitation. She founded Waves for Thriving to help you shift from surviving to thriving by cultivating a heart-centered connection and coherence between your mind, body, and soul.
Humming is one of the simplest and most effective ways to boost your health, uplift your mood, and unwind stress. Everybody can hum and enjoy its health benefits, backed by science. Humming every day for just a few minutes can boost your health, stabilize breathing rhythms, and enhance a restorative state where the mind and body can recover and recharge.
What is humming?
Humming is the act of making a buzzing, soft, continuous sound with our lips closed. As a result, air is pushed through the nose while the vocal cords vibrate, but the mouth remains shut. Humming is instinctive, soothing, and organically aligns with your own voice rhythm and tone. As humming naturally increases the length of the exhalation, it enhances the parasympathetic nervous system's dominance, with a calming effect.[1]
A yogic humming practice, known as Bhramari Pranayama or Bee Breath, has been used since ancient times to calm the mind and body. It basically consists of a deep inhalation followed by sustaining a low-pitch hum during nasal exhalation that mimics a bumblebee’s buzz. Humans can generate a sound spectrally similar to a bumblebee by the sustained vocalization of the nasal consonant /m/, /n/, or /h/.[2]
What happens to your body when you hum?
Humming causes a gentle vibration of the sinuses, throat, cranial and facial cavities, and chest, stimulating airflow and encouraging slower, more conscious exhalations. The paranasal sinuses, small hollow spaces (air pockets) inside the bones around your nose and eyes, produce most of the nitric oxide (NO) in the upper airways. This gas plays a crucial role in maintaining our health, thanks to its antibacterial and antifungal properties, which help keep the airways sterile, increase resistance to infections, and reduce inflammation.[3]
The volume of the sinus cavities and their connectivity via sinus ostia to the nasal cavity make them function as acoustical resonators.[4] The oscillating sound waves produced by humming force the ostium of the paranasal sinus to vibrate and expel nitric oxide (NO) into the nasal cavity.[4, 5] The amount of NO expelled varies with the humming frequency and the size of the ostia, with NO peaks occurring when the humming sound is produced at a narrow range of the voice’s fundamental frequency.[4]
A silent nasal breathing takes between 5 and 30 minutes to exchange all sinus gases, which occurs over a single humming exhalation in just a few seconds, making humming a very effective way for sinus ventilation.[3,5]
The health benefits of humming: Backed by research
A single hum can significantly increase the amount of nitric oxide (NO) released in the nasal cavities, up to 15 times more than during quiet breathing [8]. There is an initial surge of NO, followed by progressively smaller peaks, and NO is washed out after a few consecutive hums, taking about 3 to 5 minutes for its replenishment.[3, 6, 7, 8] Beyond boosting nitric oxide, humming promotes a more natural and efficient breathing pattern. It reinforces nasal breathing, enhances lung capacity, increases tolerance to carbon dioxide, and helps stabilize respiratory rhythms. These combined effects suggest that humming may be a simple yet effective way to support respiratory health.
Four dozen studies have shown that Bhramari Pranayama breathing practice significantly improves sleep quality, pulmonary and cardiovascular health, enhances parasympathetic dominance, attention, and emotional regulation, while reducing stress, anxiety, depression, sympathetic activity, and blood pressure.[1,9, 10, 11, 12, 13] A study conducted with students found increased heart-brain coherence and heart rate variability after a daily 10-minute humming practice for one week, which may enhance emotional regulation, attention, and concentration.[14]
How to hum?
I watched an interview with Stephen Porges, the creator of the Polyvagal Theory, who highlighted that humming is remarkable for producing calming effects that help regulate the vagus nerve. Feeling calm and safe is essential for connection and authentic expression.
Here are three simple steps to hum:
Start with a deep inhale through your nose, followed by a slow nasal exhalation with your lips gently closed, creating a soft buzzing sound, like a bumblebee, or the nasal consonant sound /m/.
Hum at a low frequency, exhaling as slowly and steadily as possible.
Maximum nitric oxide (NO) output occurs during the first exhalation, so the practice is most effective when done in rounds of three to four humming breaths, followed by a short period of quiet, slow nasal breathing.
Hum with me
Enjoy the buzzing bliss! Try humming for a few minutes a day, or whenever you are stressed, and notice what changes for you. Please share your comments and insights!
Read more from Alessandra Mantovanelli
Alessandra Mantovanelli, Sound Therapy and Integrative Coaching
Alessandra uses a unique integrative approach to help people move from survival to thriving, integrating and harmonizing their body, mind, and soul in a freeing dance. She holds a Master’s in Sound Therapy along with certifications as a Mind-Body Eating Coach, Somatic Trauma Healing and Reiki Practitioner, and Psych-K® facilitator. By combining her knowledge of physics and wave frequencies with biofield and energy balance therapies, she bridges ancient healing techniques with modern science. As the founder of Waves for Thriving, Alessandra is dedicated to helping individuals embrace their healthiest, happiest, and most conscious selves, unlocking their highest potential.
References:
[2] Cardell, L. O. (2002). The paranasal sinuses and a unique role in airway nitric oxide production. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 166(2), 174-175.
[3] Menzel, L., Hess, A., Bloch, W., Michel, O., Schuster, K.-D., Gäbler, R., & Urban, W. (2005). Temporal nitric oxide dynamics in the paranasal sinuses during humming. Journal of Applied Physiology, 98(5), 2064-2071.
[5] Lundberg, J. O. (2008). Nitric oxide and the paranasal sinuses. The Anatomical Record, 291(12), 1479-1484.
[9] Kumar, A., & Venkatesh, S. (2021). Effect of short-term practice of Bhramari Pranayama on sleep quality and perceived stress in school students. International Journal of Physiology, 9(1).
