Mindful Jazz and Preferred Music Interventions Reduce Pain Among Patients With Chronic Pain and Anxiety: A Pilot...

A mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) focused on listening to music might reduce chronic pain and provide a new approach to overcoming challenges from traditional MBIs (e.g., breathing). Due to the potential unpredictability and unfamiliarity of jazz, an MBI focused on listening to improvisational jazz music might be a particularly efficacious pain reduction intervention. This pilot study explores whether mindfully listening to music, including jazz, can reduce pain-related outcomes.

Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) participants (n=30 per group, N = 120 total) were enrolled online between 12/7/2023 and 2/8/2024. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups in a 2 (Mindful Music Listening/Intervention vs. Music Education/Control) X 2 (Preferred Music (choose their own music genre) vs Jazz (assigned to listen to improvisational jazz)) experiment, for a total of four groups (Mindful Jazz, Mindful Music, Jazz Education, and Music Education). Patients in each group were provided with training in either mindful listening to music (Intervention groups) or music education (Control groups) and given four sets of weekly recordings related to their group for daily listening/practice. Patients completed online surveys on pain-related outcomes (e.g., pain catastrophizing, pain intensity, and anxiety) pre- and post-training (immediate outcomes), and throughout a four-week period (longer-term outcomes). The main outcomes analyses compared the intervention and control groups, with secondary sub-analyses among participants who listened to at least 2/3 of their recordings (10 minutes), and among those who experienced a clinically meaningful (20%) reduction in pain.

Mindful Jazz and Mindful Music (Intervention) participants reported significantly less pain intensity (p < 0.001) and pain unpleasantness (p < 0.001) immediately after the training relative to the Jazz Education and Music Education (Control) participants. Mindful Jazz participants also reported a significant reduction in anxiety compared to the Jazz and Music Education groups (p < 0.05). Throughout the four-week period, Mindful Jazz participants reported less pain intensity relative to both control groups (Jazz and Music Education); Mindful Music participants reported significantly less pain intensity relative to only the Jazz Education participants. Mindful Jazz participants reported a >20% decrease in pain intensity more frequently than Jazz Education (Χ²=48.71, p<0.001), Music Education (Χ²=65.13, p<0.001), and Mindful Music (Χ²=8.74, p=0.003) participants. Similarly, among the instances when a participant listened to at least 10 minutes of their audio recording, the proportion who achieved a >20% decrease in pain intensity differed significantly ((Χ²=84.03, p<0.001): Jazz Education, 29%; Music Education, 26%, Mindful Jazz, 50%; Mindful Music 41%).

Mindfully listening to music can help to reduce pain-related outcomes. Both music education (i.e., music listening without mindfulness training) and mindfully listening to music (i.e., listening with mindfulness training) helped to decrease pain and anxiety from baseline to follow-up. However, mindful listening reduced pain to a greater amount compared to music education, suggesting that mindfully listening to music is a more impactful pain reduction intervention compared to listening without mindfulness training. Future research is warranted with a larger sample.