How Do I Relax? A Soundtrack

If you asked me how I relax, I wouldn’t begin with a chair or a cup of tea. I’d begin with music. My relaxation comes with a soundtrack, one that slows the pulse, deepens the breath, and makes time feel longer than it really is. Silence has its place, but music often does what silence cannot—it draws me gently into stillness.

The playlist begins with Train to Okinawa, a collaboration between Riley Lee on shakuhachi and Peter Grayling on cello. The shakuhachi is not just an instrument; it is breath given voice. Each note arrives like an exhale, teaching my body how to rest. The cello grounds the sound, a reminder that calm is both airy and rooted.

From there, the album turns toward Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1. Spare and delicate, it creates a quiet architecture of sound where silence is part of the melody. It leans against me rather than demands my attention.

Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel deepens the experience. The repeated piano notes stretch time itself, while the violin line hovers like light across still water. It feels luminous, almost sacred—an invitation to enter a slower, gentler world.

Relaxation also needs depth, and I find it in the cello suites of Bach, played by Yo-Yo Ma. The Prelude in G major resonates like a voice humming close to the ground—rich, generous, and deeply human. Here, rest isn’t light and fleeting; it has weight and warmth.

For transcendence, there is Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe, composed for The Mission. The oboe line sings with both sorrow and beauty, as though it has learned to carry grief without being crushed by it. Relaxation here is not escape but transfiguration—pain translated into tenderness.

The journey continues with Anouar Brahem’s Le pas du chat noir. His Tunisian oud, joined by piano and percussion, moves with feline grace—quiet, careful, full of small surprises. It reminds me that peace can be playful as well as solemn.

Even Bolivia finds its place in this soundtrack. The fusion of European forms and Indigenous rhythms in Bolivian Baroque carries both history and hope, suggesting that rest is often discovered in unlikely blends.

And so the circle closes where it began, with Train to Okinawa. The shakuhachi exhales once more, the cello echoes, and I am reminded that relaxation is not a destination but a rhythm—breath in, breath out, again and again.

This is my soundtrack of rest: a playlist woven with flutes, oboes, and cellos, but more than that, with stillness, spaciousness, and the strange gift of music to open windows into peace. Perhaps your own playlist would sound different, but the invitation is the same: to listen, and in listening, to breathe.