How to Tune Up Mindfully with Music
Have you ever thought about what impact music can have on your emotional state? It’s not just a matter of music making you feel happy or sad, energized or relaxed. Research on music also points to effects on physical processes, including stress response and recovery, though findings vary from study to study.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that music can affect how we feel from day to day. Often, though, we may listen to music without giving much thought to the subconscious impact that it’s having on us. We could find ourselves feeling a certain way and not understanding why, when the reason is related to something we listened to earlier in the day (perhaps a few minutes ago, or perhaps an hour prior).
Tune Up with Music: A Mindfulness Exercise
This mindfulness exercise worksheet will help you begin to gain a greater understanding of how the music you listen to impacts your mood and emotions. Using this mindfulness worksheet, you’ll create a “music-mood inventory” that reflects the relationship between the music you listen to and the way that you’re feeling. In one column, you’ll record an activity that you’re engaged in before listening to music, along with a rating for your mood. You’ll then record a song and the type of music you’d classify it as, followed by your mood after hearing the music.
Once you’ve gathered enough data from a variety of music, you’ll take the time to reflect and journal briefly on how music has impacted you in these situations. Was there any music in particular that had a distinct impact on how you felt? Which music did you find was the most effective at improving your mood? Mindfulness techniques like this one can support your mindfulness practice over time.
