There are five playlists in the Listening to Spravato® collection. Each one was built for a specific purpose — a specific phase of treatment, a specific emotional register, a specific kind of patient. None of them are general "relaxation" playlists. All of them are lyric-free by design.
This post explains what each playlist is, how it was built, and when to use it. If you want the short version — just the links — head to the free playlists page. If you want to understand the thinking behind the curation, read on.
A note on the underlying principle: Spravato® (esketamine) works in part by quieting the default mode network — the brain's self-referential narrator. Lyrics re-engage that network immediately. So does familiar music with strong personal associations. The playlists below are built around the opposite principle: music that creates space rather than filling it, that supports emotional processing rather than directing it.
LTS Official Original
Apple Music · YouTube Music
The flagship playlist. Built to carry a full 90-minute Spravato® session from onset through integration without requiring any manual intervention. The arc is deliberate: sparse and slow at the open, building to emotionally expressive orchestral and post-classical material at the peak, then unwinding back to warmth and stillness for integration.
Curation notes
Every track was evaluated against three criteria: no lyrics in any language the average English speaker would parse, no sudden dynamic spikes that could be jarring during the dissociative state, and a clear emotional arc that supports rather than competes with the therapeutic process. Tracks were tested across multiple personal sessions before inclusion.
Best for: First-time listeners, patients who want a single set-and-forget option, and anyone who prefers not to think about music during treatment.
LTS Jazz
Apple Music
Modal and post-bop jazz without vocals — Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and their contemporaries. Jazz occupies a unique position in music-assisted therapy: it is emotionally complex and harmonically rich without being predictable, which keeps the mind engaged without anchoring it to specific memories or narratives.
Curation notes
The selection deliberately avoids bebop (too fast, too cerebral) and smooth jazz (too familiar, too associated with background music). The focus is on modal jazz from the late 1950s through the 1970s — music that breathes, that has space, that rewards deep listening without demanding it.
Best for: Patients who find orchestral music too dramatic or cinematic, and those who respond well to jazz in everyday life. Also excellent for patients who have done multiple sessions and want variety at the peak.
LTS Classical
Apple Music
Minimal and early classical — Satie, Pärt, Bach (solo keyboard), and selected Romantic-era chamber pieces. This playlist works best at the bookends of a session: the sparse, unhurried quality of minimal classical is ideal for easing into the dissociative state, and its warmth makes it equally effective for the return.
Curation notes
The playlist avoids large orchestral forces, which can feel overwhelming during onset. The emphasis is on solo piano, small chamber ensembles, and works with significant silence between phrases. Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli style — built around the simplest harmonic relationships — is particularly well-suited to the onset phase.
Best for: Patients who find the Official Original too emotionally intense, those in early treatment who want a gentler introduction, and anyone who responds strongly to classical music in everyday life.
LTS Windham Hill
Apple Music
Acoustic guitar and piano from the Windham Hill Records catalog — Will Ackermann, Michael Hedges, George Winston, and their contemporaries. This is the warmest, most grounding playlist in the collection, built specifically for the integration phase when the medicine is wearing off and the mind is beginning to process.
Curation notes
Windham Hill's aesthetic — acoustic, unhurried, rooted in American folk and classical traditions — maps almost perfectly onto what the integration phase needs: music that feels like coming home. The fingerpicking guitar work in particular has a quality of presence and groundedness that supports the return to ordinary consciousness.
Best for: The final 30 minutes of any session. Also useful as a standalone listening experience for reflection and journaling after treatment.
LTS Gentle Love Safety
Spotify
The newest addition to the collection, and the only one available on Spotify. Built around a specific therapeutic intention: creating a felt sense of safety and warmth at the very beginning of a session, particularly for patients who carry anxiety into treatment. The selections are softer and more intimate than the Official Original’s opening.
Curation notes
The name reflects the curation philosophy: gentle enough not to startle, warm enough to feel held, safe enough to let go. This playlist was developed in response to feedback from patients who found even the Official Original’s opening too activating during their first several sessions.
Best for: Patients with high pre-session anxiety, those in early treatment, and anyone who has found the onset phase difficult. Can be used for the first 20 minutes before transitioning to the Official Original or LTS Jazz for the peak.
How to use them together
The simplest approach: use the LTS Official Original for every session. It's designed to carry the full arc without any intervention. Queue it before the session starts, put on your headphones, and let it run.
If you want more control — or if you've done enough sessions to have a sense of what works for you — you can build a custom arc from the collection:
- Onset (0–20 min): LTS Gentle Love Safety or LTS Classical
- Peak (20–60 min): LTS Official Original or LTS Jazz
- Integration (60–90 min): LTS Windham Hill or LTS Classical
The most important thing is to queue everything before the session starts. Once the medicine takes effect, you don't want to be making decisions about what to listen to next.
A note on platforms
Most of the playlists are on Apple Music. This is a deliberate choice: Apple Music's catalog depth and audio quality (lossless and Dolby Atmos on supported hardware) make it the best option for this kind of listening. The LTS Gentle Love Safety playlist is currently Spotify-only, which makes it accessible to the majority of streaming users.
YouTube Music versions are available for the Official Original playlist for patients who don't subscribe to a paid streaming service. The audio quality is lower, but the content is the same.
All playlists are free to follow. No account required to listen on YouTube Music; Apple Music and Spotify require a subscription for full playback.
Why this matters
Spravato® is an expensive, time-intensive treatment. Most patients do two sessions per week for four weeks during the induction phase, then monthly maintenance sessions. That's a significant investment of time, money, and emotional energy.
The music you listen to during those sessions is one of the few variables you actually control. The clinic controls the dose, the monitoring environment, the clinical support. You control what goes into your ears.
The playlists in this collection represent several years of thinking about that question — what music actually serves the therapeutic process, and why. They're not perfect, and they're not the only answer. But they're a starting point that's considerably more intentional than "whatever's in my library."
If you want to go deeper on the neuroscience behind these choices — why the default mode network matters, what happens to music processing during dissociation, why tempo and harmonic complexity affect the experience differently at different phases — the Listening to Spravato® book covers all of it.
Now available
The Listening to Spravato® Book
Genre guides, session playlists, and the science of music-assisted healing — by Justin Page