Do you get stressed out a lot and people keep trying to tell you? You should try meditating. But meditation just doesn't really work for you? Well, there might be a much easier science-backed alternative if you do it right, and that's listening to music. I'm a visha and sharing scientific evidence is my love language. And yes, there is a lot of evidence that meditation can help lower stress, along with plenty of other benefits. But I've tried many times to start a daily meditation habit and it just hasn't quite stuck. It's tough. But these three studies compared using, different types of meditation to handle stress with listening to music for an equal amount of time. And it turns out that while meditation might have various other forms of cognitive benefits like performance on different brain challenges, when it comes to stress management, it was basically the same as the music, listen. Especially for people's perceived stress, and even the ability to help manage chronic pain for fibromyalgia patients. And this study even showed lowered cortisol levels. Stress hormone. And the key to making a work is not just listening to some special track. Although we can talk about the effects of different types of music and particular frequencies in another video if you guys want. Let me know. But here people were allowed to choose whichever tracks they found most relaxing. The key was their intention going into it. Just listening while going about daily life doesn't cut it. To get the reduction in stress, they had to specifically choose to listen to music for the sake of relaxing, using it as a tool to do so, working at it. And it's especially helpful to do it right when that stressor occurs. So here's her homework. Choose two songs in advance that you find to be particularly relaxed. Then if something stresses and listen to them and just focus on relaxing yourself. Then come back here and comment that you did it and which two songs you used. I'm going to turn them all into one big relaxation playlist for you guys.
Additional notes
What’s fascinating is that, for the fibromyalgia patients, listening to music didn’t lower actual pain but improved their perceived control over pain, helping with their day to day life. This is thought to be because its effect is on the central nervous system more than the peripheral one. For a full writeup of this video with all the study links, plus periodic doses of fun new science or tools and hacks that I use, sign up for my free newsletter! #science @WHO Fides #meditation #stress #MentalHealth #MentalHealthMatters #MentalHealthAwareness #WHOFides
References
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