I HUM TO myself. It’s been going on for months, probably years. As I go through the motions of washing dishes, moving wet clothes to the dryer, folding clothes, sweeping the floor, chopping onions, checking email, weeding the garden. Even when I’m writing, I’ll notice a little hum inside me. Sometimes it’s an old hymn, sometimes it’s the earworm of a pop song vibrating through my body as I move through small tasks of the day. When my mother-in-law moved into our home and bore witness to my habits that the rest of my family was accustomed to, she observed: “You hum a lot!”
Humming is an ancient self-soothing practice. Some people, like me, do it mindlessly while carrying out other tasks. Others set aside time simply to hum and clear the mind. In yoga, Bhramari Pranayama (“humming bee breath”) is a method of focused breathing while humming. Research has shown that humming stimulates the vagus nerve, regulates the heartbeat, and even helps the body settle down for a good night’s sleep. When I consider Paul’s letter to the Romans about the Holy Spirit helping us when “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” I’m comforted to think that when the “Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words,” every hum is a vibrant prayer (8:26).
Humming is not just a private practice; it can also be social, a way of signaling to other humans that we are human too. In the same way that cats purr or chickens cluck, some researchers suggest that humming helps people signal to other people and other species that they are safe. Humming builds connection and community in a space beyond language.
Humming builds community in a space beyond language.
There are still churches, especially Black churches in the deep South, where the preacher only has to say a line of a song, and a steady hum spreads through the congregation before a familiar chorus rises up. I wasn’t raised in this tradition, but I have visited Baptist churches near my home in rural Georgia where this still happens. I feel like I’m sitting in a place of collective healing. My body remembers and I join the hum.
My grandmother left the Black Baptist church she was raised in to join a Quaker meeting where silence was the main worship practice. I recall her sitting herself down at the end of the day and saying aloud, “Ho hum!” It was a little exclamation of delight and satisfaction, of saying, I’m here, I still have breath and life. Though I’m not a grandmother yet, I hope I become a grandmother who hums, who holds the next generation with hope and love, and is a reminder of the resonance our bodies hold as safe places.
Josina Guess is a Sojourners associate editor and a contributor to Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.
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