If you’re not used to it, making music may seem like an odd way to combat stress. You might imagine the nerves of performance and the risks of getting it wrong. Yet there’s plenty of evidence that, appropriately tailored, programmes of music making can be a really effective route to reducing the everyday episodes of stress that we are all subject to, treating the symptoms of chronic stress, and even effective as part of a range of therapies for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). And you don’t need to be a highly accomplished musician to get these benefits. We think of stress in many ways, but from a biological viewpoint stress is a source of changes to the way the brain regulates hormonal activity in the body, i.e. between the nervous system and the endocrine system via the neuroendocrine system . This system regulates many processes in the body including the immune system. In particular, secretion of neurohormones regulates the hypothalamus , which is altered by physical and em