3 Ways Music Impact Your Body and Mind

Happy woman listening to music

 

Music is powerful.

The influence of songs and sound on us is greater than what many believe. Like learning how to leverage music in your daily life is very beneficial to your mind and body. Here, we show three ways listening to your favorite songs can improve your life.

The effects of music

Listening to music influences many different physical processes. It changes the respiratory and heart rate and regulates blood pressure, muscle tension, and hormone balance. The reason for this is our natural reaction to sounds, which in turn affects the emotional center in the brain, the limbic system. Depending on what kind of songs we listen to, this can have a positive or negative effect on us.

Everyone can use this effect to improve their own well-being or to direct their own emotions. In addition to choosing the right headphones or speakers, the right CD or playlist is also crucial, so that the music can unfold its effect according to the mood and your own taste.

1. Mood-lifting and motivating

It is scientifically proven that the right music can lift our mood. This also strengthens one’s own self-confidence and provides a proper motivation boost. Many professional athletes use this effect before a fight, a game, a downhill, etc. by listening to certain songs through their headphones, which give them a feeling of strength, power, and invincibility. Among other things, they stimulate the release of endorphins, which in turn creates feelings of happiness and helps to improve performance.

During training, preparation for an exam, or a presentation, music can help you cope better with the effort, to last the last few minutes or to complete the final meters or kilometers before the finish.

 

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2. Reduce anxiety and stress

It has also been proven that listening to music has a positive effect on people who are depressed or have anxiety. Here, too, it is important to be guided by personal musical taste, but there are exceptions: Scientists have found that heavy metal and techno showed rather negative effects on, for example, postoperative heart patients, while Bach, Mozart or Italian composers caused the best stress and anxiety reduction. The positive effect is therefore more likely to occur with cheerful songs, which also correspond to one’s own taste.

3. Stress-reducing and relaxing

In gentle, cheerful sounds, betaendorphins and norepinephrine are increasingly released – two hormones that have an analgesic or stress-reducing effect. Not only can music help before a presentation or during training, but also afterward the right melodies can be useful to relax, bring the stress level back to a normal level faster, and possibly even quench small aches and pains.

Scientists were able to determine this especially when test persons switched on quiet music during warm-up or after the end of an intensive training session. Thus, not only the fitness unit but also the “cool down” afterward has an additional stress-reducing effect.

Music can also be used as a sleep aid or as a sedative, for example, if you are nervous before a performance or a job interview. With the right sound in the headphones – which is again very individual which one that is – almost a meditative state can be achieved. Which sounds are the right ones for this can be determined in a self-test, but instrumental, jazz, classical, and reggae are considered suitable types of music.

October 21, 2022

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