(edited to add sources) (edited to add music-nerdery)

Reviewing my notes from Wiseman, I can add the following recommendations for stress:

*Listen to classical music. Actually, if you check the study, only major, baroque music was helpful. I recommend the Brandenburg concerti.

*Spend at least 30 minutes outside on warm, sunny days.

*Laugh at least 15 minutes a day.

*Source: Music can facilitate blood pressure recovery from stress.

*Source: A warm heart and a clear head. The contingent effects of weather on mood and cognition.

*Source A correlational study of the relationship between sense of humor and positive psychological capacities

*Source The Effect of Mirthful Laughter on the Human Cardiovascular System

<music nerdery>

(background: I've trained in classical cello for 11 years. What follows has an inferential distance of 1 for me, and an inferential distance of quite a lot for a layperson. You should probably move along)

If you check out the music study, you'll notice that it talks about "classical" music, while I'm specifying "major, baroque". Here's why.

Classical and baroque music are different. Colloquially, "classical" refers to old music that typically gets played by violins and pianos and flutes and stuff. If you're versed in music history, "classical" refers to music from the classical period, which has certain defining characteristics that make it quite distinct from other periods, like the baroque period, much like heavy metal and blues quite distinct genres with their own defining characteristics.

The original study used Spring by Vivaldi and Canon in D by Pachelbel as "classical" music. If you're a layperson, these are perfectly representative pieces of classical music. If you're a music nerd, these pieces will tell you a lot about the effect of major, baroque music on blood pressure, but generalized to classical music is analogous to saying something like "all vertices of a square form right angles, thus the vertices of all quadrilaterals form right angles."

Baroque music is different from classical is different from jazz. We know (major, baroque) works and jazz doesn't; everything else is different enough I'm sketched out about generalizing from baroque to that. Here's why I'm fine with generalizing from (Vivaldi, Pachelbel) to (major, baroque), but not to the rest of classical.

Baroque music is noticeably lighter than more contemporary music because of (the bows, lack of endpins, use of harpsichord instead of piano, gut instead of metal strings, smaller ensembles, different wind instruments, fewer types of brass instruments, less overpowering brass instruments).

Also, baroque music tends to use just intonation, whereas more contemporary music tends to use equal temperament, and the music tested. This may be important because JI sounds better, even if it's less flexible. (Physically, JI sound waves a low-reducing integer ratios of each other, whereas ET sound waves form ratios of powers of the twelfth root of 2 of each other, so instead of having 3:2, you have 1:2^(7/12))

I specify major because it's more consonant (physically, in major and minor JI, sound waves reduce to low integer multiples of each other; in major, they tend to reduce more, so instead of having 5:4, you have 6:5).

So, until somebody goes out and tests Mozart Symphony no. 40, you're overstating your case if you claim the study I cited extends to anything beyond major, baroque music. Fortunately, all of the Brandenburg concerti are major and written by Bach, the preeminent baroque composer.

</music nerdery>