Let Music Be A Healer! Relation between music and stress levels Who is not familiar with the evocation of various moods created by stray sounds of music that accidentally waft into our ears – sometimes without our being conscious of it? You sure are familiar with the power of music since your childhood: your mother used lullabies to soothe you to sleep – she was effectively using music for stress relief. A study conducted at the University of Buffalo, on the effect of music on the patients undergoing eye surgery, showed reduced stress levels during and after the event.
These patients also exhibited lowered heart rate and blood pressure. A study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing showed that listening to music for 45 minutes prior to bedtime helped older adults sleep better and longer. It also improved the quality of their sleep.
Why music and stress cannot coexist
When you listen to music of your liking, it changes your state of mind: you tend to forget your surroundings and are immersed in the sea of sounds. It is like you have entered another world, free of tensions, anxieties and many other petty things of life.
Listening to music decreases the levels of adrenalin and increases those of serotonin. These conditions are associated with meditative states or when you are going through a creative period. Now, whether, these changes are caused by change in mood or they are the cause is not important to us. What is important is that music relaxes you, makes the pain less acute and hastens the recovery processes of body and mind. Enjoy your favorite music and stress levels will come down, leaving you with more space to deal with the problems.
When you are in a positive state of mind, you are not dominated by the pressures of tensions and stresses and anxieties of life, and you are able to take somewhat dispassionate view of the situation, which otherwise would not have been possible. For coming out of weighty problems it is essential to make them less pressing, smaller and manageable. When you are stressed for a long time and are relentlessly think about a problem, it takes on huge dimensions and it seems well nigh impossible to come out of it.
Only when you slightly reduce its proportions, lessen its importance in some way, and take a bird eye view, remembering all the things that are really important in your life, that you become capable of taking some steps to combat it and resolve it. Music and stress: glass is half empty or full What the hell, life is full of problems, some of them unsolvable, but you have to live your life and pay attention to the other things regarding which you can take some steps. In other words, you have to live life. You got only one. Listening to music makes life livable!
Listening to your favorite songs or music transports you to happy memories, and happy days, and more happy days that are yet to come. The one mistake that you may commit is ignoring the importance of such simple things of life like listening to music, when you are under stress and tensions of life. Besides enjoying such simple things as taking a walk, talking to children, meeting with old friends, don’t forget the nostalgic songs and melodies; take out your old CDs, or download relaxation music, and sit and play the music and listen to it, and try to relax.
Your problems and tensions will not go away, but definitely you will come back renewed and refreshed and in a more positive state of mind. What is not important is whether or not there are tensions in your life: what is definitely important is what steps you take to deal with them. To remain updated on this and other topics Subscribe to email Newsletter and receive Free Gifts.
How To Use Music In Your Daily Life Music
Music can affect the body in many health-promoting ways, which is the basis for a growing field known as music therapy.
However, you can use music in your daily life and achieve many stress relief benefits on your own. One of the great benefits of music as a stress reliever is that it can be used while you conduct your regular activities so that it really doesn’t take time away from your busy schedule. Music provides a wonderful backdrop for your life so that you can find increased enjoyment from what you’re doing and also reduce stress from your day. The following are some of the ways you can use Music and Your Body: How Music Affects Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes Health How and Why Is Music A Good Tool For Health?
Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as music therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways.
The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:
Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.
Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.
State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.
Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.
Using Music Therapy
With all these benefits that music can carry, it’s no surprise that music therapy is growing in popularity. Many hospitals are using music therapists for pain management and other uses. Music therapists help with several other issues as well, including stress. For more information on music therapy, visit the American Music Therapy Association’s website.
Using Music On Your Own
While music therapy is an important discipline, you can also achieve many benefits from music on your own. Music can be used in daily life for relaxation, to gain energy when feeling drained, for catharsis when dealing with emotional stress, and in other ways as well.
This article on music, relaxation and stress management can explain more of how music can be an especially effect New Year Resolutions for Stress Relief Get More Music In Your Life
Now that music therapy has become a growing new field used by hospitals and therapists, the benefits of music are becoming more and more known. Playing music a simple and easy way to elevate your mood and change your energy. This makes it a prime way to relieve stress. You can play music in your car during your commute to feel less stressed as you drive, or put music on as you exercise to infuse some additional energy into your workout.
You can even have music on in the background as you go about your day, bringing a more soothing feel to all of your activities. Adding more music to your life is an effective and attainable goal for the coming year. The following resources can help:tive tool for stress management, and can be used in dailly life. Music Reduces Stress In Heart Disease Patients ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — Listening to music may benefit patients who suffer severe stress and anxiety associated with having and undergoing treatment for coronary heart disease.
A Cochrane Systematic Review found that listening to music could decrease blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of anxiety in heart patients.
How to Listen to Music to Deal With Stress
Stress can arise in many situations, including at work, home or school, and it can have a damaging effect on health and well-being. Therefore, finding a method to manage stressful situations can greatly affect an individual’s quality of life. According to Psych Central, listening to music has been shown to decrease blood pressure and lower an individual’s stress hormones. So tune into some pleasing harmonies as you tune out your anxieties.
Stress
Stress is one of the most common problems that people face every day. Stress is defined as a specific response by the body to a stimulus like fear or pain that interferes with the normal, physiological equilibrium of an organism. Stress can wreck a person’s mood, cause muscle tension, and it’s been seen to contribute to high blood pressure and the formation of ulcers.
Stress can be eliminated, or reduced, by people taking the time to relax after stressful events, the most common of which is working. However, relaxation can be a difficult thing for many people to achieve, particularly people who are chronically stressed.
Music
One of the most common ways for people to relax and to reduce their stress is to listen to music. Stress is caused by a person’s reaction to a negative stimulus such as fear or pain, and stress can be undone by exposing a person to a positive stimulus.
Music, particularly music that is composed with the idea of relaxation in mind, is keyed to be a positive stimulus. Stress usually begins in the brain and spreads to the body, and the stress relief from music follows the same pattern. The way this is done is that, when a person hears music or sounds they find pleasurable, the sound receptors in the ears activate a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This is the part of the brain that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is typically associated with elevated mood and pleasure.
Effects of Music
Oliver Wendell Holmes is quoted as saying, “Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ” His phrase suggests that music has a cleansing quality. That may very well be true. In fact, music can affect the body in many ways. The variety of music is endless. Music can be used for relaxation, motivation and even education.
Music’s Effects
Music affects many areas of the brain. Dr. Daniel Levitin, author of the book “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession,” suggests that the brain responds in various ways to music, and everyone’s brain doesn’t respond in the same way. Some music motivates you to move. According to Levetin, that effect comes from the stimulation of the motor cortex of the brain. Other music may relax you because your frontal cortex is stimulated.
