Relaxing Music for Sleep

Music plays a large role in our lives. We listen to it nearly every day, whether when driving in our cars, working out, or just when cleaning up around the house. It can excite us, make us sad or happy, and even relax us. Many factors play into your mood such as your physical, mental, and emotional states. All of these states can be positively affected by relaxing music for sleep.

Music can also relieve stress and anxiety making it easier for sleep. Music relaxes your mood through its inherent effects on your brain and is a natural way to reduce stress and anxiety.

Factors that Affect Your Sleep

Stress

Stress in our daily lives can have a major impact on a person’s sleep. Stress doesn’t allow your mind to relax, which is what is needed for your body to reach a sleeping state. Your mood is closely tied to the amount of sleep you get. You may experience irritability and anxiousness when you don’t get the proper amount of sleep- 5 Tips for Better Sleep. 

Sleep Stress

Individuals who are experiencing sleep stress may deal with: a racing mind, tense muscles, and a heightened heart rate. Because of these factors, a person experiencing sleep stress will be unable to fall or stay asleep. This inability to fall asleep may also lead to anxiety and a poor mood as a result of tiredness. 

Anxiety

Anxiety is your body’s natural reaction to stress. It is usually a fear of what is to come or of the unknown. It is normal to feel anxious from time to time, and we often experience it in our daily lives. Individuals may feel anxious before a big test, or when starting a new job. Ordinary anxiety comes and goes. If your anxiety stays with you all the time, it may be the case of an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety and its side effects are often caused by high levels of the hormone noradrenaline (also known as norepinephrine). Noradrenaline is produced by the body as a result of stress, and its presence can lead to increased blood pressure, which often causes individuals to feel restless.

While medication is often used to treat both sleep stress and anxiety, there are other, more natural approaches that one may take. Some people combat sleep stress and anxiety by listening to relaxing music or by participating in music therapy.

The Benefits of Music for Better Sleep

When listening to relaxing music, several changes occur in our bodies. These changes include slower breathing, lower blood pressure, slower heart rate, and a number of other side effects. These effects allow your body to enter a state that highly resembles sleep. By mimicking sleep, your body is able to more easily fall asleep and stay asleep. 

Along with easing stress and anxiety, relaxing music has been shown to have a number of additional benefits. 

Several studies show listening to music at bedtime improves sleep quality, including in young adults, older adults, and in children. There is also research showing that listening to music before bed can help improve sleep quality for adults with insomnia. When you have a better night’s sleep, your mood improves too because your body is able to fully rest and repair itself. 

 What Music is Best for Affecting Your Mood and Sleep?

A natural cure for stress, particularly sleep stress, is listening to relaxing music. If you’ve ever searched for a peaceful playlist, you most likely found one full of piano or jazz music. You may listen to this music and feel more at ease or even as though your stress has been reduced. Individuals consider different types of music relaxing, but some of the more popular ones include:

• Classical music: Made up of songs by composers like Mozart and Beethoven, classical music tends to have a very calming sound. The songs are usually made up of notes played on pianos, violins, etc.
• Soft jazz: Soft jazz specifically allows for good sleep and health. It reduces nor-adrenaline and can even help support your immune system.
• Nature sounds: While taking a walk on a nature trail isn’t possible for most, listening to nature sounds can have the same effect! These sounds of running water, birds chirping, wind blowing, etc. relax our brains greatly and can improve an individual’s mood.
• Ambient music: You may be unfamiliar with this genre of music, but it is considered to be just as relaxing as its counterparts. Ambient music is made up of gentle electronic instrumentals and is often described as a mood enhancer. 

These types of music offer a wide variety of health benefits and can:

• Slow breathing
• Lower heart rate
• Lower blood pressure
• Calm the nervous system
• Ease muscle tension

Will Music Make Me Sleep Better? 

It has been proven that listening to music increases the efficiency of your sleep. Sleep efficiency is calculated as the total time spent asleep divided by the total time spent laying in bed. Someone with a low sleep efficiency will find themself waking up throughout the night, having trouble falling back asleep, and becoming restless. A person with high sleep will sleep throughout the night. 

If you’d prefer not to listen to music throughout the night, you can still reap the benefits. Instead of listening to relaxing music while you sleep, you can do so before you go to bed. Research has shown that listening to music right before you go to bed can allow you to fall asleep more quickly.

Key Points

In conclusion, it is clear that listening to peaceful music will aid a person suffering from stress and/or anxiety. Relaxing music, while available in many forms and genres, has the ability to put the body in a state similar to that of a person sleeping and can drastically improve your mood. By mimicking sleep, relaxing music prepares the body for sleep, which allows for a person’s stress to lessen. The effects of relaxing music can also decrease a person’s anxiety as it calms the nervous system and slows breathing.

In order to gain the most benefits from music, you should remain consistent. The more often you listen to music, either while sleeping or relaxing the more effective the practice will be and the more you will see the benefits for your stress and anxiety.