Music and Wellbeing: What the Science of Health is Missing

Photo by Derek Truninger on Unsplash

We can’t help but gravitate towards the reduction of the human experience into metrics; how many steps we walk, calories we burn, watching our sleep cycles and logging mood, but being human goes beyond the rigidity of structure, further than efficiency, measuring outcomes and evidence-based prescriptions. As a species, humanity doesn’t just function, it feels, we sing and dance and listen. What if, before the science of health, we already had something capable of improving wellbeing; the phenomenon of music.

In a review, of multiple studies, it transpires that music and wellbeing are linked, and a reframe of how we address health, connection and meaning may be important. Instead of looking at music as if it’s an addition, or a luxury, there may be psychosocial mechanisms and cognitive, emotional and relational processes that emerge when people actively listen to music.

We see music in many forms: passive listening through sitting with sound, shared listening at concerts, physical engagement through playing an instrument, group singing, dancing to music and songwriting. Each form offers a different experience; music doesn’t just evoke one single effect. Music produces a mosaic of psychosocial mechanisms, it does not just change a person’s mood but can shape how they relate through blurring boundaries, encouraging movement and situating the self with others.

If we reduce health and wellbeing to outcomes, we miss the why. These psychosocial processes highlighted in this review indicate the effect of music has on us:

1. Arousal and physiological modulation: calming anxiety, reducing pain and shaping a stress response

2. Social connection: group singing or shared listening builds belonging and mutual recognition, co-creating a relational space.

3. Cognitive engagement: Playing instruments, composing or dancing with music engages attention, motor coordination and memory

4. Identity and meaning: through songwriting and improvisation, a narrative identity can be formed and solidified, giving voice to the self

   
   

Why does this matter for professionals?

Most leadership models obsess over skills and competencies, frameworks of behaviour that can be taught, measured and controlled. The difference is, health and agency are always psychosocial, not purely behavioural or mechanical. When music improves mood, it aligns body and emotion, not by fixing bad feelings but by opening a path for new relational possibilities. This mirrors what we see in leadership:

-            A leader won’t ‘fix’ a mood, but instead, they have the capability to shape experience.

-            If group singing increases social connection, it does so through shared rhythm and voice, not through the organisational way of overengineering but through embodiment and ritual.

-            The effects of music are not uniform, a live jazz performance will impact identity differently to background music in a waiting room, just as a team retreat would impact culture differently than an annual performance review.

The context, intention and relational texture matter. Wellbeing is not a variable that can be isolated, it’s a process that’s embedded in lived experience. When group singing, for example, increases connection because people synchronise, what mechanisms are synchronising teams? Shared purpose? Or perhaps, fear?

The professional world treats music like a therapeutic add on because it fits our mindset, but music reveals how health is constituted. It goes beyond intervention and is a centuries old tool used for meaning making about the condition of aliveness. Health is not something to be achieved, it’s something we inhabit.

How in daily routine can we foster an environment for us and others to engage with meaning and not simply execute tasks? Do we mistake behavioural interventions for relational transformation? Are we just looking for boxes to tick without understanding why something can change? Wellbeing is not an outcome to be optimised and, by shaping relational fields and activating psychosocial mechanisms, a reframing can emerge and true connectedness can form.

From the depth psychology perspective, music does not just regulate conscious emotion, it touches the archetypal layers of the psyche. Music bypasses relational defence. It activates symbol, image, and affect before cognition can intervene. A melody can evoke grief we thought we had mastered or overcome. A rhythm can awaken vitality we didn’t know we’d suppressed. Harmony and dissonance mirror inner psychic tensions; persona and shadow, order and chaos. Music is not just a wellness tool, it’s a mediator between conscious identity and the unconscious field. When people write music or feel their way through improvisation, they are both expressing emotion and creating a dialogue between parts of themselves that are otherwise inaccessible. When groups sing together, something collective emerges, something Jung might call the collective unconscious finding temporary voice.

If music affects wellbeing, it may be because wellbeing requires integration, which, in turn, requires symbolic expression. When we supress we eliminate the symbolic and the ritual, and the shadow, that accumulates in systems that favour productivity over expression, will eventually emerge.

For the full review published in Frontiers in Psychology, 2021, find the link here: Frontiers | How Do Music Activities Affect Health and Well-Being? A Scoping Review of Studies Examining Psychosocial Mechanisms

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