Pianist, composer, and certified breathwork expert Chad Lawson shares what he’s learned about the parallels between music and meditation.
For many people, anxiety is so familiar of a sensation that it’s a constant part of their lives. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health condition in the U.S., affecting more than 40 million people. Sometimes, anxiety is simmering in the background; you feel on edge but don’t know why. Other times, it drowns everything else out, making it hard to focus on anything besides how out-of-control things seem.
Pianist and composer Chad Lawson is hoping his music can be an antidote in both instances, playing in the background of people’s lives, canceling out anxiety, and replacing it with feelings of calm. Lawson, who’s also a certified breathwork expert, even includes a melody that matches a box breathing technique in his album “Breathe”, helping listeners slow their breath and decompress based on the rhythm of the chords. Other times, his music is meant to support mental health in ways that people listening to it might even not be aware of.
Scientific research shows that what you listen to — whether it’s while you work, during a workout, or on a walk around the neighborhood — impacts mental health. Want your playlist to work for you, making you feel more calm? Here’s what you need to know.
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Music as Meditation
During the pandemic — certainly a time when anxiety was at an all-time high — Lawson decided to study the connection between music and mental health. Sure, he knew that music can make you feel good (like the euphoria of seeing your favorite band in concert or just hearing a song you like come on the radio when you’re in the car), but he wanted to understand how music impacted the brain.
Through research, he learned that music can literally change your brain chemistry and help with stress recovery. One scientific paper that took into account 14 different studies about music and mental health found that listening to classical music lowers cortisol and overall feelings of anxiety more than sitting in silence. Researchers also found that people who listened to happy or relaxing music after a stressful situation reported being able to manage the stressful event better than people who didn’t listen to any music.
“Listening to music is something passive that can really lift our spirits,” Lawson says. The more he learned about how music can affect mental health, the more he found a parallel between music and meditation. Lawson has long practiced Transcendental Meditation, a form of meditation where you silently repeat a mantra in your head. Similar to how a mantra gives you something to come back to when the mind is wandering, Lawson found music could serve a similar purpose.
“Music can bring you back to the present moment,” he says. “For example, the other day I walked into a local coffee shop and a song I like by The Cure was playing. It made me feel so good and present at that moment. Meditation really just means ‘presence.’ It’s about being in the moment and music can help do that.”
Breathwork, he says, works similarly: Focusing on the inhales and exhales of your breath helps ground you in the present moment. It’s why the two often go together in his music. In fact, before Lawson performs, he often leads concert-goers in a breathwork exercise, helping to bring them to the present moment and fully enjoy the music.
Now, Lawson creates music with the specific intention of giving listeners something grounding to come back to when life starts to feel out of control. “The album I just created [When We Are] was not the album I planned on making. I originally planned to do an album about chasing your dreams, but I had a nagging sense that it wasn’t right,” he says. “One night, I had just finished a concert in Baton Rouge and a woman came up to me and said my podcast was all she listened to when her dad was dying of cancer. That’s when I realized, we’re still healing in this post-pandemic era. You have to heal before you can dream.”
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What to Listen to When You Feel Anxious
It’s clear that what you listen to affects your mental health, so what does the science say about what you should put on when your anxious thoughts start spiraling? All of the below have been scientifically shown to help:
• Classical music: Research shows that listening to classical music can help relieve tension and make you feel more relaxed. It’s also been shown to help with concentration, making it a good music genre to serve as the soundtrack to your workday.
• Lofi: Whether it’s lofi hip-hop, indie-rock, funk, or jazz, the downtempo of this genre of music has been shown to help with anxiety. The slow tempo helps slow down the mind and breath, lowering cortisol levels and leading to feeling more calm. For many, it can evoke feelings of nostalgia, which helps anxiety for some because it reminds them of a time when they felt safe and carefree.
• Music you enjoy: Remember Lawson’s experience of walking into a coffee shop and feeling pumped about hearing The Cure? It may sound simple, but listening to music you enjoy is a major happiness booster and anxiety reducer. When you listen to a song you like, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released in the brain, which leads to feeling happier. Lawson recommends making a playlist of your favorite songs to listen to whenever you tend to feel particularly anxious, like Sunday nights or Monday mornings.
While music can help you feel less anxious, it doesn’t solve the root causes of your anxiety. It’s still important to get enough sleep, move your body, eat a balanced diet, and have effective ways of managing stress in place. If anxiety is getting in the way of your ability to function, seeing a therapist can help.
What you listen to matters — especially if you’re struggling with anxiety. While it’s only one piece of the stress-reduction puzzle, it can help you feel less on edge. And no matter what your favorite song is, that should be music to your ears.
Photo credit: Michael Lavine