Sleeping Music: What Kind of Music Should You Listen to at Bedtime
Several studies have shown that relaxing sleeping music has an amazing impact on our health and our bodies.
Recently, I wrote in great detail about the many benefits of listening to music while sleeping.
I’m not going to even try to compress all of those scientific findings here.
But before we talk about the kind of sleeping music to listen to at bedtime, allow me to share a high-level overview of the benefit of listening to music at bedtime.
- Improve sleep quality
- Facilitates deeper and longer sleep
- Enhances relaxation
- Offers distraction from pain
- Reduces stress
- Helps you sleep faster
- Provides a cheaper way to fall asleep
- Improves cognitive performance
- Helps you lose weight
- Fights diseases
(Read more these benefits here)
In this article, we’re going to focus on the type of sleeping music you should choose.
1. Choose music you enjoy
For starters, an important factor in all the research is that the music you choose should be one that you like and enjoy. This is a good baseline for any music. If you don’t like it and enjoy it, why listen?
So now that we’ve narrowed the choices to what you like and enjoy, let’s some additional things you’d like to consider.
2. Choose familiar music
It’s better to sleep to track that you are familiar with. Over time, it becomes the external cue to your body to wind down, because it’s time to sleep.
A familiar song will also make sure that you’re not distracted. Nor that your sleep is distracted with a surprising loud section of the new music.
3. Choose slower beats per minutes
Our bodies and brains are often like dry leaves during a wildfire. Once it catches a bit of the fire, it easily spreads to different parts.
This is to say one thing: our brains are very responsive. And when you want to sleep, the kind of response you want to trigger is that of relaxation.
Our breathing will begin to mirror the music’s slow beat, which will, in turn, align with our heart rate. All of this enabling us to get to sleep.
In that case, slow tunes and music with a rhythm of about 60 to 80 beats per minute (BPM) are ideal. Most of the studies used classical music, jazz or other sedative genres of music.
4. Choose music without lyrics
If you want to sleep well, lyrics, or words in a piece of music is not your best friend. Let me explain.
Most people’s minds like to catch up with lyrics in words, just because we like them or know them.
Remember that’s the last task you want to give your mind when you want to sleep. It’s important to allow the brain’s cognitive machine to wind down and rest as well.
5. Aim for consistency
As we’ve discovered in numerous research, our body and brains’ adaptation to sleep becomes stronger with time.
Some studies used it for up to three weeks. Plus, habits, in general, take time to not only build but also see the results.
This is why you should aim to be consistent with your bedtime music routine once you start. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results.
6. Guard your emotions
If the song you choose reminds you of a date that went sour or a terrible breakup, you probably have the wrong choice.
Your goal is to fall asleep, and not to arouse strong negative emotions that will keep you more stressed and more awake.
The other way is true too. Avoid choosing songs that will make you too excited that you can’t sleep, like a kid on Christmas eve.
7. Avoid the falling asleep with earbuds
Earbuds or headphones are a great way to isolate yourself into the wonderful world of music. But it can make your sleep uncomfortable and prolonged use may lead to ear canal damage.
8. Enhance the rest of your sleep environment
Your sleeping music won’t matter a lot if the rest of your sleeping environment is in disarray.
Often, all you need is a few little changes to help you sleep better at night. This could mean changing the color of the bedroom paint to light.
For example, have dim bedroom lights or blackout curtains. Or you can paint your bedroom blue or moss green and even pale yellow.
Or yet, you want to keep the temperature of your room between 60 and 75°F.
An important bedroom change is having the room well ventilated and making sure our bedrooms are equipped with a comfortable mattress and pillows.
