Hear “Weightless,” the Most Relaxing Song Ever Made, According to Researchers (You’ll Need It Today)

As I write this, it’s elec­tion night, and I do not need to tell you about the thick haze of fear in the air. I have already had a cou­ple friends ask me about resources for med­i­ta­tion and relax­ation. I’m no expert, but I have looked into var­i­ous ways to deal with stress and hyper­ten­sion. Med­i­ta­tion tops my list (and those of many men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als). At a very close sec­ond place: Music.

We’ve brought you many med­i­ta­tion resources in the past (see here, here, here, and here). And we’ve point­ed you toward four hours of free orig­i­nal med­i­ta­tion music to help you “not pan­ic,” cour­tesy of Moby. We’ve also brought you music to help you sleep, from com­pos­er Max Richter and many oth­ers. Now, we bring you what “a team of sci­en­tists and sound ther­a­pists” claim is “the most relax­ing song ever,” as Elec­tron­ic Beats informs us. You can hear the track, “Weightless”—by Man­ches­ter band Mar­coni Union and Lyz Coop­er, founder of the British Acad­e­my of Sound Therapy—above.

The song’s relax­ing prop­er­ties sup­pos­ed­ly work “by using spe­cif­ic rhythms, tones, fre­quen­cies and inter­vals to relax the lis­ten­er,” writes Short­List. I’ve had it on repeat for an hour and will tes­ti­fy to its effi­ca­cy. So can 40 women who “found it to be more effec­tive at help­ing them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Cold­play.” In this exper­i­ment and oth­ers, says UK stress spe­cial­ist Dr. David Lewis, “Brain imag­ing stud­ies have shown that music works at a very deep lev­el with­in the brain, stim­u­lat­ing not only those regions respon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing sound but also ones asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tions.”

Emotions—fear, rage, and disgust—are run­ning wild nation­wide. Jus­ti­fi­able or not, they can wreak hav­oc on our men­tal and phys­i­cal health if we can’t find ways to relax. “Weight­less,” reports The Tele­graph, “induced a 65 per cent reduc­tion in over­all anx­i­ety and brought [study par­tic­i­pants] to a lev­el 35 per cent low­er than their usu­al rest­ing rates.” That’s no small change in atti­tude, but if you find this atmos­pher­ic track doesn’t do it for you, maybe try out some oth­er tunes from the research team’s top 10 list of most relax­ing (hear them all in the playlist above):

1. Mar­coni Union and Lyz Coop­er – Weight­less
2. Airstream – Elec­tra
3. DJ Shah – Mel­lo­ma­ni­ac (Chill Out Mix)
4. Enya – Water­mark
5. Cold­play – Straw­ber­ry Swing
6. Barcelona – Please Don’t Go
7. All Saints – Pure Shores
8. Adelev­Some­one Like You
9. Mozart – Can­zonet­ta Sull’aria
10. Cafe Del Mar – We Can Fly

And then, again, there’s Moby’s four hours of ambi­ent sounds, Max Richter’s eight-hour Sleep, the work of Ger­man ambi­ent com­pos­er Gas, and hun­dreds of oth­er supreme­ly relax­ing pieces of music to bring your stress lev­els down to man­age­able. Maybe keep some relax­ing music on hand for extra-stress­ful moments, and as always, don’t for­get to breathe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness