The Power of Music to Reduce Stress by Jane Collingwood

Music is a major part in society, and has been a driving force in humanity especially in todays world. People listen to music when they are out for a run or while taking a bath, even as background noise when working. Music has become a part of peoples everyday lifes. The reason music has played such an important role in almost every humans life is how it affects us. Listening to music makes people feel, whether it be a happy feeling or a sad feeling. Listening to music makes humans feel emotion and that is what we thrive on. Music has the tendency to impact an individuals mood and behavior.

People can benefit by acknowledging how music makes them feel and using it to their advantage. When feeling stressed people can use music as a means of escape. Music helps distract people from pain and elevates mood (Jabr). In Jane Collingwood’s article The Power of Music to Reduce Stress it states, “As music can absorb our attention, it acts as a distraction at the same time it helps to explore emotions. This means it can be a great aid to meditation, helping to prevent the mind wandering” (Collingwood). Music has the ability to extract people who are suffering from their own personal problems in life and experience better emotions than they are dealing with. Jane Collingwood also says that using music during meditation is extremely calming and “[…] can help the mind slow down and initiate the relaxation response” (Collingwood). Quiet classical music is best known to have a calm, relaxing effect on an individuals body and mind, and gentle music with a familiar tone is more comforting (Collingwood). It has been found that music can help you physically relax by slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing levels o...

... middle of paper ...

...tached to one another. When someone is experiencing a painful emotion, they need reassurance that others have felt the same way. Knowing that others have experienced what they are feeling aids in the recovery process and helps us deal with painful emotions. Music is one of the ways humans experience emotion and connection. Producing music helps display emotion while listening to music helps us feel and bond with those emotions. Depending on the type a music an individual is listening to, they can experience all different kinds of emotions. Music produces positivity and helps people deal with their emotions. As Nathan Feiles, a counselor in the state of New York, says“[Music] can be used to elicit underlying emotions and teach us about unconscious elements in our emotional structure” (Feiles). Music can affect humans in a positive way and people can benefit from it.