What Are The Benefits Of Music Therapy?
Today, at Design Indaba in Cape Town, we're launching a world first - Unwind - an exclusive personalized music experience to help you relax before sleep. As a young girl, I secretly listened to singer-songwriter music in my bedroom into the wee hours. And sleeping poorly can make us more vulnerable to stress, more emotionally reactive, and more prone to depression and anxiety. On the other hand, when the tempo of the songs was upped 10 percent, the men covered more miles in the same period of time, produced more power with each pedal stroke and increased their pedal cadences.
Subjects memorized Japanese characters while listening to music that either seemed positive or neutral to them.13 The results showed that participants who were musicians learned better with neutral music but tested better when pleasurable music was playing.
Playing music is a simple way of promoting relaxation as it releases tension in your muscles, carrying away any stress or anxiety. While you exercise - exercise itself is a good stress reliever and can help your mind relax - your endorphin (anti-stress hormone) levels increase while your cortisol (stress hormone) levels decrease.
In essence, listening to music increases the brain's level of dopamine and dopamine makes us feel happier and instill a go-getter†attitude within us. Studies have also found that listening to your favorite music will help stimulate adrenaline secretion, and other hormones, which will increase your mental focus, as well as physical energy levels too.
Recent research has shown that music affects the same neural pathways that are regulated by psychostimulants and other drugs Sync Project is building on this foundation and partnering with the world's leading scientists and musicians on the first-ever large-scale studies to measure how the structural properties of music - like beat, key and timbre - impact biometrics such as heart rate, brain activity and sleep patterns.
The Mozart Effect relies on listening to classical music while performing a task, which helps to focus on the task at hand meditation and improve memory retention. Using soft, soothing music to unwind before retiring to bed each night is not only acceptable, it's encouraged as a relaxation technique.
Some people prefer to fall asleep to fast tempo beats, while others find classical music to be the best. It's an exercise in listening and composing therapeutic music to promote physical and mental rehabilitation. In sum, it appears that listening to music has the inherent ability to decrease the psychobiological stress response.