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Meditation Music, and Music for Super-learning

Lots of people ask me about meditation music -- "Is there any good music to meditate by?" Let's take this slowly and see what they're really talking about....and whether this is or isn't genuine meditation audio help. Let's hope for some audio samples of online meditation music, too.

Is there any music that helps you destress, calm down and relax?

Sure, and if that's your definition of "meditation music" there's all sorts of instrumental music that fits the bill.... anything from Western and native Indian flute music, to orchestral pieces, to classical guitar, classical piano, ancient Chinese Naxi music, New Age rhythms (people mention Stephen Halpern along these lines) and more.

Whether or not this music is relaxing all depends on what works for you. It's an individualistic sort of thing. And whether it's meditative-friendly is another question as well. You can call it yoga meditation music because you can stretch to it, and that's a good start.

Some other favorites of folks? Silk Road (Kitaro), Daniel Kobialka recordings, Sea Peace (Georgia Kelly), "Seasos" recordings (George Winston),Trois Gymnopedies (Eric Satie) and Barefoot Ballet (John Klemmer).

Is there "meditation music" that helps you with studying and super-learning?

Sure.

In particular, studies have found that instrumental soothing music (not rock music, hip hop or rap) with higher frequencies tends to help with accelerated learning. Examples include Mozart, Handel, Corelli, Locatelli, Marcello, Vivaldi and Bach instrumental pieces. I would call this concentration music or relaxation music but not meditation music once again. Examples?

Divertimento for Strings, K. 136, Mozart
Four Seasons, Vivaldi
Water Music, Handel
Brandenberg Concertos, Bach

Baroque music, with its unique rhythmic structure and stability, is particularly conducive to memory, productivity and healthy, stress-free environments.

Drum music tends to put people into trances, when all other conditions are right. But I would not call that meditation music, either. Trance states are NOT meditation but a side-path that access the shadow side of clear consciousness. Isolation (sensory deprivation or floatation) tanks also end up cultivating this shadow side or "solitary consciousness", which is NOT spiritual cultivation.

For brainstorming and problem solving, a few pieces people like include:

Piano Concerto #5, Beethoven
Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky
Etudes, Chopin
Claire de Lune, Debussy
Piano Concerto # 26 & 27, Mozart

For creativity and imagination -- pieces by Wagner, Grieg, Ravel, Dvorak, Smetana, Berlioz, Borodin, Debussy, Glinka, Scriabin.

None of this is really music for meditation, however.

For calming, de-stressing, dreaming, visualization exercises... you can always find music but for meditation you want a quiet mind, so listening to anything else other than the silence within or self-produced inner thought (such as mantra) is letting the attention go outward, and distracts from inner calming. You want to follow the principles of cessation-contemplation practice wherein you listen within to what's going on in your head, and in time that noise of wandering thoughts (the monkey mind) will calm down.

So "real meditation music" is just listening to the silence within. Get it? Silence is the real music of meditation, the real producer of joy, harmony and well-being. At first what's inside you sounds like a full orchestra when you first get started at meditation, but in time that cacophony of sounds -- thoughts, mantra recitations, prayers, whatever -- will calm down to real inner silence, and we can call THAT silence the real music or meditation.

Of course, if you want relaxation music, check out a few of the titles listed. Amazon.com lets you click on links to hear samples of the albums it sells, and it's a fun way to pass the time without having to pay. That's how you can sample online meditation music for free.