Can Vibration Cure Anxiety and Mental Illness? (Dr. Dave Rabin, Apollo Neuro)
This seems really promising
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“We have new techniques being developed that rather than you going to your doctor and your doctor just saying, hey, you looked like you have a mental illness because you check off all these boxes, here's your prescription, right? Now take this for life because you're diagnosed and you have a diagnosis and there's no cure. And what we're shifting towards in mental health is this really interesting and exciting opportunity where we're starting to develop cures for mental illness.” (44:35 in this cast)
Dr. Dave Rabin is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and health tech entrepreneur who is revolutionizing our understanding of how specific vibration patterns can rewire the nervous system to eliminate anxiety, PTSD, and depression. As the co-founder and CEO of Apollo Neuro, he's conducted 17 clinical studies across over 2,000 subjects showing that therapeutic vibrations can induce the same healing states as psychedelic medicine for mental illness.
His research began in 2014 studying chronic stress and trauma in veterans at the University of Pittsburgh. This led to a breakthrough discovery that vibrations could replicate the safety-inducing effects of MDMA therapy.
I was excited to have Dr. Rabin on because I've been fascinated by frequency-based healing modalities for years. I wanted to understand the actual science behind why vibration seems to have such profound effects on our wellbeing and how he has managed to take something as esoteric as vibrational healing and ground it in rigorous scientific methodology.
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This episode is great for:
Has tried multiple anxiety or depression treatments without lasting results
Is curious whether vibrational healing has legitimate scientific backing
Suffers from treatment-resistant PTSD, anxiety, or depression
Wants accessible alternatives to psychiatric drugs
Understanding the science behind frequency healing and sound therapy
Learning practical techniques for nervous system regulation
Exploring alternatives to pharmaceutical mental health treatments
Ideas that really stuck out to me:
Mental illness is a "learned fear response" that vibration can systematically unlearn. The breakthrough insight is that chronic anxiety, PTSD, and depression aren't permanent brain diseases. They're learned patterns where your nervous system has been conditioned to perceive danger constantly. Dr. Rabin explains that just like Pavlov could train animals to fear food and then eliminate that fear by reintroducing safety signals, therapeutic vibrations can retrain your nervous system to feel safe again. This isn't symptom management. It's addressing the root cause.
We're witnessing the "antibiotic moment" for mental illness. Before 1920, infections like syphilis were considered terminal illnesses. Then penicillin came along and within 20-30 years, we went from people dying to completely curing these conditions. He believes we're at the exact same inflection point with mental illness. In MDMA trials for PTSD, 67% of people with treatment-resistant trauma no longer met diagnostic criteria one year after treatment and they continued improving after treatment ended. That's cure-level efficacy, not just symptom management.
Your nervous system responds to vibration the same way it responds to MDMA. Through his research mapping the neural pathways of safety he discovered that soothing touch, music, yoga, meditation, and MDMA all target the exact same brain systems. This led to a breakthrough question that what if we could use technology to send the right vibrational signal to remind the body it's safe? Apollo Neuro delivers specific sound wave patterns that trigger the same safety cascades in your emotional brain that MDMA does but without any pharmaceutical intervention.
Your body is an orchestra that anxiety throws out of tune. When you're anxious, you're typically breathing at 12-24 breaths per minute which puts your heart, lungs, and brain completely out of sync like a warming-up orchestra playing chaotically. Healthy, calm states happen at 5-7 breaths per minute where all your organ systems work in harmony like a beautiful symphony. Apollo essentially teaches your body to remember what that harmonic state feels like giving you a "bullseye" to aim for during meditation or breathwork.
The "tactile range" of sound is where the healing happens. Most people think sound healing means listening to binaural beats or 528 Hz frequencies. We don't need to hear therapeutic frequencies to benefit from them. The most powerful range is actually what you feel those bass-like vibrations from 20-200 Hz that your touch receptors are more sensitive to than your ears. This is why holding a purring cat or getting a hug feels so immediately calming.
Safety is the core mechanism that heals all mental illness. This insight connects everything. Whether someone has anxiety, depression, PTSD or addiction the underlying issue is that their nervous system doesn't feel safe. Dr. Rabin's work shows that when you consistently signal safety to the body through vibration, breath, touch, or psychedelic therapy. People don't just feel better temporarily. They actually heal at a foundational level often maintaining improvements long after treatment ends.
Simple vibrational techniques can stop anxiety spirals instantly. Humming makes it virtually impossible to ruminate on anxious thoughts. When you're humming any tune, you can't simultaneously cycle through worries, regrets, or catastrophic thinking. It works because humming induces resonance in your body naturally syncing up your nervous system. You can do this anywhere and anytime.
If vibration can truly elicit the same healing states as psychedelic therapy, we may be witnessing the dawn of a radically accessible tool for emotional well-being. No side effects. No risk of dependency. No need for clinical supervision. Just a wearable or even your phone, delivering healing frequencies quietly as you move through your day.
This is helping us see that mental illness may not be a permanent sentence, but a pattern of nervous system dysregulation that can be shifted. His research invites us to question the entire premise of lifelong pharmaceutical management. Instead of managing symptoms indefinitely we could actually heal the root cause.
We’re living through a quiet revolution in nervous system regulation. From vibrational medicine to psychedelic therapies to somatic practices and traditional pharmacology, the new landscape is one of choice. As Dr. Dave puts it we’re entering a new chapter where “spirit meets science.” And the outcomes speak for themselves.
We’re just beginning to understand what becomes possible when we treat the nervous system as the gateway, not the obstacle.
I hope you enjoy this conversation!
- Scott
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Episode Transcript
Show Notes
00:00 - The Healing Power of Vibration
10:10 - Understanding Apollo Neuro Technology
19:56 - The Science Behind Sound Therapy
29:49 - Applications and Future of Vibration Healing
32:16 - Therapeutic Vibrations and Their Impact
34:36 - The Safety of Non-Pharmaceutical Healing
37:06 - Personalized Sound Healing
40:19 - The Power of Humming and Chanting
44:35 - A New Paradigm in Mental Health
51:24 - Challenges in Advancing Mental Health Treatments
This is fascinating, thank you for spreading the message
I love the idea that we can simply hummmm our way back to happiness, no matter what our favourite song is.