10 Reasons Why You Should Be Meditating With Music
Cognitive skills are the essential skills that your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and stay focused. One study concluded that simple mind body practices, such as combining Kirtan Kriya meditation with music can significantly improve cognitive function. With participants seeing a dramatic increase in cognitive function and memory after just 6 short months of practicing. Keeping these benefits in mind, there have been new developments in creating music that when paired with meditation help increase its impact.
The brain has an affinity to natural sounds and instruments that replicate sounds found in nature. It relaxes when it hears the calming properties of a water stream, a soft wind, rainfall, and ocean waves. Some just doesn't hit the spot and take you into that relaxing zone; that place where all your worries and stresses fall away amidst a serene backdrop of calming, peaceful sounds.
Meditation offers many benefits, and an app can help you make this practice a habit. Music may be one way to help manage them and their troublemaking. You can even try using music with a tempo that allows you to align your breaths with the music.
If you’re more of the calm silent type, blues music is most probably your playlist preference. By combining meditation with the right type of beats, you can increase your motivation and confidence levels. Music therapy uses different aspects of sound to improve your emotional and physical well-being.
Music can provide many psychological benefits including stress reduction, improved memory, and general improvement to cognitive performance. Research shows that the activity of listening to music can aid in detaching a person from their surroundings and help focus on their own thoughts and actions. When applied specifically to a meditative setting, music can aid in mindfulness, visualization, and contemplation.
Raise your hand if you think that you need silence in order to meditate. A lot of people don’t believe it’s possible to enter a meditative state why listening to music. The problem is, there are certain methods that either require you to focus solely on your breath or utilize a mantra practice. Neither of these methods is conducive to practicing with music. But there is a practice style you can use called mindfulness that does allow for listening to your favorite music created by your favorite musicians.
Certified music therapists are professionals trained in using music to improve mental and physical health. A Relaxing Sleep Music music therapist can assess a person’s individual needs and create a treatment plan that can involve both listening to and creating music. For more information on music therapy, talk with your doctor or visit the American Music Therapy Association. If you do have trouble meditating with music that has lyrics or loud instruments, try the more traditional meditation music, like instrumental music, meditation bells, or nature sounds. For me, this simple benefit alone should be more highlighted more often to promote hearing music while meditating. Improved focus, concentration and mental clarity are also some of the less-focused benefits of meditating with music.
Throughout history, music has been used to boost morale in military troops, help people work faster and more productively, and even ward off evil spirits by chanting. Expert and amateur field recordists travel the world in search of the perfect sounding waterfalls and rainstorms and bird sounds. These sounds can remind us of the importance of nature in our lives and for that reason this is a very popular option for meditation. Isochronic tones are simply tones that turn off and on at regular intervals. Just as if you raised and lowered the volume on any device quickly up and down.