Healing Music

Listening to classical music is a powerful tool for calming the mind, aiding your mental health, helping you fall asleep. Thanks to science, this emotional range isn’t just anecdotal. Listening to music comes with tangible benefits, including a direct correlation between music and stress relief. Understanding the chemical reactions in your brain relating to sound is key to unlocking the calming magic of music. Even if you already know how awesomely powerful music can be, now you can explain it with sound science. Contemporary research suggests music has significant power to help reduce stress and anxiety, relieve pain, and improve focus among many more benefits.

Harmony with others could start with the harmony in music, according to new research. A study published in the journalAging & Mental Healthin 2014 found that among those with dementia, music served as a tool to feel connected to others because the subjects could listen to and discuss the music together. Family members connected to the study also acknowledged the communal aspects of musical connectedness, whether it was through singing songs together, participating in music therapy sessions, or listening to a visiting violinist.



This idea of musical nostalgia is a fun exercise for anyone, but is most impactful for people suffering from memory loss, including those with dementia or Alzheimer’s. Robert Forster August 23rd, 2016 I have suffered anxiety with panic and depression for about 40 years. My daughter was getting married and I wanted to say a few nice words and send her on her way, but I couldnt as I was. I started everything at one time, asprins every day for some time, breathing exercises even at night if I woke, self hypnosis, meditation, exercise and more. I then went on a course in speech making only to realise that the anxiety Awakening Your Higher Mind had gone after approx. I held a speech for my daughter at her wedding and felt great about it.

An a priori power analysis was conducted to estimate the optimal sample size to answer the main hypothesis of a decreased cortisol response in the music group when compared to the control groups. It indicated that 54 participants were required to reach an 87% power for detecting an effect of 0.15 when employing an alpha criterion of 0.05 of statistical significance. Simplicity, transparency, and repetition contribute to music's power to relax. Minimalism has repetition in spades, and also a transparent simplicity that reminds me of the clear air on a sunny autumn day. My favorite minimalist music for relaxing is Harmonielehre by American composer John Adams.

Patients who listened to music were less reliant on pain medications. The key is choosing the right music for the time of day or night, and the desired effects. (More on this in a minute.) First, let’s look at what science has to tell us about how music can enhance sleep.