How Music Help You Calm Down And Bring You To Sleep
Music can have a profound effect on your body as well as your emotion. Upbeat music might make you feel more positive and optimistic about life. Faster music might make you concentrate better and feel more alert. Slow tempo music can relax both your mind and muscles, those soothing while reducing your stress levels.
Not only does music help in stress management and relaxation, but also in bringing you to sleep. Have you ever wondered why lullabies make children sleep? Because they soothe and calm them, making them fall asleep.
Just like quality mattresses, music can calm adults and help them fall asleep. However, its effect doesn’t occur overnight. Sometimes it can take up to three weeks before you can see an improvement in your sleep patterns.
Keep on reading to find out how music affects your sleeping pattern….
Effects of music on the mind and body
Listening to your favorite song can make you feel a rush of pleasure, that’s why you tap your feet or nod your head. Music possesses the power to affect your mind and body.
Music can influence your breathing and heart rate, trigger the release of stimulation hormones, boost the brain’s emotional and cognitive centers, and even stimulate your immune system.
Our reaction to a different song varies and each type of song has a varying effect on both our mind and body. Music can trigger emotions and in others, it triggers memories.
As a unique tool to improve sleep, relaxing and soothing music can:
Lower heart rate
Ease muscle tension
Reduce anxiety and stress
Lower blood pressure
Reduce sleep-stifling hormones such as cortisol
Trigger release of sleep-friendly hormones such as oxytocin and serotonin
Upbeat music can:
Increase heart rate
Trigger production and release of dopamine and adrenaline hormones that boost alertness.
Activate the area of the brain responsible for mental focus, attention, creativity, and physical coordination
By selecting the right music at night you can achieve calmness and eventually sleep.
Music and Sleeping
When you listen to relaxing and soothing music before going to bed, your breathing and heart reduce and your blood pressure reduces. These physiological changes help you to fall asleep and stay asleep.
In addition, soothing music relaxes the body, alleviates stress and anxiety, and distracts you from stressful thoughts that might prevent you from sleeping.
Listening to music before going to bed essentially helps to turn on your body sleep mode both psychologically and physically.
Most studies show that music improves sleep quality not only in children but in both young and older adults. It also improves the sleep quality of adults suffering from insomnia.
In hospitals, patients in the intensive care unit who listens to music during the day experience improved sleep.
Music and Sleep Efficiency
Sleep efficiency is the measure of the time you sleep compared to the overall time you spend in bed. Waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, having trouble falling asleep once you wake up, or taking long before going to sleep indicates a lower sleep efficiency.
If you’re experiencing a lower sleep efficiency, listening to music before going to sleep can come in handy. Research shows that music can be an effective treatment for both chronic and short-term sleep disorders, including insomnia. However, music therapy only works with consistent use. It’s not a one time thing.
Music improves mood and treats pain
Lack of sleep hurts your emotional health. Sleep deprivation leads to the production of stress and anxiety causing hormones. But music can help you sleep, by balancing your mood and emotional state and increasing the release of sleep-inducing hormones.
Music is known to reduce stress, depression, and anxiety which are some of the most common inhibitors of quality sleep. Music influences the memory and emotional centers of our brain, easing stress and improving mood. As a result, improving our sleep quality.
Another indirect influence of music on sleep is its ability to reduce pain. Discomfort from pain can prevent you from sleeping. Sleep and pain go in hand together with pain.
Pain interferes with your ability to sleep, while poor sleep increases your sensitivity to pain. Thankfully, they both ease each other.
Listening to pain can help to treat acute and chronic pain. At the same time, it eases anxiety, stimulates the immune system, and offers a channel for emotional release.
Conclusion
Apart from calming you and helping you to fall asleep, music can improve your focus, creativity, stamina, and physical performance.
When using music to induce sleep, avoid emotional triggers that can bring sadness or excitement. Also, try lyric-free songs since your mind can’t help following along songs with lyrics. These songs can stimulate you mentally and prevent you from sleeping.
Keep in mind you need to be consistent if you want to improve your sleep quality and to reap the maximum benefits of music therapy.
