It is said and shown that “just 45 minutes of relaxing music before bedtime can make for a restful night”. And that people who make this into a regular practice can notice “a 35% improvement, including better and longer night-time sleep and less dysfunction during the day". (BBC News, 2005)
Well, music can have beneficial effects on our sleeping patterns. Some medical practitioners would even claim that music therapy is 4 to 8 times more effective than tranquilizers! How come?
Looking from the neurological side, sleep music both works on:
- your conscious mind level, where the sounds will be a source of distraction that in some point keeps you awake;
- your subconscious level, where the sounds will actually start to create brain waves guiding you into “the falling phase*”.
The reassuring tunes of rest sounds operate then physically and mentally.
Reducing blood pressure, lowering breathing and heartbeats, melting tension away, decreasing anxiety and relieving stress, soothed and quiet music helps your body reach its “cozy point out”, magically allowing you to fall asleep.
Positively acting on muscle relaxation, a soft consistent flow of sound has powerful effects on distraction from thoughts, putting your mind off issues, which maintains you relaxed as you meet absolute and delightful comfort.
In a nutshell, sleep music is an amazing organic technique tuning your brain to quickly and deeply go to...sleep! However, it can appear that any type and level of music disrupt some people’s sleep, being yet a form of stimulation.
* “Falling is where you get that feeling where you’re about to go to sleep and actually if you do drift off to sleep you’ll lose consciousness and you won’t remember anything more, until you wake up”. Paul Geracy, Sleep-tunes
