Feelings about incorporating music into yoga sessions differ greatly. The scope of opinions about adding music to your yoga repertoire span from complete silence to the louder and more raucous sounds the better.
Choosing the best music for yoga involves exploring the benefits, creating a thematic purpose, considering different factors, and designing a flow to complement your yoga practice.
Yoga practice has evolved from its ancient origins. Adding music is one of the elements of change that many find enhances their yoga experience. Continue reading for ideas on how to select the best music for your yoga practice.
Exploring the Benefits of Playing Music during Yoga
Listening to music for the enjoyment of its sounds and lyrics offers many benefits for us. Music helps reduce stress. When our stress levels are lowered, the overall health of our bodies and minds improve. Levels of serotonin and endorphins are increased. Not only do these chemicals in our bodies boost our moods, but our hearts can also become healthier. With strong hearts, our blood flows more readily and our blood pressure is better controlled.
Feeling more energetic listening to music, our level of anxiety can be lessened. We are more apt to have the motivation to engage in activities such as yoga. If you combine the power of yoga with the positive results gained from listening to music, your yoga sessions can be dramatically enhanced.
Exploring some of the benefits of combining music with yoga will help you select the genre of music along with individual songs.
- Music assists us in improving our stamina, so difficult yoga poses may be more attainable.
- Songs and melodies let us focus more. For yoga, this additional depth of concentration lets us perform deeper stretches and more meditative relaxation.
- Sounds heighten our senses, which can bring us more into the present moment. A greater awareness during yoga adds value to each practice session.
- Different songs can create a calming effect on listeners; other songs can boost energy levels. Either type of song or reaction can develop creativity and let us try more challenging poses.
- When music is energizing its listeners, we are encouraged to push ourselves to work harder. That can be holding a pose for longer or trying new types of yoga.
- Everyone has songs that have special meaning to them. This develops bonds between listeners. For a yoga class, this promotes a communal atmosphere in yoga sessions.
- Immersing yourself into a song, lets you begin to relax and leave daily stress behind. Yoga sessions are more effective when we are fully engaged.
- We naturally move our bodies to different tunes. This movement will more naturally lend to our bodies flowing from one pose to another.
Playing music in the background creates a welcoming atmosphere before class starts. Continuing to play music after the yoga session lets participants ease their way back to their life’s responsibilities.
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Creating a Thematic Purpose for Music
Music can readily set the mood for any event and for yoga classes. When selecting the music to play for yoga, you want to focus on genres of music that will augment your sequence of poses and exercises. You can be as creative as you want when selecting music once you have focused on your purpose. Consider the goals or reasons why you are doing yoga.
- Reduce stress
- Improve balance
- Increase flexibility
- Strengthen and tone muscles
- Reduce or lessen pain
- Help with different medical conditions such as arthritis and heart health
- Relaxation
- Lose weight
- Boost energy levels
- Feel happier
- Meet people and become part of a community
- Taking time for yourself
- Better prepare your body for your other physical endeavors
- Improve your metabolism
During each yoga session, working on many of these benefits simultaneously can be the goal. However, grouping similar objectives for yoga together will help you develop a better playlist for your yoga practice. Your selection of music may vary throughout the class. Beginning and concluding the class with slower paced songs and melodies is often a good way to transition between daily activities. Starting with music that is too fast or loud may make it difficult to begin the calming process.
As the poses become more difficult after the warm-up, the music can increase in tempo. Music with a faster cadence can be inspiring and help motivate you as the poses become more challenging.
All selections of music should invoke positive responses in people. Negative lyrics or harsh sounding instrumentals will not complement many yoga sessions. Sad songs can create a melancholy atmosphere; this can make it difficult to retain your motivation to complete class.
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Considering Different Factors in your Musical Selection
Selecting music for your playlist should include a number of different factors. The sequence of music is also another consideration. Think through the goals and objectives of the class. This will help guide you in brainstorming possible titles. Then consider some of these factors when creating your playlists.
- Who usually attends the class? The audience for which the music is played will focus your selection. Change your playlist to meet the needs of those who will attend the class. Music should resonate with its listeners.
- What time of day is the class? People attending a class at 6:00 pm instead of 6:00 am will be expecting to hear very different types of music. Vary your music to meet the time of day and day of the week.
- Time or season of the year can also impact the type of music that you choose. The ambiance created by the weather can be another thought process used in selecting melodies.
- The location of the yoga class is another factor to consider. If the class is being held as part of a festival at a town park, it will have different music than a class held at a law office.
- Be sure you know how long the class is when selecting music. A ninety-minute class should have a greater variety of music than a sixty-minute class. Building up to the crescendo of music and difficulty of poses will be at a different pace with each class’s length.
- The type of yoga that will be practiced during the class should impact your musical decisions. Adding to or slowing from momentum is important for the music to complement the yoga movements during class.
Designing a Flow to Complement Yoga
Now you have playlists that have themes, that consider many aspects of the class, and will enhance the benefits gleaned from music and yoga. Next step is to design the flow of the yoga class. While you are not choreographing the yoga moves, you do want the music to create natural movement from pose to pose. The timing of holding a pose, working on a challenging pose, or pausing with a child’s pose should have music that pulls participants along.
You want people to be subconsciously aware of the music. This perception should transfer to participants’ breathing and awareness of their bodies. Developing mindfulness during yoga sessions makes people more in tune with their minds, bodies, and emotions.
Be aware of the length of songs and how they correlate to each pose. So that you are not spending too much time trying to coordinate each, keep similar types or genres of songs playing in a sequence. This gives you more time to complete the practices and poses you are looking to accomplish.
Take time to practice your sequence of yoga poses with your playlist. Invite friends over to gather feedback. The more playlists that you create to complement your classes, the more natural it becomes to teach. It also becomes easier to develop playlists for your classes as you add more music to your yoga practice.
Adding in breaks of no music can add depth to your selection of music. A pause of silence can add a great change up for you.
Have fun and experiment with music, melodies, and sounds!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Music copyrights provide legal protection for the creator of the music. If a creator allows you to use their creation or intellectual property, they are giving you the right to copy. Usually there are stipulations that detail the use of the creation.
Public domain or PD refers to intellectual property or creative works that can be used without consent. You can use music that is part of the public domain without seeking permission from the creator; also, you do not need to compensate the creator of the music.
Music available through a Creative Commons license is a way for you to use music for free with some provisions. Often, creators of music available through Creative Commons are sharing their works for free with the requirement that the creator receives attribution for their work.
Royalty free music is not usually completely free. Often the person obtaining a license to use royalty free music must buy a usage license once, not every time they play the music. Sometimes the agreement states a length of time that the one-time license is valid for.
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Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.
Meet Shawn Chun: Entrepreneur and Yoga Fan
I’m a happy individual who happens to be an entrepreneur. I have owned several types of businesses in my life from a coffee shop to an import and export business to an online review business plus a few more and now I create online yoga business resources for those interested in starting new ventures. It’s demanding work but I love it. I do it for those passionate about their business and their goals. That’s why when I meet a yoga business owner in public at a studio or anywhere else I see myself. I know how hard the struggle is to retain clients, find good employees and keep the business growing all while trying to stay competitive.
That’s why I created Yoga Business Boss: I want to help future yoga business owners like you build a thriving business that brings you endless joy and supports your ideal lifestyle.