Playing meditation music as part of your meditation exercises, helps you to achieve a state of extreme relaxation, through alteration of your brainwaves.
There are a variety of music types to choose from, and each teacher and student of meditation, will have their own personal preference.
In order to achieve the desired state of consciousness, however, the meditation music that you listen to should have a specified number of beats per minute.
A student of meditation can find the influence that they need through the appropriate music, similar to how some writers listen to music while writing, to find inspiration.
You need not restrict your music selection to one that has been deemed suitable by other meditation teachers and students, but instead, choose one that you like to help you achieve the results that you are looking for.
There is one component of meditation music that should be present no matter what genre you are listening to, and that component is known as 'binaural beats'.
These musical beats repeat throughout the song as the same, slightly off-key note, that doesn't seem in tune with the rest of the piece.
By teaching your mind to pick out these beats, you will be able to find your way into the state of meditation with ease.
By training your mind to concentrate on these beats in the meditation music, you are performing a form of 'brainwave entrapment'.
The binaural beats in the music assists in slowing your brain activity from the Beta, or waking state, into a state of total relaxation, known as the Alpha state.
Once you have become skilled at meditating, with the assistance of some effective meditation music, you may even be able to get into a higher state of relaxation called Theta, in which you may actually sleep without knowing you are sleeping.