Music Can Relieve Your Stress Too

Shakespeare said in Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on.” The jury is still out on whether music is the food of love or not, but it sure is food for stress relief. Music taps into our most primal emotions and can manipulate us for good or for bad. With patience and honesty, you can discover the best stress relief music for you.

Play That Funky Music, White Boy

One of the original functions of music may have been to express the inexpressible. Music was used for laments, for worship and for medicine. One of the oldest kinds of healer, shamans, used songs to seek assistance from the spirit realm to assist his tribe. In modern times, blues music can make you feel good by listening to songs about bad times.

Times have changed, but the need for relief from, as Shakespeare put it, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, haven’t. Between worries about basic survival, there are also worries about traffic, about how to cook a new meal or meeting your date’s parents, about why the cat won’t use her litter box, and hundreds of other straws that can make your camel’s back reach breaking point. By reducing stress, you can make yourself healthier, which can lead to being more energetic, creative and happy.

For stress relief music, you might prefer instrumentals to those with lyrics. Some people find their minds latch onto words, whether sung or not, and can’t stop thinking about the song lyrics rather than trying to relax. And then, there are some people who can only fall asleep with Metallica blasting at full volume (and they always seem to move next door, don’t they?) Music taste is a very personal thing, so stress relief music that works for one person may do nothing for you.

Bringing Sounds into Focus

Your stress relief music should remove you from your worries and fears. It is as if you are placed in a temporary cocoon hanging outside of reality. You can’t stay there all of the time, but a few minutes a day can make coming back to reality a lot easier.

Not your body’s reactions when listening to a favored piece of music. Does your pulse quicken? Then that’s not the best stress relief music for you. You want your body to calm down, not speed up. You might try tapes of classical, New Age or even songs of whales or birds to help you relax. You want to be interested enough in the music to pay attention to it, but not so much that it bores you to tears and thus cause more stress. The best stress relief music can balance between relaxing you and boring you. You’ll know it when you find it.