Music has always remained in touch with human emotion for a very long time. Every time you listen to a certain song, the memories it creates linger within the individual. Any form of music is conveyed on strong emotion whether it may be a feeling of joy or dread. Also music brings about both understanding and misunderstanding between people.
With misunderstanding comes stress and there are a lot of ways relieving it. Examples are yoga, exercise, eating, taking a vacation or just taking a long walk around your local park. Stress is very preventable that even people take their hypertensive medication when they’re at their 70’s. Usually these medications are taken by people forty years of age and above.
Aside from these stress relieving methods, there is one that’s very cheap, sometimes free; it perfectly soothes the mind without spending large sums of money just to relax. This solution is called music.
Stress Management
According to Wikipedia (2014), stress management refers to the wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at controlling a person’s levels of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of improving everyday functioning.
As stated in the definition, stress management is basically anything a person does to relieve himself from stress. Good stress management starts with a good mindset and a good lifestyle. Without those, it would be useless since living a bad lifestyle or having bad mindsets can disrupt your stress management therapy.
Example, smoking cigarettes after a long day exercise does not reduce or manage your stress. It only aggravates the problem and it may also lead to serious illnesses like cancer and stroke.
Use of Relaxing Music for Stress Management
Music has always been a great tool for stress management since melodic sounds reduce blood pressure among individuals who use it for therapy. Everybody has their own musical taste and any music genre can be relaxing for people. Some love to listen to classical music, while others love to listen to death metal. It is different strokes for different folks but the bottom line is, music unites us all.
But there are instances that even your most preferred sounds could not relieve you from stress. There are different ways relaxing music can help you release from your burdens, leading to a more upbeat and productive individual. Here are some ways on how relaxing music can help stress management.
Blood Pressure Reduction
Whenever hypertension strikes, you usually take medications for it to help the body return to normal. However, studies show that listening to relaxing music reduces blood pressure dramatically. They can turn armed c4 explosives to snowballs. The power of music can never be underestimated. You may think that this fact is nonsense but it is certainly true.
The actions of notes on the brain inhibit its secretion of cortisol and epinephrine, the stress hormone. With less stress come less blood pressure, with less blood pressure come better health.
Mood Swinger
Studies show that music lifts up the mood of a person. Music can easily be your mood control tablets since it’s free, very unique and it’s almost accessible to anyone. Every time you listen to your favorite musician, the thing call musical goose bumps happen. This releases the feel-good chemical dopamine, thus elevating the mood. Music as a mood setter is shown to be of very excellent results.
Relaxing music gives you time to ponder on things. It can wake you up on an increasingly boring transit. The magic of music never fades as long as you let yourself go and be one with the sound. Your day may be bad, with tempers flaring up and at any time you can explode; but just listen to music and you’re going to realize that you have already soothed yourself down.
Focusing Assistant
If you’re distracted by problems such as your big exam tomorrow plus paying for your bills, then your choice of relaxing music keeps you at bay. It’s shown that relaxing music can effectively improve concentration and focus. Once the mind is exposed to something that would make you feel good, then your musical rush circulates around your system, making you focus harder. This greatly reduces stress to the person leading to more organized thinking and proper problem solving.
Methods such as binaural beat therapy or better known as i-Dosing are proven to improve focusing on individuals. You need stereo headphones to fully enjoy the experience. They can actually make any sensations you wish to feel like an LSD trip, pseudo-marijuana high and others.
Additional Therapy
Some patients in the hospital have a hard time recovering from their illness. One probable fact is the psychological side of the rehabilitation process. Pain is always present in high-level forms of treatment. And sometimes the only therapy that can cure their pains is music. Music has the power to distract you from what’s really going on. The concept of “mind over matter” is applied in this method. Once music is being played, the individual infers that the music is in his mind thus reducing pain and stress at the same time.
Jogging Partner
A lot of people love jogging. Working out their legs and hearts lap for lap makes a good mind, body and soul. But one thing about jogging is that it bores you after a few long laps – much like sitting the bus seat for four hours. To turn a boring experience to a more energetic and fun one, better listen to music as your additional stress reliever.
Music tends to provide higher endurance for joggers. This happens due to their lowered perception to think of effort throughout their entire exercise. The good thing about this is that you get to be more fit since you jog plus the endurance enhancing power of music.
Music does not just limit itself from being a past time or a distraction. For others it’s their way of healing themselves inside and out. Never underestimate the power of music to relieve you of stress for it is one of the best stress management methods to choose.
