The power of music

Humans have been creating musical instruments for at least the last 40,000 years and music is believed to have served an important survival purpose in facilitating communication and strengthening in-group social bonds. In Ancient Greek times, music was used to help alleviate mental disorders and throughout history music has served to rally troops, spur on sailors, market products and win people over to ideological causes.

Music is also important to many of us on a personal level. Listening to music is immersive and hits us on a lot of different levels simultaneously while cutting across cultures and giving us something to relate to and even believe in, regardless of where we come from. Music can also help give voice to our own experiences and make us feel less alone in our problems, while also boosting our mood and keeping us motivated.

In this month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates we’ll be reflecting on some of the physical and mental health benefits of listening to music and thinking about how we can incorporate the power of music into our daily routine.

One of the main reasons that we enjoy listening to music is because it is associated with the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is part of the brain’s reward system and is linked to pleasure and motivation. This helps to explain why listening to music puts us in a good mood, and why so many of us listen to music while exercising or preparing for a big day ahead.

Listening to music is also associated with improved sleep quality, which is important in an age when approximately a third of the adult population is sleep-deprived, according to Help Guide. Listening to music helps our body to regulate our heart rate and breathing, making it easier to fall asleep and helping us to reach a deeper and more restorative sleep state.

Over and above this, exposure to music is associated with a reduction in pain, and also a reduction in the emotional distress associated with physical pain. Studies in palliative care settings have indicated that music therapy can have a beneficial mood-boosting effect on patients experiencing pain, while also helping to alleviate anxiety and depression experienced as a result of this pain.

Listening to music has also been linked to improved focus and concentration and is believed to help our brains to process information more effectively. The power of music to help us to retrieve memories is well-known, but in addition to casting our minds back to past times, music may also help us to lay down new memories more effectively. For example, studies in the US and Japan have shown that healthy elderly people scored better on tests for memory and reasoning after completing moderate physical exercise in time to music.

Thinking on an emotional rather than physical level, music can also help us to cope with personal challenges and setbacks. According to the University of Winchester, ‘mood-congruent experiences of art’, or in other words listening to music that resonates with our current state of mind, is capable of offering a sense of emotional sharing similar to interacting with an empathetic friend, which explains why music can often help us feel seen during difficult moments in life.

Lastly, music has an important social aspect in that it reflects universal human experiences while providing a reason for people from all different backgrounds to get together. Listening to music can also feel cathartic in that it can help us to make sense of our own experiences, which is why so many people are drawn to sad songs after experiencing breakups or other adverse life events.

With all of the above thoughts in mind, how can we use music to boost our morale, alleviate our physical and emotional pain, and improve our productivity? Here are a few tips.

Listen to what connects with you personally

Listening to music is an intensely personal experience and our musical tastes are reflective of our age, life experiences, personality, and many other factors. Enjoy listening to music that’s meaningful to you and try not to be swayed by what’s popular. Don’t buy into the culture of listening to certain songs as ‘guilty pleasures’. If you like something, just listen to it!

Create playlists for different activities

Listening to music can be helpful in many different scenarios, from training for a marathon to completing an essay, but different music is useful for different purposes. If you’re exercising to music then something fast-paced and repetitive with a solid and consistent beat is probably likely to be helpful, whereas instrumental music is generally seen as being more conducive to studying than songs with lyrics.

Always be open to recommendations

If you listen to music through streaming services then you probably find that you get recommended the same songs again and again. In order to break things up a bit, it’s always good to try and get song recommendations from other people since this can often expose you to amazing music that you might not have known about previously. If you ever hear a great song while you’re out and about, try to Shazam it or Google the lyrics so you can find out the artist and listen to more of the same songs later.

Don’t be afraid to dance to the music

If you’re listening to music while doing something sedentary like working or studying, try taking occasional breaks to dance along to the music even if only for a few minutes and even if it makes you feel ridiculous. This will increase blood circulation and oxygen flow to your brain and help you to feel a bit more focused once you sit back down again.

And with that, we conclude our article! We hope you’ve enjoyed our tips on harnessing the feel-good power of music, but if you have any additional thoughts then please feel free to drop us a comment.

Stay mindful, and see you again for next month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates!