Do you remember a moment in your life when you felt so down and listened to your favorite song? It may have been a melancholy tune or classical harp music, but when the music moves you, it moves you. Music is a magical form of art that can affect human emotions in various ways. It can enhance what you are feeling, whether you are happy, sad, nostalgic, or something else.
If you are curious about how this happens, here are some scientific studies that explain how music can affect your brain, emotions, and spiritual experience.
Helps You Understand a Person’s Personality
Have you ever asked your friends about their favorite songs or their music recommendations? How about acquaintances or strangers? When you know someone and learn about their favorite music, it is easy to say that their personality perfectly fits their song choices. The same goes when you feel like you immediately understand a stranger’s taste when you learn about their music recommendations.
There is a scientific study behind that. According to a Heriot-Watt University study, a person’s musical preferences can help you determine their personality traits. Comparison among participants’ music choices showed accuracy in conveying five aspects of their personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability.
Some of the results say that people who like country music are more emotionally stable. People who love jazz are more likely to be intellectual, while those who love vocals are extroverted.
Stimulates One’s Creativity
Music also has the power to affect one’s creativity. In fact, a study was conducted to test participants through creative exercises. The goal is to measure people’s divergent thinking (the process of coming up with multiple unique solutions for problem-solving) and convergent thinking (finding the single best solution to a problem). It turns out that listening to happy music can promote creativity in efficient and inexpensive ways.
Can Help Give You Drive
Ever recall how playing upbeat music in the gym can help you feel a lot stronger during workouts? That is because music has the power to make your brain think that it is not experiencing fatigue yet. Fast songs always have that capacity to stimulate the brain, thanks to their strong beats. The tempo and lyrics also affect how the brain reacts to the activity.
Can Also Be Your Source of Distraction
Music can bring a positive influence on the brain, but it can also work the other way. Overstimulating the brain can make one lose its focus. Therefore, when you are doing something and you play a highly familiar song, you might end up not giving it the attention it deserves.
This scenario is more likely to happen during activities that require one hundred percent of concentration, like driving. A familiar song while driving might cause you to make mistakes. However, not playing music at all is also not so beneficial to the brain. It is all about picking the right piece that is not too distracting.
Conclusion
Music is a great medium to connect with oneself in unique and powerful ways. It can inspire you, uplift you, and give you a unique spiritual experience. At the same time, music is used to heighten the transpersonal components of spiritual practices—meditation, ritual, and worship. All these happen because of how the brain interprets and receives them.
If you need relaxing music to enhance your spiritual practices or to improve your mood, we have classical harp music and instrumental gospel music you can listen to. Prayer Pray is a site dedicated to spreading peace, love, kindness, and joy worldwide with our curated relaxing music. Visit our music store to experience this yourself.
