No, I am not going to speak about medicines. Probably, they promise the easy way to relax (swallow a pill and relax) but we all know how harmful they can be to our health. The time people spend on relaxing activities has been lessening more and more today. The main reasons are increasingly demanding jobs and the pressures of modern society. And for these exactly reasons, the need for relaxation has become higher. There are, of course, many relaxation methods that one can use. Psychologists offer a wide range of them:

Going in for sports (at least twice a week)

Walking in the forest (15 minutes can be enough)

Sleeping in (not less than 10 hours)

Traveling (it takes time!)

Knitting (you may get a new sweater for yourself)

Meditation (requires at least half an hour)

Eat sweets, mostly chocolate (could be harmful to your body).

Talk to a friend (15 minutes chat)

Lots of puzzles: Word Search Puzzles, Jigsaw Puzzles, Crossword Puzzles (will take 15-50 minutes)

Watching your favorite movie (do you have 2 spare hours?)

All these relaxation techniques can help but they all require some free time. That is probably the biggest problem: above mentioned relaxation activities require you to dedicate time to them, and re-juggling your schedule just so you can relax can itself be stressful.

Is there a solution? Can a busy person relax not wasting time on relaxation? Sure, the answer is music. Just think! Music is always accessible. Music has always been a regular part of human society, from prehistory and especially today. Humans, even with the simplest tools, naturally gravitate towards music and the creation of music—this says a lot about the nature of music and how it affects humans. The mind and body responds and relaxes to music even in the midst of physically or mentally demanding activities. There is a lot of evidence that points to the beneficial effects of music on the mind and body (hence the existence of music therapy). The many effects of music on the mind and body has even warranted the existence of music psychology, a branch of psychology.

Music is the only tool for relaxation (and a very effective one) that you can take anywhere and use anywhere. With today’s modern technology, relaxing need not be something done to the exclusion of anything else. If you have a portable audio player, no matter where you are, you can listen to music and immediately start to relax. Even in the midst of work or some recreational activity (such as jogging or walking your dog) you can benefit from the relaxing effects of music. Note that the scientists proved that listening to background music even if you do not pay any attention to it can still be extremely powerful.

All you have to do is to buy an iPod or any mp3 player. Why those? Because they are far more convenient to use (small size and light weight) and you can fit more music on them (up to hundreds of albums of the music that you find relaxing). Now you can get your music everywhere with you and use its relaxation power whenever you like. Just rip your old CD’s and convert to mp3 format with Total Audio Converter. Now you can listen to your favorite music on your mp3 player.

By the way, the relaxation music is not necessarily slow tunes. You’d better listen to the music you like even if it is rock’n’roll than force yourself to relax listening to the music you hate. Everybody has his own relaxation music. Many people find the sounds of ocean waves or spring forest very suitable for a relaxation. You may download such tracks from the web, convert to the format your gadget supports with Total Audio Converter and enjoy it.

Listening to music can do wonders for a stressful life. Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination. Take the advantage of modern technologies and enjoy music in your busiest life!

About the Author

Mary Banas is a member of http://www.CoolUtils.com team. http://www.CoolUtils.com  team believes that software is supposed to save people time not taking ages to learn. We develop indeed user-friedly software.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

The Illusive Big Sound in Home Music Production

By Ermias Kebede

It is clear that booking studio time and spending hourly fee's to record your music is pretty much a thing of the past. Thanks to technology musicians can, with minimum recording equipment and relatively very little money produce great sounding recordings from the comfort of their bedroom studio's.

However, to make your bedroom studio production sound like it was recorded in a big studio and have that "big sound" is till a tricky endeavor that requires attention. Here are some basic tricks that can help you towards that goal.

If I have to pin point one major area in the production process that is crucial and extremely important in your music sounding big is the recording of the drums. If the drums are not recorded cleanly and featured prominently in the recording the whole song is going to sound weak and small. Short of having stand alone drum sequencers like the MPC series or even live drums, which is the best way to go for your drum recordings, if you are using drum sounds from a keyboard module here is one usual mistake you need to watch for. Avoid dubbing all your separate drum parts on one track.

Since it comes easy to sequence your drum parts on one track, we tend to leave it as is and end up having a weak sound as a result. Just because it sounds good in your studio doesn't mean it going to produce a big sound in the end.

The trick is to give each drum part two separate tracks and record them in stereo. For example when recording the hi-hat, record it on two separate tracks and pan the tracks left and right. The same with all the other parts; the bass drum, snare, toms and cymbals. Now you have ten or more tracks of just the drums, you then adjust the levels accordingly and dub the tracks to the final left and right tracks. This should give you a prominent drum sound on which you can build the rest of your song. The drums are the driving rhythm force of your song, so don't hesitate to give them a good sound level.

Once you have a good sounding drum tracks, here are some simple tricks to give your other instruments instant body and presence. Again the same rule applies here, double or even triple track the same instruments. Foe example if your song requires a background guitar chord parts, play the same part twice on two different tracks and pan them left and right. Bingo, that's an immediate body and presence for your song. You can use this same trick to guitar licks as well. The illusive "big sound" doesn't have to be that illusive if you use the techniques I described above. Hope this has been helpful and good luck with your recordings.

The Positive Affirmation Dilemma

By now you probably have read countless information on the power and magic of using positive affirmation techniques to improve your life. There is no doubt that positive affirmations repeatedly exposed to ones brain for a period of time will affect ones life for the better.

However, one thing that seems to be neglected in most of the information out there is the fact that we almost always don't come to the table with an empty subconscious mind ready to be filled with positive affirmations. We come loaded with all kinds of information, a considerable part of it negative, already well installed in our subconscious mind. There is very little information out there on what to do with the already existing garbage before we install new affirmations.

Although the problem is not a lack of space, the old information in the subconscious will still have an influence on our lives even if we add new affirmations on top of it. They don't necessarily cancel each other out.

By no means I am discrediting affirmation practices, in fact I completely believe in them and we should all pursue them aggressively. However, we will get even better results from them if we release the negative affirmations that we are currently holding on and playing out in our lives.

One of the fastest and better methods I know of how to do just that is called EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique. By simply tapping on specific energy meridians on the body this method helps to reconfigure the negative aspects of stored affirmation or memory into a positive energy flow, freeing us from its hold. To go into the specifics of this method is not the scope of this article but detailed info of EFT is available through the link: http://www.emotionalfreedom.etkglobal.com

Releasing old unproductive affirmations or beliefs is definitely going to take an effort and considerable amount of self awareness to accomplish. Therefore, it is a good idea to immediately start the positive affirmation practice while we are tying to release the old and unwanted ones. The order they are done is not a major issue as long as both aspects are addressed. This way we get the benefit of both approaches quicker. Good Luck and more success to you. For a great affirmation application software go to: http://www.mindzoom.etkglobal.com

Copyright©2007 etkglobal