By JANE COLLINGWOOD
The soothing power of music is well-established.
It has a unique link to our emotions,
so can be an extremely effective stress management tool.
Listening to music can have a tremendously relaxing effect on our minds and bodies, especially slow, quiet classical music. This type of music can have a beneficial effect on our physiological functions, slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormones.
As music can absorb our attention, it acts as a distraction at the same time it helps to explore emotions. This means it can be a great aid to meditation, helping to prevent the mind wandering.
Musical preference varies widely between individuals, so only you can decide what you like and what is suitable for each mood. But even if you don’t usually listen to classical music it may be worth giving it a try when selecting the most calming music.
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When people are very stressed, there is a tendency to avoid actively listening to music. Perhaps it feels like a waste of time, not helping to achieve anything. But as we know, productivity increases when stress is reduced, so this is another area where you can gain vast rewards. It just takes a small effort to begin with.
To incorporate music into a busy life, try playing CDs in the car, or put the radio on when in the bath or shower. Take portable music with you when walking the dog, or put the stereo on instead of the TV.
Singing (or shouting) along can also be a great release of tension, and karaoke is very enjoyable for some extroverts! Calming music before bedtime promotes peace and relaxation and helps to induce sleep.
Research on Music
Music has been used for hundreds of years to treat illnesses and restore harmony between mind and body. But recently, scientific studies have attempted to measure the potential benefits of music.
They have found:
Music’s form and structure can bring order and security to disabled and distressed children. It encourages coordination and communication, so improves their quality of life.
Listening to music on headphones reduces stress and anxiety in hospital patients before and after surgery. Music can help reduce both the sensation and distress of both chronic pain and postoperative pain.
Listening to music can relieve depression and increase self-esteem ratings in elderly people. Making music can reduce burnout and improve mood among nursing students.
Music therapy significantly reduces emotional distress and boosts quality of life among adult cancer patients.
Meditation
Certain music is appropriate for meditation as it can help the mind slow down and initiate the relaxation response. However, not all peaceful or “New Age” music works for everyone. Music with no structure can be irritating or even unsettling. Gentle music with a familiar melody more often is comforting. But search around to find what produces a sense of calm, familiarity, and centeredness for you as an individual.
The sounds of nature often are incorporated into CDs made specifically for relaxation. For example, the sound of water can be soothing for some people. It can help conjure up calming images such as lying beside a mountain stream on a warm spring day. Birdsong may also be of use as an aid to help your mind slow down and release stressful thoughts.
Music Therapy
Because music has the potential to influence us both psychologically and physiologically, it is an important area of therapy for stress management. Music therapy can make use of biofeedback, guided imagery, and other established techniques to play an important role in the treatment of people with stress-related disorders. But due to the dramatic effects music can have, a trained and knowledgeable music therapist always is required.
When used in combination with biofeedback techniques, music can reduce tension and facilitate the relaxation response. It may be more compatible with relaxation than verbal stimuli, which may be distracting — music is processed mainly in nonverbal areas of the brain.
Music may help people to identify and express the feelings associated with their stress. In a music therapy session, the client can express these emotions, providing an important cathartic release.
Producing music in an improvisational way, and discussing pieces of music and lyrics in a group, can also help us become more aware of our emotional reactions and share them constructively with the group.
Thinking More Clearly
Listening to music can help the brain by improving learning and memory skills, always useful when we’re under stress. This has come to be known as “The Mozart Effect.” Experiments carried out by scientists at the University of California at Irvine found that students’ test scores improved after listening to a recording of Mozart, compared with either a relaxation tape or silence. This may be because the processing of music shares some of the same pathways in the brain as memory.
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Baroque music i.e. music composed during the Baroque era (1600 - 1750) has been shown to have a calming effect on the brain. It is generally the slow movements of such music and it is believed to be it has this effect because the rhythm is around 60 beats per minute which is similar to a resting heart rate. The brain 'entrains' itself to rhythm - we have all noticed the tendency of our foot to tap when we hear certain types of music. This is the brain buying into the rhythm and going along with it.
We all have brainwaves which move at different frequencies depending what we are doing or thinking. If you have ever seen an EEG recording - which is similar to an ECG for measuring the heart, but is measured by placing electrodes over the head, that the brain produces lines reflecting the frequency of electricity in the different areas.
Brainwaves in a human vary from beta waves (which are upwards of 15 cycles per second) and appear very spiky, through alpha waves, theta waves, and delta waves. Most of the time we are awake and participating in everyday life we have beta waves. When we are deeply asleep we have a high percentage of delta waves which are like a gently rolling ocean.
So as we fall asleep our brainwaves gradually slow through all the stages to delta and back again as we wake. When we dream we are usually in theta and then if this is just one dream period we then go deeper again. There is a diagram of this on the page that explains nightmares.
Alpha waves are the daytime magic ones, when we are awake. It is during alpha that we can access our unconscious thoughts. During hypnosis the client goes into the alpha state so that their issues may be accessed without the thinking and rationalising part of the brain getting in the way. It is thought that it is during our dreams when we sleep that we resolve issues of the day and that is done during theta.
Research in Bulgaria has found that slow Baroque music entrains the brain into alpha waves. Studies have been done whereby such music, when played in the background during lessons in junior school classrooms, has a calming effect and enables children to concentrate on their lesson far better.
I have sometimes given patients suffering from PTSD or other severe anxieties which stopped them sleeping, or gave them constant nightmares, a CD of Baroque music with the instruction to just play it quietly in the background when they go to bed. In many cases this has had a significant effect and has enabled them to sleep better, often through the night, and to reduce the occurrence of nightmares.
To feel the calming effect of this music you don't have to consciously listen to it but to allow it to play softly in the background as you do everyday tasks. I have found some commercially available cds of this music which are available to buy should you wish. The most famous Baroque (1600-1760) composers are probably Bach, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Handel Telemann, Purcell, Scarlatti. It is the slow, largo, movements of their works which are relevant here. There are few CDs available at present which are made up exclusively of such tracks so you may have to put together your own. Some of the tracks can be purchased individually as mp3 downloads on Amazon and similar sites.
If you feel inclined to listen to largo music combined with the sounds of nature, then I can recommend the Solitudes series by Dan Gibson, which do just that. There are two CDs of music by Pachelbel, Forever by the Sea and in the Garden as well as Bach Forever by the Sea which incorporates his music with the sounds of the ocean. Further details of these can be found here in the Amazon Store.
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References:
Allen K. et al. Normalization of hypertensive responses during ambulatory surgical stress by perioperative music. Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. 63, May/June 2001, pp. 487-92.
Aldridge D., Gustoff D. and Neugebauer L. A pilot study of music therapy in the treatment of children with developmental delay.Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Vol. 3, October 1995, pp. 197-205.
Hanser S. B. and Thompson L. W. Effects of a music therapy strategy on depressed older adults. Stanford University School of Medicine.Journal of Gerontology, Vol. 49, November 1994, pp. 265-69.
Good M. A comparison of the effects of jaw relaxation and music on postoperative
pain. Nursing Research, Vol. 44, Jan/Feb 1995, pp. 52-57.
Bittman B. B. Recreational music-making: an integrative group intervention for reducing burnout and improving mood states in first year associate degree nursing students: insights and economic impact.International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, published online July 9, 2004.
Waldon E. G. The effects of group music therapy on mood states and cohesiveness in adult oncology patients. Journal of Music Therapy, Vol. 38, Fall 2001, pp. 212-38.
Burns D. S. The effect of the bonny method of guided imagery and music on the mood and life quality of cancer patients. Journal of Music Therapy, Vol. 38, Spring 2001, pp. 51-65.
Rauscher F. H., Shaw G. L. and Ky K. N. Music and spatial task performance. Nature, Vol. 365, October 14, 1993, p. 611.
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