For women navigating the profound transition into motherhood, healing doesn’t always have to involve doing more. Sometimes, it begins with listening. As our understanding of the nervous system and the subconscious continues to evolve, sound is emerging as a gentle yet powerful tool for supporting the emotional landscape of motherhood. For women navigating pregnancy, postpartum, and the quiet identity shifts in between, could healing be as simple as pressing play?
We sat down with Marisa Hallsted—subconscious and nervous system specialist and founder of Seeded Sound—to explore the science, intention, and philosophy behind the sound healing platform. We learned why the subconscious may hold the key to lasting transformation, how sound can help regulate the nervous system during motherhood’s most demanding seasons, and why this practice might become the easiest ritual you’ll add to your day. Read on for a conversation that bridges neuroscience, maternal well-being, and the quiet power of listening.
LHM
Can you share the story behind Seeded Sound and what inspired you to create it?
MH
Seeded Sound was born out of a collision between personal breaking point and professional obsession. I have spent over 15 years as a Reality Architect, which is what I call my work as a transformation coach who supports women to dismantle the subconscious programming that keeps them stuck, overwhelmed, and running on empty. I have witnessed brilliant, capable women do all the "right" work: therapy, journaling, breathwork, mindset coaching and still hit the same walls. The missing piece, almost every time, is the subconscious, which governs our foundational identity. The beliefs running silently at the root, shaping everything. Sound became the tool I kept returning to, both in my own life and in my work with clients. It was an easy-to-use modality that could access the subconscious without requiring the conscious mind to cooperate—no willpower, no perfect conditions, no showing up ready. You just press play and use this tool to anchor in change on a deep level. Something I noticed was that most sound healing content was either too esoteric for everyday life or not backed by anything clinically credible. Seeded Sound bridges those worlds—subliminal affirmations layered beneath beautiful soundscapes, so the subconscious receives the message even when the conscious mind is fully occupied elsewhere. It's 15 years of understanding how women's minds work, compressed into something you can put on while making breakfast.
LHM
For those who are new to frequency healing, how would you explain it in a simple, approachable way?
MH
Think of your nervous system like a tuning fork. When you're around chaos, stress, or constant noise, it starts vibrating at that frequency. Sound healing is essentially the practice of introducing a different, more coherent frequency—and letting your brain attune to it. The subliminal layer in Seeded Sound takes it one step further: specific affirmations are encoded beneath the music at a level the conscious mind doesn't register as "content," but the subconscious absorbs completely. You're not meditating. You're not doing anything differently. The specifically-designed frequencies have been proven to shift brain waves states into regulation. From High Beta stress states, into Alpha and Theta relaxed, focused, calm states. This leads to healthier sleep, cortisol levels and hormone health biologically and behaviorally less reactivity, more presence and calm.
LHM
What's actually happening in the body when we listen to sound frequencies or guided audio?
MH
Your brain is constantly pattern-matching. When it hears certain frequencies, particularly those in the theta and alpha ranges, it naturally begins to downshift from the stress response. Cortisol lowers. The parasympathetic nervous system comes online. Brainwave states shift from high-alert beta into something more receptive and regenerative. In our IRB-approved EEG and QEEG pilot study, 100% of participants showed measurable improvement in brainwave regulation after 30 days of daily listening for an average of 10 minutes. That's not anecdotal, that's the nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do when given the right input.
LHM
How did you hone in on the sound healing benefits for mothers?
MH
I have spent 15 years sitting across from mothers—women navigating pregnancy, postpartum, the invisible labor of raising children while simultaneously trying to remember who they are. Through hundreds of client sessions, and through deep study of psychology, neuroscience, and subconscious reprogramming, I came to understand something clearly: the inner landscape of a mother shapes everything. Her nervous system is her child's first environment. Her subconscious beliefs become the silent architecture her family lives inside. Seeded Sound is my contribution to changing that. Not from the inside of motherhood, but from a place of profound devotion to it. I think of it as my way of mothering: taking everything I know about how women's minds and nervous systems work, and building something that serves mothers, children, and honestly, the future health of our society. If we can support women at the root; in the body, in the subconscious and in their families, the ripple effect is enormous. That felt like work worth doing.
LHM
Why is sound such a powerful tool for women in seasons of pregnancy and postpartum?
MH
Because those seasons demand everything from you while simultaneously dismantling your usual coping tools. You can't have a glass of wine. You can't push through on caffeine alone. A lot of supplements are off the table. Your body is in a radical state of change, and your nervous system is working overtime. Sound requires nothing of you. It's passive, it's safe, it's available at any hour, and it works directly on the physiological level without adding more to do during an already unpredictable time. For women whose bandwidth is already maxed out, that accessibility is everything.
LHM
How can expectant mothers benefit from sound healing?
MH
Pregnancy is a profoundly receptive state—emotionally, physically, hormonally. The subconscious is more permeable during periods of significant life transition, which means the affirmations in Seeded Sound have a particularly direct line in. Practically: reduced anxiety, better sleep onset, a clearer sense of groundedness and identity through a period that can feel destabilizing. And there's something powerful about using sound intentionally during pregnancy. It creates a ritual, a daily point of contact with yourself and your growing baby at a time when it's easy to feel like your body belongs to someone else.
LHM
Are there specific benefits for stress, sleep, or connection with their baby?
MH
All three, yes. For stress: the soundscapes alone activate a parasympathetic response within minutes. For sleep: theta-range frequencies are specifically associated with the hypnagogic state—that edge between waking and sleep—making Seeded Sound a natural sleep onset tool. For baby connection: when you are regulated, present, and in a coherent nervous system state, that transfers. Babies feel the difference in how they're held, fed, spoken to. Regulating yourself is one of the most direct ways to attune to your baby. Science supports this in a meaningful way. Research shows that the fetal auditory system becomes responsive to sound as early as 25 weeks of gestation, and newborns who were exposed to sound and music prenatally already demonstrate physiological responses to rhythm and pitch patterns in their first days of life—suggesting that fetal sound memories carry forward into the newborn period. A 2023 systematic review published in BMC Pediatrics found that prenatal sound stimulation, including music and speech can form stimulus-specific memory traces during the fetal period and affect the neonatal neural system. In other words, what a baby hears in the womb becomes part of their earliest neurological wiring.
LHM
How can sound healing support the postpartum period?
MH
Postpartum is where I think sound healing has the most underutilized potential. The identity disruption is real. The sleep deprivation is real. The invisible emotional labor is real. And most of the support structures we offer new moms require them to do something like show up to a class, schedule an appointment, make a call. Seeded Sound asks nothing. You press play while nursing, while the baby sleeps on your chest, while you're staring at the ceiling at 3am. The affirmations working underneath are doing quiet, consistent work on the subconscious beliefs that often go sideways in postpartum: I am enough. My body knows how to do this. I am not alone. That kind of cellular-level reassurance matters.
LHM
What shifts have you seen in mothers who consistently use sound healing in their daily lives?
MH
The most common thing I hear is: I feel like myself again. Not a different self, but the self that was always there underneath the stress and the survival mode. Women report sleeping more deeply even in short windows, feeling less reactive, moving through hard moments with more steadiness. The ones who use it most consistently tend to describe it as the thing that "holds" everything else, like it creates a foundation that makes all their other practices more effective. That tracks with what we know about subconscious reprogramming: small, consistent inputs compound over time.
LHM
Are there any specific tracks or resources you'd recommend for pregnancy or postpartum?
MH
We have dedicated seed categories specifically designed for these seasons. The Women's Health category includes tracks built around hormonal regulation, body trust, and identity anchoring, all of which are directly relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Our Nervous System Regulation category is the foundation everything else builds on and where I'd direct any new mom first. The Emotional Regulation category is particularly useful for the postpartum emotional landscape, which is rarely as simple as "baby blues" or "PPD," it's a full spectrum experience that deserves full spectrum support. Start with 20 minutes a day. Morning or night. Let it be easy. Certainly the Kid’s entire library is intended to be used from zero to teen for new babies, their siblings and the whole family at every age and stage.
LHM x Marisa Hallsted
