Almost everyone listens to music, Hip hop, jazz, rock and roll, EDM, k-pop, j-pop, classical, country, alternative, etc. and so on. We listen to music all the time; usually what type of music we listen to depends upon our mood but the opposite is true too.
Ever feel happy after listening to a happy go lucky song? Ever feel sad after listening to song about breaking up? That’s because the music we listen to affects how we feel. But you don’t have to take my word for it, just check out this article.
There is no proper explanation for why this happens but I think it’s because when we listen to music we try to relate to it in some way, it’s not something we try to do consciously, it’s like a reflexive action; we hear music and we try to relate to it. And since the best way to relate to something is through feelings, our brains find a feeling that best matches and associates it with the music. Mind you, these are just the ramblings of one man and I can be completely wrong. I just wanted to voice my thoughts, that’s all.
Personally I listen to music every day, especially when I’m stressed out. When I listen to music I feel like I can keep all my anxiety in check and since I feel anxious very often, I think you can guess what I do with a lot of my time.
Nowadays it’s become a lot easier to get access to so many different kinds of songs, thanks to the internet. I remember the time when the only way you could listen to new songs was through M-TV or Channel [V] (How many of you remember Channel [V]) or some other music channel?). Another thing you could do was to go to a shop and browse the music that they were selling; problem is you had the entire ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ thing going on here since you could only look at the casing, not listen to the songs before you bought it (if you asked the shopkeeper to play the song he’d usually call you an idiot and tell you to buy the music or get out). Thankfully you don’t have to worry about that anymore.
There was this one time, some years ago. After an especially stressful day in school, I was pretty drained and all I wanted to do was to go to my room and put on some music while I lay down in bed; my parents however had other plans. For some reason my parents decided that this was the perfect day to invite some of their colleagues from work. Now, at the time I was a teenager (an antisocial one at that) so when I was expected to socialise with the grown-ups, I was thinking, ‘No please no. I just want to go to my room and listen to some music,’ but nope. ‘There are guests here son, come and say hello.’ Talk to these complete strangers who speak about nothing but work and want to know everything about your future, what you plan to do after school and the rest of your life too. ‘By the way, how was school?’ Needless to say I shut myself in my room after the guests left and payed my music full blast for half an hour! I would have only played for fifteen minutes but I needed more music to get rid of the stress the guests had put me in after asking about my plans for the future.
So if you’re stressed out, or just plain down in the dumps, just turn up the volume and listen to some music. Don’t just stop there though, there’s a lot of music out there and thanks to the internet you have access to it all. There’s no excuse to not broaden your horizons.
Alternative Yoga 