I've seen quite a few people post stories about going through a hard time, getting frustrated with life, getting mad at the general state of society, being depressed or lonely, and various other stressors that life has thrown at them.

I want to share with you guys some of the music that saved my life when I went through some of the worst portions of my mental illness. When voices were attacking with relentless fervor with stress from school, work, etc piling up, sitting back and listening to these would put my brain into a state that allowed me to rise above it and vanquish my inner demons.

When looking for or listening to healing music you need to take a few things into account. First, you need to stop listening to songs and instead listen to albums. By that, I'm not necessarily saying you need to listen to the whole CD that your favorite song was on, but rather true albums that do not have any seams between songs and you can't actually determine precisely where track two or five began. Some albums have very minimal seams between tracks and allow for the same results, sometimes it's just a quiet end and a quiet begin of the next track, or sometimes the songs are just so similar in style and the artist was developing with the whole album in mind so that it doesn't make a difference. This seamless or near seamless album structure is one of the things that will help mend your mind. Sit back, don't make any decisions, and just let the music pour over you for an hour, then move on to the next album you wish to listen to. So many people are listening to radio, playlists, internet radio, etc, which are good tools for locating music and music genres but should not be the way that you enjoy music as it can damage your focus.

When listening to a playlist created by you or someone else or even a music CD that is song based instead of seamless, you sit there in anticipation of what the next song is going to be or trying to force enjoyment of the current song because it's your favorite. You are anticipating the end of the current track, and not truly enjoying the song that you are currently listening to. As a result, many people end up listening to songs they enjoy on loop so they can enjoy the song. This also isn't really very healthy as there is no proper "end" to what you are listening to, and you have to decide when to end it by yourself. It also does have a proper "end" that interrupts your self-healing process.

Think of it like sleep. Would your body rather have 16 good quality 30 minute naps in a row where it wakes up and gets interrupted, or a full 8-hour continous sleep? Your mind is very similar when listening to music. It would much rather listen to a 1 hour continous quality album than get interrupted and readjust to a new song every 5 minutes.

Other ways to reduce the amount of distraction is to either listen to music that has no lyrics, minimal lyrics, or is in a language you do not know. This reduces the amount of friction in your brain as it's trying to decipher meaning from the lyrics, or trying to keep up with what the people are saying subconsciously.

Listening to albums like this can repair some of the ills that society pushes on us. We get pushed headlines and summaries of what's happening the world, we get bite sized information shares in the form of tweets or facebook posts, we get micromanaged at work into various metrics, we are constantly texting instead of sharing quality time with our friends, we play video games that are based on being killed repeatedly and starting over, etc. Think of music like a #goodlongread. In fact, go browse #goodlongread while listening to healing music or grab a book. Relax for the first half hour or so and focus on the music, then move on to do things that require your focus and are more passive activities and are not stressful or task oriented with the music in the background. You can also meditate if you are into that sort of thing.

Now that my ranting is over, let's get to the actual music.

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Williamson - A Few Things to Hear Before We All Blow Up [Spotify] [Magnatune] [YouTube]

Eitan Reiter - Places I Miss That I Haven't Been To [YouTube]

Robert Miles - Organik [Spotify] [YouTube]

BT - Monster Soundtrack [YouTube]

Shulman - In Search of a Meaningful Moment [YouTube]

Amon Tobin - ISAM [Spotify] [YouTube]

Flashbulb - Soundtrack to a Vacant Life [Spotify] [YouTube]

m-seven - Activate [Spotify]

Solar Fields - Blue Moon Station [Spotify] [YouTube]

Xerxes - The Mirror Formula [Spotify] [YouTube]

Asura - Lost Eden [YouTube]

Ott - Skylon [Spotify] [YouTube]

Broadway Project - Compassion [Spotify] [YouTube]

Sophie and Ives - Untie Me [Spotify]

Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place [Spotify] [YouTube]

Shpongle - Museum of Consciousness [Spotify] [YouTube]

Little People - Mickey Mouse Operation [Spotify] [YouTube]

Bliss - Afterlife [Spotify] [YouTube]

Chaos Control - Instrumental Alchemy [Spotify] [YouTube]

Patrick O'Hearn - So Flows the Current [Spotify] [YouTube]

William Orbit - Hello Waveforms [YouTube]

Carbon Based Lifeforms - Hydroponic Garden [Spotify] [YouTube]

This Will Destroy You - S/T [Spotify] [YouTube]

Sigur Ros - () [Spotify] [YouTube]

Air - Le Voyage Dans La Lune [Spotify] [YouTube]

Bluetech - The Divine Invasion [Spotify] [YouTube]

Entheogenic - Spontaneous Illumination [Spotify] [YouTube]

Spatialize - In the Midst of Myriads [Spotify] [YouTube]

Hibernation - Some Things Never Change [Spotify] [YouTube]

Jon Hopkins - Opalescent [Spotify] [YouTube]

Jami Sieber - Hidden Sky [Magnatune] [Spotify] [YouTube]

Kaya Project - Walking Through [Spotify] [YouTube]

Kuba - How the Future Sounded [YouTube]

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Have albums or music that has helped you get through a hard time? Share it in the comments, it doesn't necessarily have to be the same style as all of this, I know I tend to listen to ambient psychedelic electronica mostly. I tried to filter out some of the lyrically oriented music that I like as well for "healing" since it went against the ideas I presented at the top (Goldfrapp, Massive Attack, Zero 7, and Thievery Corporation immediately come to mind here). Also of note, almost all orchestral or classical music fits this description as well, with the exception of composers that did marches or such like John Philip Sousa.

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Let us remember

Life's such a beautiful mistake

It's precious and fragile

Sometimes more than we can take

It's stronger than fire

Greater than all things men create

And I don't know what you want from me

But I don't want to be perfect anymore

-Brian Transeau (BT)