Living through history can be a jarring, surreal experience and if you’ve lived… anywhere in the world through March of 2020, you can relate. The Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has taken the world on a ride of uncertainty, anxiety, and quarantine-induced restlessness. For the first time in modern history, society at large is experiencing the same large-scale trauma, with internet culture allowing us to see and respond to the stress together.
When humans experience significant and prolonged amounts of stress, our emergency response systems are triggered for a period of time longer than we are accustomed. This results in physiological repercussions to our respiratory, our musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal systems, all further outlined by the American Psychological Association.
The good news is, there is hope to help manage difficult times, including mindfulness and other self-care practices, and music can be easily incorporated into just about anything.
Music As Mindfulness
Mindfulness has a variety of working definitions, but perhaps the most concise is described by a longtime expert in the field, Jon Kabat-Zinn as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment.” The use of mindfulness in stress reduction is rising in popularity, possibly due to its various suggested health benefits, which include but are not limited to blood pressure reduction, immune response, and psychological pain.
Mindfulness can be practiced anytime, anywhere, and music can be an easy way to introduce the practice into your life. This blog post published in Good Therapy outlines a step by step method to familiarize yourself to mindful music listening, while this article from Michigan State University explores the health benefits of adding music to mindfulness practices.
Music As Self-Care
In addition to its role in mindful listening practices, both playing and singing (or screaming) your favorite tunes can be an effective tool in your self-care routine to relieve stress. With digital meeting spaces like Zoom on the rise, you can even have virtual jam sessions with friends, or continue practices with an instructor. If concerts are more your thing, many artists are now live-streaming performances to keep a sense of the live music community strong.
Whatever your self-care routine is, make sure you make it a priority as we navigate this new normal together. Move your body, get some fresh air, drink some water, and most importantly, stay connected with friends and family. We’re all in this together, and if we take good care of ourselves, we can take better care of one another.