Seven Spotify playlists to boost your wellbeing

Tunes for health and happiness

As providers of music therapy, we see up close the power of music to improve people’s lives and unlock their potential. You don’t need to attend one of our sessions to draw from that power. Listening to the right tunes at the right time can bolster anyone’s health and happiness. These seven Spotify playlists are designed to offer everything from better sleep to pain relief.

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As part of Mental Health Awareness Week this week, Nordoff and Robbins Music Ambassador Edith Bowman has curated a special playlist for us called ‘Mood Boosters’. Edith has chosen some of her favourite songs to help boost your mood this Mental Health Awareness Week. You can listen to that here.

1. Improve your sleep

Music can aid sleep by slowing your breathing, lowering your heart rate and blood pressure, and triggering the release of hormones such as serotonin and oxytocin, which regulate sleep cycles. Music can help us fall asleep. Research has also shown that it can also improve the quality of sleep for people of all ages. It can even help those with insomnia and other sleep disorders. To relax, try listening to songs with a slow beat. You should avoid songs that you feel a strong emotional attachment to, and you might also want to avoid music with lyrics. Above all, stick with it! The effects of using music to improve sleep only get stronger the more you try it.

2. Boost your mood

You’ve almost certainly experienced the positive effects that music can have on your mood – lifting you up when you’re down, or energising you when you’re tired. Research has shown that music is helpful in combating anxiety and depression, whether mild or severe. Listening to your favourite music releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, otherwise known as the ‘happy hormone’. If your mood needs a boost, try listening to both happy and sad music, as both can have a positive effect.

3. Stimulate your memory

Music reaches many parts of the brain, including those associated with memory. It can act as a trigger to help us retrieve memories, and it can also help us lay down new ones. It is especially beneficial for people with dementia, or those who’ve experienced a stroke or brain injury, but it has the power to help everyone learn and memorise things faster. Learning to play an instrument is the most potent thing you can do to enhance your memory in the long term, as it vastly improves neuroplasticity. Simply listening to music has also been shown to provide significant neural stimulation.

4. Exercise your brain

Music can also increase other areas of intelligence, including language skills, maths skills and spatial learning. It is particularly impactful in children, as it can aid the growth of new neural connections. However, learning an instrument at any age can improve intelligence, and as music reaches so many areas of the brain, it can lead to a wide range of benefits! If you’re unsure about learning an instrument, why not try looking at more unusual instruments like the harmonica or the theremin?

5. Increase your energy

Just as slow and relaxing music can improve your sleep, listening to faster and more intense music can raise your energy levels. Studies have shown that music can reduce fatigue, and improve physical performance. Athletes of all levels, from park-runners to Olympians, have been shown to perform better to music. To unlock your full physical potential, create a playlist filled with your favourite energetic songs and listen to it when you exercise.

6. Build your physical health

Music can help you improve your physical health. Singing along to songs can increase your lung capacity and strength, while dancing improves cardiovascular capacity and aids gait training for those with Parkinson’s. It also increases the flow of blood around the body.

7. Relieve your pain

Trials involving patients recovering from surgery and people with chronic conditions have found that music is a potent pain-reliever, reducing the need for medication. As a strong competing stimulus, music can decrease the perception of pain and lower stress levels. Music can assist with all types of pain, be they physical or mental. Listening to music releases natural opioids in the brain that then spread throughout the body.

The rhythm and melody remedy

Seven Spotify playlists to boost your wellbeing

Tunes for health and happiness

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week this week, Nordoff and Robbins Music Ambassador Edith Bowman has curated a special playlist for us called ‘Mood Boosters’. Edith has chosen some of her favourite songs to help boost your mood this Mental Health Awareness Week. You can listen to that here.

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