Your Playlist Can Change Your Life

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Pages: 2

When assigned our advanced project, we decided to tackle mindfulness. Both of us have had similar experiences with meditation and we loved the idea of meditation as a mindful practice, but sticking to a daily routine always became impossible. It always felt like we were failing ourselves. After several discussions, we discovered that music played a large role in both of our lives. So naturally, we jumped on the idea to focus on music as a tool for mindfulness.

We found a lot of documentation about music and its effect on the brain, but we really hit the jackpot when we read, “Your Playlist Can Change Your Life” by Galina Mindlin, Don Durousseau and Joseph Cardillo. This book gave us a foundation to create a template to use music as a mindful
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This model guides clients through the process of creating personalized music playlists for different life situations. Any client can use and benefit from the playlist theory model.

ADDers do not naturally pause to pay attention and music can help us pay attention more deeply and more consistently. ADDers are often excited with the idea of a meditation practice, but concerned that they can’t sit still through it and won’t be able to maintain a daily practice. It becomes something to dread, so it eventually fizzles out. For this reason, we chose to view our playlist guide through an ADD lens. We included situations which commonly affect ADDers.

At this point, the majority of both of our practices is teens, so we chose to gear this guide towards teenagers. Because it’s especially difficult for teens to maintain a meditation or mindfulness practice and music is so ingrained in their everyday culture, this playlist model is a natural fit for that population. Kids are tuned into music. It is individual, yet a common thread that links them together. At no other time in your life is music so powerful. Music is present at schools, parties, proms, football games, etc. Music fuels teen angst. Coaches may find teens more amenable to, and even excited about, a musical mindfulness