The power of music to relieve anxiety and stress
As a musician, my life experience has shown me again and again how engaging with music immediately reduces mental anxiety and stress levels in our body.
It’s hard to believe that something as familiar and accessible as music can be such a powerful tool in helping to calm our minds and bodies.
For thousand of years ‘healers’ and health practitioners have recognised this powerful fact.
Today we live in a world that seeks the support and proof delivered by science to confirm what we often intuitively know to be true.
And yes, what we sense about music, what we feel in our bodies and in our minds is true: Music is a superpower, hard wired into each and everyone of us.
One of the great superpowers music offers is its ability to impact deeply on our mood states and specifically, anxiety and related levels of stress in our bodies and its impact on our general well being. Researchers at Stanford University have said that,
"Listening to music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication."
They noted that music is something that almost anybody can access and makes it an easy stress reduction tool.
A 2020 overview of research into music and stress suggests that listening to music can:
Lower our heart rate and cortisol levels
Release endorphins and improve our sense of well-being
Positively distract us, reducing physical and emotional stress levels
Reduce stress-related symptoms, whether used in a clinical environment or in daily life
Listening to music is great but engaging actively in music raises the effectiveness of the healing powers of music, and in the case of anxiety and stress (heightened cortisol levels in our bodies), those levels will be lowered accordingly. The more regularly we engage in music the the less anxious we will feel.
So now you may be thinking, ‘Hey that’s great, but I can’t make music or I’m tone deaf or I am not musically talented etc, so how can I actively engage with music and I can’t sing or play an instrument’.
News flash: All of this is irrelevant.
Firstly there is empirical proof that we are all musical humans (check out this blog to learn more)…it has nothing to do with being talented at making music, and the fact that over 95% of all humans enjoy music is proof enough anyway.
Secondly, all you have to do is engage with musical sound. At MindHarp we make that possible for anyone simply by tapping buttons.
A bit more info.
When we actively engage with music, higher levels of dopamine are released into our body; (Dopamine is known as the “feel-good” hormone. It gives you a sense of pleasure. It also gives you the motivation to do something when you’re feeling pleasure.)
When we actively tap away at the buttons, or sing in the shower we enter a state many like to call the ‘zone’, a headspace that allows us to be in the moment. 5-10 minutes in the Zone every day will impact directly on your level of stress and anxiety.
Engaging in music also release the hormone oxytocin into our brain, enhancing our sense of well being and calm.
And don’t forget those wonderful endorphins (Endorphins are the body’s natural pain relievers and mood boosters.)
So actively engaging in music, quickly lowers anxiety, brings us into the ‘zone’ releases a bunch of feel good hormones into our brain and generally improves our sense of well being.
How wonderful to be a musical human.
