Choosing the Right Music for Your Session

Music holds a uniquely transformative role in psychedelic therapy, with research showing that it can deepen emotional experiences, evoke powerful imagery, and even facilitate moments of catharsis. 

At the same time, studies indicate that individual responses are deeply subjective, with factors like cultural background, emotional resonance, and personal taste influencing how music is perceived. In addition, aligning music with these personal preferences has been shown to enhance therapeutic outcomes, amplify emotional processing, and facilitate peak experiences and insights.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the fundamentals of the Mindbloom music library, how to use the features and filters available, and offer tips for choosing the music that best supports your therapeutic goals.

Understanding the Mindbloom Library

Appreciating that music preferences are highly diverse and unique, we’ve thoughtfully developed a robust library that offers a variety of options and musical characteristics that can be tailored to your individual needs.

Style

Style refers to the instrumentation, sonic palette, and tradition in which the music is grounded.

• Acoustic: Organic instrumentation, typically featuring more recognizable instruments such as piano or strings. 
• Ambient: Prominently features electronic instrumentation and soundscape elements. 
• World Music: Draws on global music traditions, ranging from Indian raga to West African rhythms. This style can add a ceremonial aspect, connecting listeners to broader, universal sound traditions.
• Multiple Styles: Offers a blend of the above, allowing for diversity in experience.

Intensity

Intensity reflects the emotional force and dynamic range of a track—how much it guides and shapes the experience of a session.

• High Intensity: Ideal for those who want the music to lead them through an emotional journey, creating a structured narrative to follow.
• Low Intensity: Provides a softer, less directive background - ideal for those who don’t want music to take center stage.

Mood

Mood represents the emotional tone or “color” of the music—setting the overall atmosphere for your experience. Like colored glasses, the mood sets the tint—uplifting, calming, or sentimental—while intensity is the amount of light passing through them. 

• Uplifting: Can evoke feelings of hope, inspiration, and vitality—helping you tap into a sense of positivity and motivation.
• Calming: Gentle and introspective, this mood encourages relaxation and reflection, providing a soft, grounding presence to center yourself.
• Sentimental: Evocative and tender, sentimental music can help you explore memories, emotions, and moments of vulnerability. An excellent choice for connecting with a deeper emotional current.

Features

Features are additional elements woven into the music that add layers of depth and richness to your experience. Think of them as “spices” in a track, subtly shaping the therapeutic atmosphere. 

• Nature Sounds: From flowing water to gentle forest ambiance, nature sounds can ground the listener, invoking a sense of connection to the natural world and fostering an open state for reflection.
• Binaural Beats: These sound frequencies are designed to influence brainwave activity, helping to deepen relaxation. 
• Non-Lyrical Vocals: Soft, wordless vocals provide a human touch without introducing specific ideas or narratives—offering an emotive, supportive presence. 

Choosing the Right Music for Your Session

While each session provides a default track based on your program and session, we encourage you to explore our library to find music that aligns with your preferences and intentions. Using filters for style, mood, intensity, and features, you can easily discover tracks that work best for you.

Tips for Personalizing Your Experience

Your preferences outside of therapy may not always translate directly to psychedelic sessions. Here are some ways to find what works best for you in this context:

• Reflect on Your Previous Sessions: If a particular track didn’t resonate, try to identify what felt off. Use our filters to adjust your next session. For example:
  • Felt unsettled? Consider filtering for tracks with an uplifting or calming mood.
  • Music became distracting? Try moderate or low-intensity music that plays a more passive role in the session experience. 
  • Bored or struggled with a wandering mind? Explore high-intensity tracks which might offer more structure.

Remember that letting the music “take” you to different places can be a valuable part of the journey. A wandering mind isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it can open doors to unexpected insights (as long as it’s not drifting to thoughts of what’s for dinner). Trust the music to guide you, and allow yourself to flow with it.

• Try Different Guided Options: In addition to tailoring the music to fit your personal preferences, we also offer options with differing amounts of spoken guidance:
  • Spoken Intro: The spoken word is limited to the 7 minute “onset” period, helping to orient you and plant seeds for the remainder of your session.
  • Guided: Offers additional, intermittent narration every 5-10 minutes throughout the session to help you stay grounded.
  • Music Only: Great for users who want to dive deeply into their own inner world without verbal accompaniment.

Other Tools

In addition to the filters mentioned above, we offer several other tools for exploration and personalization. Previews allow you to sample tracks before making a selection, so you can get a sense of how each piece resonates with you. 

The search function enables you to seek out tracks by various characteristics, including style, mood, intensity, and even topics like self-love, or perspective shift - giving you a direct path to the tracks that align with your goals. 

If you come across tracks that stand out, you can also “like” them to easily refer back to your favorites in future sessions. 

Together, these features are designed to help you tailor your therapeutic journey and ensure that the music you select feels supportive and meaningful.

For a truly immersive experience, we recommend listening with headphones, which help bring out the rich nuances of each track and support a more inward-focused journey. 

Conclusion

Music in psychedelic therapy is deeply subjective—what resonates with one individual might fall flat for another. Recognizing this, we’ve designed our music library with flexibility in mind, providing carefully crafted tracks, filters, and features that empower you to explore and find what feels right for each session. 

As you navigate our library, let this guide be a resource for discovering music that resonates with you, helping each session feel supported, meaningful, and tailored to your personal path of healing and self-discovery.