5 Ways Music Promotes Good Mental Health
Music is a powerful thing. Aside from its entertainment value, listening to music is known to have positive effects on our brain. More specifically, music can change the way we feel, think, and act.
Our brains trigger specific emotions, memories, and thoughts, which often lead to more positive effects on your mental health.
Here are five potential benefits music is said to have on our brains:
- Music Elevates Your Mood and Increases your Motivation
A strong mental wellbeing is closely aligned with optimistic and positive feelings.
So, when you’re having a bad day, there’s nothing better than playing an uplifting song as loud as you can. The light musical tones and lyrics will change or elevate your mood and empower you for the day ahead.
But what if you’re having a slow start to the morning? Need to get through a long day of the week? or don’t have any motivation to go for a run?
Up-tempo, fast-paced music gets your brain and body moving, making you excited and motivated to enjoy what’s ahead. In fact, researchers have claimed classical and ambient music have the best mood-boosting benefits, while heavy metal and hard electronic music were considered to have the opposite effect.
- Listening to Music Reduces Stress
Whether it’s playing softly in the background or you’re giving it your full attention through your headphones, certain genres of music have the innate ability to reduce stress.
Soft, ambient music provides calming stimulation for the mind. In this case, best to avoid a loud rock or heavy metal genre to moderate your stress. Try to search for playlists that contain a lot of ambient and quiet music.
- Listening to Music Improves Your Focus
One of the many great benefits of music is that it can be played while you perform your everyday activities.
Certain types of music are known to boost focus, so it’s important to know which music is right for improving focus. We recommend listening to instrumental, classical, or ambient music.
- Listening to Music Promotes Relaxation
Everyone enjoys relaxing and switching off their mind at the end of a long day.
Playing music is a simple way of promoting relaxation as it releases tension in your muscles, carrying away any stress or anxiety. Listening to music as you drift off to sleep is also an effective way of relaxing and reducing stress as it can help slow your breathing and calm your mind.
- Listening to Music Reduces Anxiety and Depression
Understanding how the music you listen to affects your emotions goes a long way to help ease anxious and depressive thoughts.
Music Therapy has become a popular form of treating anxiety and depression. It’s an exercise in listening and composing therapeutic music to promote physical and mental rehabilitation.
In fact, a recent study has shown that instrumental, classical, or ambient music can help reduce anxiety by up to 65%.
This blog post was created as part of our response to the Covid-19 pandemic. For more information about our response, including changes to our service delivery and other resources, please visit: https://familyserviceregina.com/covid19-a-message-from-the-ceo/