Winter can be tough. What for generations was just something you lived with now has a name: seasonal depression. Seniors and people with disabilities are particularly hard hit by seasonal depression. There are a number of therapies in use, but today we’re going to focus on Music Therapy.

This quote shows some of the benefits of Music Therapy.

Music therapy—the clinical use of music to evoke visceral responses that help people heal, emotionally and even physically—has been shown to aid in everything from PTSD and pain management to speech recovery. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords famously credited it for helping her regain the ability to read, write, and speak after an assassination attempt, and a recent study out of the University of Pennsylvania found that music was just as effective as sedatives before an operation. But as those of us who have been in isolation for the last 10 months can attest, music can also keep you company—and it can have a direct effect on our parasympathetic nervous system, which works to slow our heart rate and breathing when we’re stressed.

Part of the reason SMPL Technologies developed our SMPL Music Player and SMPL Radio & Music Player was to help facilitate music therapy in the home. Even