Have you ever wondered why you need to pretend to fall asleep before actually falling asleep?
As you stare vacantly at your ceiling wide awake, you can only think of falling asleep but somehow you just can’t. You tuck yourself into bed snugly, turn the lights off, and lie there thinking about sleeping until you wake up the next day and the cycle continues.
Every person has a different bedtime ritual to snooze off, but a great number of studies illustrate that listening to music is one of the most effective ways of falling asleep.
The Science Behind Music Inducing Sleep
Recent research concluded that music does indeed help people sleep better and easier, based on their online survey with 651 respondents. This study reported that at least 62% of their total respondents believed that music helped them sleep better. It also stated that a younger age group of people with higher musical engagement in their daily lives were significantly more likely to listen to music to help them fall asleep.
The major take away from this research was that the respondents used music to induce sleep:
- Music that has unique characteristics to stimulate sleep
- Music is part of the sleep routine
- Music induces the required mental and physical state to fall asleep; or
- Music is used to block some internal or external stimulus that could disturb sleep.
As toddlers, we were put to sleep using lullabies. Lullabies are sung to infants across all cultures of the world, and this shows that our association with music begins at the nascent stages of our lives. The National Sleep Foundation explains (NSF) that music helps lower your heart rate and blood pressure.
Music can also relax your muscles, easing your body into rest mode. Such biological changes are exactly what the body requires while trying to fall asleep. Playing your preferred music better helps your body relax while trying to fall asleep.
The NSF recommends listening to music with a tempo of 60–80 beats per minute (BPM) while trying to sleep as ideal for inducing deep slumber. This would typically be classical or jazz. Once you integrate music into your sleeping routine and make a habit of it, your body will pick up the cue to fall asleep once you hit the play button.
Music for Insomnia
Sound sleep influences your mind and body as a whole. Sleeping helps you be productive the next day, boosts your mood, and ensures a more healthy lifestyle. It helps improve your memory and also stimulates creativity. Furthermore, it sharpens your focus and keeps body weight in check.
Insomnia, on the other hand, can trigger the failure of cognitive functions like memory loss, increased anxiety, and often causes mood swings. In the long run, it could lead to obesity. NSF also estimates that people suffering from insomnia are also prone to higher chances of accidents linked to sleep deprivation.
A majority of adults suffer from sleeping disorders and or insomnia. A recent survey by Philips suggests that 62% of adults across 12 countries reported that they had irregular sleeping patterns, and on an average, adults got only up to 6 hours of sleep as against the recommended 8 hours. The main reasons cited for irregular sleep were worry and stress (54%), unsuitable sleeping environment (40%), erratic work or school schedule (37%), and health reasons (32%).
In order to find solutions for inculcating healthier sleeping routines, one such Psychologist, Laszlo Harmat, gathered 92 students with sleeping problems for an experiment. One group of 35 students were given classical music to listen to while sleeping and the remaining were given an audiobook.
30 out of the 35 students from the music listening group reported improved sleeping patterns over three weeks as compared to only 9 from the other group of audiobook listeners who reported better sleeping patterns.
In another study conducted by a PhD student and a professor from the Centre for Music at Aarhus University derived that music can improve sleep quality over time. However, it is difficult to determine the effect of music on how long a person might take to fall asleep, or the actual amount of sleep one may get, or even the number of times a person would wake up overnight.
What is definite, though, is that music has absolutely no side effects and is easy to administer.
Closer to home, in India, a research survey published with the National Journal of Music Therapy concluded that Indian classical music was tantamount to hypnotic medication in improving sleep quality amongst people suffering from depression.
One group was given hypnotic medication, whereas another group of similar individuals were given a few particular raagas to listen to while sleeping. Both the groups were monitored closely for their sleeping patterns, and it was later concluded that the group that was prescribed music started showing improvement in their sleep cycle.
Best Music for the Best Sleep
World over, academicians, musicians, and scientists are constantly working together to better under this relationship between music and sleep.
One such effort made by a British composer called Max Richter, who released an eight-hour lullaby called Sleep. Richter quotes, “For me, Sleep is an attempt to see how that space (in your mind) when your conscious mind is on holiday and can be a place for music to live.”
Similarly, the British Academy of Sound Therapy in collaboration with the band Macroni Union released the song “Weightless” that is scientifically crafted to make you fall asleep. This track reportedly helped slower the heart rate and reduced anxiety amongst women by a staggering 65%. Weightless also featured amongst the top 10 songs designed to help you sleep better, sharing the playlist with Mozart, Coldplay, Adele, Enya, and All Saints.
Psychologist Daniel Levitin has attempted to demystify the connection between music and sleep. According to him, “Our neurons tend to synchronise with the tempo of the music we listen to. Slow music can cause our neural firing rates to predispose us to relax and sleep. That’s provided that the music doesn’t do something else to upset or arouse us with dissonance or lyrics that pull us out of our reverie.”
In the words of Sound Therapist, Lyz Cooper, it is not just the rhythm and tempo of the song that factors in for good sleep, the length of the song is equally important too. It takes about five minutes for the brain to naturally sync with the rhythm of an external stimulus.
Is Music Fool Proof for Better Sleeping Habits?
It is essential to understand the sleeping process to answer this question. Scientists have broken down the process into:
- Non-Rem (NREM) which is divided into NREM 1, NREM 2 and NREM 3, and
- Rapid Eye Movement (REM).
Joseph Chandler, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Birmingham South College, juxtaposes the effects of Max Richter’s eight-hour-long Sleep with the sleep cycle. Accordingly to Chandler, if you are listening to Richter’s Sleep while trying to get some shuteye and your attention starts to wander off, you are entering your first phase of the sleep cycle, known as the NREM 1 sleep.
He believes that anything that contributes to the relaxation of your mind causes you to enter this phase, so it might seem like Richter’s Sleep is having an effect. This lasts only for a few minutes.
As you enter the next sleeping phase, NREM 2 sleep, your mind switches from ‘external’ to ‘internal’, making you feel dreamy or floaty. At this stage, you actively block out any external stimuli and start attaching yourself to memories, meaning you are no longer actively listening to Richter’s Sleep.
The next is the NREM 3 sleep phase, where you are completely non-responsive to the outside world. This stage usually lasts for 30 minutes, post which your mind goes back to a lighter sleeping phase, NREM 1. At this point, you may hear some bits of the track playing in the background. However, according to Chandler, this is the tricky phase. If the music is not suitable or too disruptive, it will wake you up and disrupt your sleeping cycle, that is yet to be complete.
However, if you don’t wake up, you end up reaching the REM phase where your body relaxes, and your mind feeds off the internal memory. This is also the phase that introduces dreams. This sleep cycle repeats itself multiple times overnight, and each time your mind enters the REM phase, it lasts longer than the last time. Thus, Chandler concludes that your mind is receptive of the external stimuli, Richter’s Sleep, only for a grand total of 60 minutes in the entire sleep cycle, unless you are woken up in between.
Encore — Final Word
Music, as is famously said, is the cheapest drug known to mankind, that has no side effects. From the above-mentioned studies, research surveys, and collaboration by various stakeholders, it is evident that music is better than any other drug for inducing sleep. Include music into your bedtime routine and see what changes it makes to your sleeping habits over time.
Bonus Note:
If you are looking for calm and relaxing music, a host of sleep-inducing playlists are available on various platforms like YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify.
P.S. Safety Reminder: Do not fall asleep with your headphones/earphones plugged in, as it might lead to other health complications/injuries.
