Music as a Way of Knowing
A Qualitative Exploration
The Music in Me
Ever since I was young, back in the early 1980s, I have loved making playlists. I would sit with my double cassette deck and curate a listening experience tailored for a party or a person. The songs, their order, and even the title of the mix was part of the creative process. If something didn’t feel quite right while listening, I wouldn’t hesitate to erase the entire tape and start over. It took hours, but I loved every minute of it. When my mix was playing at a party, I would revel in watching how the music influenced the energy of the room. And if I gave you one of my mix tapes, it was the greatest gift I could give.
In my senior year of college in 1987, still undecided about my major, an instructor assigned us the project of creating a three-minute “audio collage” to express how we felt as we approached graduation. I became obsessed with the project. I spent countless hours selecting lyrics and songs that resonated with emotions I couldn’t yet express in words. I still have the cassette and even though I can no longer play it because I don’t have a way to play it, its contents are imprinted on my heart and mind. Each track carried a complex emotion, and one of those was Going to California by Led Zeppelin
“Someone told me there’s a girl out there, with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair…
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems…”
Years later, in 2017, after 13 years of holding the dream of attending Sofia University (formerly the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology), I found myself in California at the start of a week-long seminar. On a run through the retreat property, I pressed shuffle on the thousands of songs in my library, and low it and behold there it was: Going to California playing through my headphones. I stopped in my tracks, doubled over, and sobbed. I knew, deeply and undeniably, that this was the right time and place for me. I had finally declared my “major” and made it to the top of my own “mountain of dreams.”
Back with the group, I shared my experience, and they understood. During one of our drum and singing circles, my new friends invited me to sing that song as they accompanied me honoring my process. Surrounded by “my people,” I felt seen, supported, and more connected to myself than ever before. This collective experience of musical meaning reflects the type of participatory knowing that Heron and Reason (1997) describe in transpersonal and indigenous traditions.
Even earlier, in the early 2000s, I was a spinning instructor. I poured hours into designing themed rides with titles like Spin City, Spin and Grin, Spinergy, using music to create a sonic landscape for the journey. Everything flowed from the heart, guided by the transformative power of music to motivate the riders.
Although I don’t play an instrument, music lives inside of me. Creating playlists and sharing songs is how I express that inner music. I may not be able to draw what I imagine, but I have this tool—a sound-based medium—to give form to what I feel. As Eisner (2002) suggests, artistic forms like music are valid and valuable modes of knowing, allowing expression where words may fall short.
“Music is what feelings sound like.” - Georgia Cates
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that music is a way of knowing. It reveals synchronicities, uncovers patterns, attunes me to energy, and delivers guidance from beyond the rational mind. Neuroscientific research supports this, showing that music activates multiple brain areas related to emotion, memory, and meaning (Levitin, 2006).
I remember the day before my wedding in 1994: as I settled into my car after work, I turned on the radio, and our wedding song, All I Want Is You by U2, began to play. Released five years earlier, its sudden presence affirmed everything I needed to feel. Thirty-two years later, I can say: the knowing was real.
Songs hold immense power for me. So much so that I’m cautious not to overplay them and risk turning something sacred into background noise. For instance, when my friend plays Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd on the beach, I sometimes ask him to turn it off, not because I dislike it, but because I want to preserve the memory and feelings of slow dancing to it in eighth grade. I don’t want to dilute the power of the feeling and preserve it as a time capsule as part of my life.
Musical Threads
My oldest friend and I often talk about why we love the songs we love. We trace the threads that connect them. What sides of ourselves do different songs bring out? And how do we understand those sides more clearly through music?
About 20 years ago, I was deeply into yoga. Music played a major role. It helped me sync breath, movement, and presence. After stepping away for a while to explore other practices, I recently found myself in a new yoga studio in a new town, surrounded by a new generation of yogis. One day, There is So Much Magnificence by Steve Gold, began to play. Instantly, I felt the thread, between past and present, between the person I was and the person I’d become, all moving together and linked to those moving beside me now.
Are you a lyrics person or a melody person? It’s a deceptively simple question. Do you tune in to the story, the poetry, the language? Or is it the movement, the feeling, the rhythm that stirs something inside you? Your answer may something about how you process the world and how you relate to your own inner life.
Collaborative Playlists
There’s a special kind of intimacy in shared playlists. Recently, I made my daughter, Jenna, a playlist for her half marathon, each song an inspiration, a memory, a message for her to listen to while running through the streets of Chicago called ByYourSide. We were unable to be with her to cheer her on, but our songs could accompany her. Jenna truly felt our support during her challenging run. All along thinking: What does it say about someone when they think of you while choosing a song? How do they know you? And what does their song choice reveal about your connection?
There was also Judy’s birthday playlist—a mix of inside jokes, shared tastes, and emotional anthems. Each song a vignette. Each vignette a reflection of our shared experiences with her.
Music, in this way, becomes more than background—it becomes a language of relationship, of memory, of soul.
Music as a Love Language
When I’m listening to music and someone pops into my mind, it my practice to send it to them. I don’t always know why that person entered my consciousness, but I follow my intuition and let them know. I ask them to share whether it means something to them and what that might be. Music is my way of saying, I see you, even from afar.
This is my love language. And when someone tells me they loved a song I shared? That’s the best compliment I could receive.
“Music is a tonal analogue of emotive life.”- Suzanne Langer
Music in Coaching
Today, I weave music into my sacred circles and coaching sessions. It brings people together, sets a tone, and opens portals to deeper self-awareness. According to Langer (1957), music expresses the dynamics of feeling and lived experience in ways that language cannot, making it a powerful tool of insight.
For an upcoming Global Mental Health Conference at Sofia University, I will be presenting and guiding the closing circle for the event. As part of this experience, I will incorporate a listening session featuring the song Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. This piece will serve as a reflective moment for participants to integrate what they are taking away and to use the power of music as a way of knowing how to create healing bridges in their lives and communities. This practice reinforces music’s role not only in personal insight but also in collective transformation and healing.
Here are some ways I incorporate music as a tool of insight and inquiry:
What does the music you love say about you?
What instruments do you feel in your body—and how do they move you?
What has changed in you since you first heard this song?
What does this song connect to—people, places, emotions?
What song would be the soundtrack to a particular event in your life?
If you could walk up to any moment in life like a baseball player entering the field: what would your “Walk On” song be?
I sometimes ask a client a question, play a song, and then invite them to revisit the question. More often than not, something shifts—an insight, a memory, a truth they couldn’t access before.
Final Reflection
Music is more than sound. It’s memory, meaning, and movement. It’s an inner compass. A spiritual friend. A mirror. A message from a higher source.
It is, without question, a way of knowing, way of expressing love…. and a friend.
“If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.”
– Simon and Garfunkel
References
Eisner, E. W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Yale University Press.
Heron, J., & Reason, P. (1997). A participatory inquiry paradigm. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 274–294.
Langer, S. K. (1957). Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Harvard University Press.
Levitin, D. J. (2006). This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Dutton/Penguin.