Anyone interested in personal development, mental health and sustainable stress management will sooner or later come across therapeutic writing or journaling.

The benefits are manifold: it helps to clear the mind, reduce stress and can support us with various goals. For example, a career journal can make an important contribution to improving or changing your professional life, while a dream journal can provide valuable insight into suppressed feelings.

Despite all these benefits, it’s not always easy to stay on the ball – and regularity is the key to effective journaling. Personally, I’ve found that I find it easier when I associate writing with other positive things. Music can be a big factor here. With the right soundtrack, I can get into the flow even better and get my thoughts from my head onto paper.

What makes a good journaling playlist?

For me, journaling music should be relaxing. The process of therapeutic writing is about switching off, and I like to be supported by chilled music.

I also don’t want the music to distract me from my writing. It can happen that you’re listening to music and suddenly a certain song lyric comes to mind that brings up a memory or association – and the flow of thoughts can be interrupted or an idea can vanish. That’s why I prefer music without lyrics when journaling.

Last but not least, the journaling soundtrack can also be catchy. While I usually don’t like it when every song sounds “similar”, this is more of an advantage for me when writing.

Try it for yourself!

The journaling playlist I’ve put together for you meets these criteria. You can expect half an hour of relaxing music that can help you get into the right mood and concentration and let your thoughts flow.

Let’s go – fire up the playlist, grab a pen and paper and get started! I wish you lots of fun.

Magical Mantras

Just as it wasn’t love at first sight between yoga and me, it wasn’t with mantras either.

“It’s all too esoteric for me”, I thought at the time. I, who had already discovered an interest in tarot cards as a teenager, suddenly found this music “too esoteric”. What irony!

The first time I attended a yoga class in which mantras were recited at the beginning and end, I had to stifle my laughter because I found it so absurd. Overall, I felt a little uncomfortable and strange with it. But over time I got used to it and no longer found anything strange about it.

How I learned to appreciate mantras

The fact that I had gotten used to it, however, only meant that I simply tolerated this aspect of yoga classes without thinking anything of it. I was still a long way from becoming a mantra fan.

During the first intensive weekend of the yoga teacher training course, I experienced a satsang for the first time. Satsang is an event where people first meditate together before chanting mantras together. This is followed by a few Hindu rituals. This was completely new to all of us and at first we didn’t really know what to make of it all. But interestingly, we quickly warmed to it. While the days in general and the satsangs in particular felt like an eternity at first, they just flew by on later weekends.

We had become so comfortable with the topic that we went to the cinema together to watch the movie “Mantra – Sounds into Silence”. Many of the training group went along and it was a wonderful evening. After the movie, we had dinner together and talked about the movie. It was a documentary that not only featured mantra musicians but also scientists. Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it yet!

The absolute breakthrough came when I took part in a mantra yoga class, which was absolutely magical for me. The asanas were held for longer and accompanied by matching mantras played live on the harmonium. A wonderful experience that I described at the time as “flossing for the soul”.

The Mantra Playlist

Maybe you are still as skeptical about mantras as I was at the beginning. That’s completely okay! With this playlist, I want to appeal to doubters and fans alike.

If you’re more in the first category, try to let go of the “esoteric” image and simply see the mantras as beautiful music. Yes, the content is spiritual. Yes, it often pays homage to Hindu deities. But none of this need concern you if you are unspiritual but are still looking for some inner peace. Meditating with mantras can have a very positive influence on the spinning carousel of thoughts; completely independent of the content, which you won’t understand anyway if you’re not a Sanskrit expert.

If you are already a mantra fan, this playlist may provide you with some new inspiration or you may enjoy listening to well-known and popular mantras. Classics such as the Gayatri Mantra, Om Namah Shivaya or the Maha Mantra are of course not to be missed and are brought to life by well-known artists such as Deva Premal and Krishna. But lesser-known mantras also find their place here.

Use this playlist to meditate, practise yoga – or simply to unwind.

One of my first articles on this blog was about morning routines – in general, but also about mine in particular. I had already written this article before I published the blog. So some time has passed since then. However, what hasn’t changed is that I consider my morning routine to be essential and attach great importance to it.

Of course, sometimes it’s very short or I have to skip it completely because otherwise I simply can’t keep to my schedule or I’m ill. But even if I only spend a few minutes on the mat in the morning, it enriches my whole day.

Whether I play music or not depends entirely on my mood. In most cases, however, I like to start the day with some background music.

The search for the perfect morning yoga playlist

As my taste in music is very broad, I naturally have a huge selection when it comes to putting together the perfect songs for my morning practice. However, this very selection has sometimes made it difficult to choose something.

Sometimes I was in the mood for something calm, sometimes for something that would put me in a good mood for the day ahead. Of course, my choice of songs always depended on what I was planning to do on the mat. Did I want to start the day gently or sweat and get my circulation going?

I soon realized that I needed both. So I experimented with different songs, genres, artists and playlists.

 Good Morning Yoga Playlist

I have selected the “Good Morning Yoga” playlist along similar lines. It starts with a few gentle tracks without vocals, which are ideal if you like to start your practice gently. You might want to do some breathing exercises first, write in your journal, draw an inspiration card or just sit for a few moments and feel what you need today. This background music is also suitable for light warm-up exercises in a seated position.

The music gradually becomes a little more lively. You may already notice that you are starting to feel the urge to move (more). Norah Jones, Xavier Rudd and the Beatles get you in the morning mood with their vocals.

The playlist continues with some good mood tracks that lift your spirits but are not too “upbeat” and therefore go wonderfully with sun salutations and the like.

The playlist ends with a song that provides the perfect title for the day ahead: “Beautiful Day”. And that’s exactly what I wish you after listening to this playlist – a beautiful day.