Does music really helps to relax?

Many people are sincerely convinced that music is capable to cure the body, reason and soul. You can agree with this opinion, cannot share it, however there is one certainty – music possesses the power over what surrounds us. In more detail about it read further.

In 2011 the Manchester Marconi Union group together with British Academy of sound therapy recorded the Weightless song (in style ambient). Soon this record became known as the most calming and weakening song in the history of mankind. Scientific research of this phenomenon showed that slow and kind of the shaking “current” of a sound reached by means of a combination of a number of the musical principles really has the calming effect.

Of course, it is difficult to prove for certain that this song really very best, however its calming and weakening properties are indisputable. The modern science proved that the mankind knows already thousands of years: music essentially influences our mood and health.

Oliver Saks, the author of a set of the books devoted to a surprising phenomenon of human consciousness claims in the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain that music is so natural to people, as well as language. He also says that organs of hearing and nervous system of people just are ideal for listening of music, and the emotional reaction caused by her can be incredibly difficult, mysterious and deep.

Saks and other experts give a set of surprising effects which music renders on a human brain as examples. The MRT technology and similar ways of a research of a brain allowed scientists to find the area which is responsible for perception of music. To tell more precisely, they were quite a lot. Music influences not someone central region, instead she activates several sites of a brain at the same time at once.

In more detail this phenomenon is considered in the best-seller “It is your brain in music: science about the human notion of compulsion” (This is Your Brain on Music) the neurobiologist Daniel Levitin heading at the time laboratory of studying perception and the analysis of music in McGill University, and now holding a post of the dean of faculty of social sciences of Minerva schools in KGI.

As writes in the book Levitin, when listening music in a brain as if begins to play the whole orchestra in which are involved as the most ancient, and the evolutionarily newest parts of a brain and also both occipital, and his frontal lobes.

So, the areas of a mesolimbic system which are responsible for excitement, pleasure, transfer of opioids and development of a dopamine respond to sounds of music. The cerebellum and basal kernels also become more active when listening music – moreover, for many years’ scientists considered that these areas of a brain were connected only with processing of a musical rhythm and the size. During the recent researches it became clear that the cerebellum also participates in management of emotions due to communications with frontal shares and the limbic system of a brain.

The meta-analysis of 400 researches published not so long ago in the Trends in Cognitive Sciences magazine showed that by means of music it is possible to reduce significantly the cortisol level (stress hormone) and it is essential to muffle feeling of uneasiness at patients. Surprisingly, but music can even reduce pulse rate.

For the person normal pulse from 60 to 100 beats per minute at rest is considered. The composition of Weightless begins with 60 blows bits a minute and gradually slows down up to 50. In those five minutes that this song sounds, nervous system of the listener begins to adapt to its speed – just as at small children at whom pulse quite often coincides with mother’s pulse.

As Aldous Huxley told at the time, “Music is on the second place after silence, expressing inexpressible”. Probably, music nevertheless should be put on the first place.

Among Calm Radio music channels, you will find options which will help you to relax thus. Try to listen to Sleep channel on Calm Radio. Calm Radio Ambient I Spaces and Ambient II Things are free channels which will become an ideal source of the calming and weakening music in a genre ambient.