How rhythms help us regulate: What to know about entrainment

By Unyte Editorial Team Reviewed by Unyte Clinical Team

Have you ever caught yourself tapping your foot to a catchy beat or feeling calmer after listening to a relaxing playlist? That’s not a coincidence — it’s a powerful process called entrainment, and it can play a significant role in helping us stay balanced and regulated.

In this blog, we’ll explore how entrainment works, how it supports homeostasis, and how this understanding is applied to Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP) to regulate the autonomic nervous system.

What is entrainment?

Entrainment is the process of independent rhythms interacting and influencing each other (Clayton 2012). You can see this in nature when fireflies flash in unison, or when pendulum clocks placed next to each other eventually become synchronized through the transfer of energy (yes, it’s true!).

As humans, our bodies are full of natural rhythms, like our breathing, heart rate, digestion and sleep cycles, that operate as interconnected feedback loops where sensory and motor components influence organ function and generate rhythmic patterns, such as how our breathing rhythms affect our heart rate.

When we’re exposed to external stimuli, such as music, movement or soundscapes, our biological rhythms can begin to synchronize with them. This is how entrainment can be used to promote autonomic balance.

The Three Levels of Entrainment

Entrainment operates at three levels: cortical, skeletal motor, and viscero-motor, influencing brain processing, movement and autonomic regulation.

1. Cortical Entrainment

Cortical entrainment refers to the synchronization of brain activity. High-frequency audio and visual stimuli with rhythmic or modulated patterns can synchronize neural oscillations (Doelling & Poeppel, 2015). However, this can sometimes lead to seizure activity in people who may be more sensitive if the stimuli align with the brain’s excitability thresholds, causing excessive synchronization.

2. Skeletal Motor Entrainment

Movement can be synchronized with external rhythms, which can influence motor coordination (Thaut et al., 2015). Skeletal motor entrainment is what happens when you start clapping, dancing, or walking to the beat of a song, either solo or with a group.

3. Viscero-Motor Entrainment

Viscero-motor entrainment, which refers to our internal organs, is where it gets interesting. The rhythms of our internal organs — such as the heart, lungs and gut — can synchronize with motor function, which can help regulate our autonomic rhythms, such as heart rate, breathing and digestion, and return the body to homeostasis.

Rhythmic stimuli, such as slow rocking or listening to soundscapes, enhance vagal regulation, supporting gut motility, vascular tone and other autonomic processes (Barbaresi et al., 2025).

Subtypes of viscero-motor rhythms include:

• Cardiac and respiratory rhythms: Slow breathing (e.g., six breaths per minute) promotes heart rate variability and vagal tone.
• Gut peristalsis: Slow rhythmic stimulation entrains the gut to promote optimal digestion.
• Vascular tone: Slow rhythmic stimulation entrains the vascular system to promote optimal vascular tone and fluid dynamics.

Why entrainment matters for homeostasis

Homeostasis is the body’s ability to stay balanced and regulated despite changes to its external environment. But as you navigate through life, stress, trauma or illness can throw these rhythms off, causing us to experience dysregulation.

Entrainment gently nudges our internal rhythms back into sync. It can occur rapidly, often within minutes (Thaut et al., 2015); the more open and receptive we are, the easier it is for our bodies to respond to stimuli. Techniques like slow breathing, rhythmic movement and Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP) can help realign the autonomic nervous system with natural biological rhythms (Barbaresi et al., 2025).

How Does Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP) Work?

Built on this science of entrainment, Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP) is a clinical-grade application of Sonocea® Enhanced technology, delivered in a therapeutic process by a certified provider.

Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP) is Sonocea® Enhanced.

Sonocea® is a patent-pending innovative technology that uses acoustic parameters that go beyond traditional sound design, integrating the scientific knowledge of endogenous biological rhythms with the nervous system’s proclivity to be entrained through rhythmic stimulation. This approach incorporates in the acoustic stimulation the visceral rhythms of bodily organs.

Sonocea® Technology and Rhythmic Recovery

In the context of RRP, Sonocea® technology serves as a neuromodulatory tool, influencing the autonomic nervous system via brainstem circuits. It employs slow, rhythmic modulation of audible acoustic parameters (e.g., tempo) embedded in music to restore the nervous system’s natural rhythms.  By optimizing homeostatic processes such as health, growth and restoration, users can experience calming and restorative effects.

RRP is designed to entrain bodily rhythms back to homeostasis.

Homeostatic rhythms embedded in RRP are carried up to the brainstem and integrated with the brain and throughout other bodily systems via sensory-motor feedback loops — a truly bottom-up and integrative therapeutic process.

References

Barbaresi, M., Nardo, D., & Fagioli, S. (2025). Physiological Entrainment: A Key Mind–Body Mechanism for Cognitive, Motor and Affective Functioning, and Well-Being. Brain Sciences, 15(1), 3.

Clayton, M. (2012). What is Entrainment? Definition and applications in musical research. Empirical Musicology Review, 7(1-2)

Doelling, K. B., & Poeppel, D. (2015). Cortical entrainment to music and its modulation by expertise. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(45), 13936-13941.

Thaut, M. H., McIntosh, G. C., & Hoemberg, V. (2015). Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: rhythmic entrainment and the motor system. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1185.