Chapter 6Live Concerts and the Pathway TowardVentral Vagal RegulationJoyce (Fangyu) Zhang

Joyce-Fangyu Zhang is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner working at the
intersection of art, psychology, and healing. She approaches artistic expression as an
accessible entry point into the personal and collective psyche, with the conviction that aesthetic
experiences can reattune individuals and communities to the underlying patterns and natural
rhythms that shape the more-than-human world.
She holds an undergraduate degree in Classics and Psychoanalysis from Colorado College and
a Master of Science in Business Psychology. Her research explores how encounters with
literature, music, and visual art open pathways into deeper strata of consciousness and
emotional life.
Her scholarly trajectory began with a thesis on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, using a
psychoanalytic lens to show how mythic narratives encode enduring motifs of psychological
development. This early work established her commitment of treating artistic texts as dynamic
encounters with the structures of human (un)consciousness. She extended this line of inquiry in
her graduate research, conducting a qualitative study of live concerts that mapped the
psychological terrain experienced by both musicians and audiences.
This chapter stems from her graduate thesis titled What makes live music special? A qualitative
exploration of the experiences of live music participants in a digitalized world.
She is currently based in Berlin.
Attached: Thematic Map Illustrating Psychophysical Experiences of Musicians (Green) and
Audience Participants