Music, the Mind-Body Connection, and The Relaxation Response!

Music can be used as a valuable stress management and relaxation tool. Relaxation music creates an ambient oasis of peace and tranquility enhancing vital relaxation.


Music is a great accompaniment for holistic therapies and very powerful tool for relieving stress. It also enhances the production of guided meditation or hypnotherapy. Soothing music helps a person calm down, lower the heart rate and by design create additional alpha brainwaves with its special rhythms.


Music with a magical tempo of 60 beats per minute enhance a restful sleep, speed up learning, improve immune response, decrease the need for anesthesia during surgery and has even been known to reduce blood pressure.


The experience of most people and science points out the significance of baroque music in offering relaxation. Studies indicate that baroque music played at 60 beats per minute enables the brain to generate increased alpha brainwaves offering a relaxation effect.


To choose the relaxation music, which works best for you, start by testing the various types of soothing music available. It is likely that what one considers relaxing may be irritating to another. Choosing appropriate calming music is a matter of personal preferences, but though one’s personal preferences go into the equation, some kind of music is more relaxing than other music.


The brain primarily produces brainwaves at 14 to 30 cycles per second (hertz) known as beta waves when in normal consciousness. Brainwaves with frequencies of 8 to 14 cycles per second are alpha waves that are present when one is more relaxed. Around 4 to 8 cycles per second is the theta waves that present a deeper drowsy and meditative state. Finally, when one is asleep, delta waves of fewer than 5 hertz are produced.


Normally, alpha brainwaves stimulate a relaxing state, but meditation encourages a more relaxing consciousness state especially if practiced regularly. For those who have no time or inclinations to meditate, music embedded with particular beats works in a similar way. This is the source for brainwave entertainment technology, which alter one’s brainwaves giving a rapid relaxation response. Relaxation music affects the soul. People don’t just merely hear it, they also feel it.


When trying to use relaxation music to calm the body and spirit it is most important to choose music that is relaxing to you. There are various styles and genres of music and the style that is comfortable for one person may be completely different from the style that relaxes another. Trial and error will help to gauge which style is best for your mind.

found on http://www.blueorbitmusic.com/?p=430

Characteristics of Healing Music: Maximizing the Mind-Body Connection

Music can be used as a valuable stress management and relaxation tool. Relaxation music creates an ambient oasis of peace and tranquility enhancing vital relaxation.




Music is a great accompaniment for holistic therapies and very powerful tool for relieving stress. It also enhances the production of guided meditation or hypnotherapy. Soothing music helps a person calm down, lower the heart rate and by design create additional alpha brainwaves with its special rhythms.



Music with a magical tempo of 60 beats per minute enhance a restful sleep, speed up learning, improve immune response, decrease the need for anesthesia during surgery and has even been known to reduce blood pressure.



The experience of most people and science points out the significance of baroque music in offering relaxation. Studies indicate that baroque music played at 60 beats per minute enables the brain to generate increased alpha brainwaves offering a relaxation effect.



To choose the relaxation music, which works best for you, start by testing the various types of soothing music available. It is likely that what one considers relaxing may be irritating to another. Choosing appropriate calming music is a matter of personal preferences, but though one’s personal preferences go into the equation, some kind of music is more relaxing than other music.



The brain primarily produces brainwaves at 14 to 30 cycles per second (hertz) known as beta waves when in normal consciousness. Brainwaves with frequencies of 8 to 14 cycles per second are alpha waves that are present when one is more relaxed. Around 4 to 8 cycles per second is the theta waves that present a deeper drowsy and meditative state. Finally, when one is asleep, delta waves of fewer than 5 hertz are produced.



Normally, alpha brainwaves stimulate a relaxing state, but meditation encourages a more relaxing consciousness state especially if practiced regularly. For those who have no time or inclinations to meditate, music embedded with particular beats works in a similar way. This is the source for brainwave entertainment technology, which alter one’s brainwaves giving a rapid relaxation response. Relaxation music affects the soul. People don’t just merely hear it, they also feel it.



When trying to use relaxation music to calm the body and spirit it is most important to choose music that is relaxing to you. There are various styles and genres of music and the style that is comfortable for one person may be completely different from the style that relaxes another. Trial and error will help to gauge which style is best for your mind.


http://behealthyandrelax.com/2009/12/finding-relaxation-music-that-works-best-for-you/

How does the mind respond to familiar music?

This is one of the things I've wondered for decades. When we listen to familiar music our brains "light up" differently from when we listen to unfamiliar music. But what about familiar music played on a very different instrument? Listen to this very unusual version of Bach's familiar Prelude and Fugues in D minor and tell me how it strikes YOU! I'd really love to know!

Music and the Mind-Body Connection

Do you believe that music can connect the mind and body? I sure do because it happens to me every day. When I was in college I discovered at one point that when I was studying for a music history exam I could remember a specific piece by always sitting in the same place when I listened to it. At exam time, I could hear Prokofiev's 5th symphony, opus 100 (for example) and know immediately that that was my kitchen table piece or my den rocking chair piece or my bedroom piece. My ear/brain/mind was inseparately connected to my memory of my body and there was no question about which piece I was listening to. To this day, I can listen to the Dvorak cello concerto and remember exactly how my dorm room at Florida State looked. That was the first place I heard that gorgeous piece and I listened to it over and over there. Same with Kodaly's "Hary Janos Suite," and William Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast." Music is powerful for me and for you. How can you harness that power to make your life better??

Are the mind and body connected?

For hundreds of years people thought that the mind was above the neck and the body was below the neck. Today, thanks to the exciting field of quantum physics and other writers with great insights into whole mind-body healing field, we know that the mind and the body are actually in every cell of the body. Our cells store memories of every event, thought and feeling that we have had since birth. Exciting? I think so.

How does music fit into this picture? Music affects the memories and thoughts in our minds and affects neurohormone release in our brains and adrenaline from our pancreas. Our muscles relax when we hear soothing music and our heart-beat and breathing begin to get regular and steady when we listen to music with a regular and steady beat.

Amazing? I think so. If you want to know more, check out my website, my other blogs, and my products. Better yet, invite me to speak in your city to your conference, convention, or favorite organization!

The Power of Music and the Mind-Body

Why is music so powerful for healing? Well, there are lots of reasons. One of the biggies is the power of memories that music can instantaneously recall. How many times have you been riding in your car or just listening to the radio "mindlessly" and suddenly a song from the past or a piece of music of any kind fro the past comes on? You are flooded with images, thoughts and yes, feelings that were long ago associated with this piece of music. Now because I am a professional musician I have a pretty big reservoir of past music to associate. There are pop tunes from my "courting years" as well as symphonies, operas, piano sonatas and lots more that just send me, like a time machine, to different periods of my life. Do I like this??? Yes! I love it. It's a way to have an ongoing photo album/movie/soundtrack from my entire life and I enjoy it a lot! How about you??