Music Therapy and its magical powers!

When doctors don’t seem to know exactly what is wrong with us they call it stress. Stress bought on by anxiety, work, children, relationships, environment….the list goes on. Stress is everywhere it seems and stress accounts for more sick days from gainful employment than any other ailment. It’s lurking just out of sight, although anyone who has ever actually seen stress is one up on me….but it’s there isn’t it? Sitting in the murky backwaters of our minds waiting for an excuse or incident which will trigger it into action so it can leap and jump and demand not only our attention but also our health our well-being and our happiness. Stress is a confidence killer and it’s insidious. It might be invisible but it hurts and it’s real and it’s downright yukky.

So how would it be if we decided to play stress at its own game and fight it with something equally invisible? A mighty power that is known to us all, available in some form to most of us and which has amazing results!

What if we used Music? Or Music Therapy as some call it.

Music is invisible. As is laughter. As are hugs. All of these can help reduce stress. They can all help stress to return to its dwelling space out of sight or can help to dissolve it and take away its power. And you know I can talk laughter and hugs all day long but today I wanted to delve into how and why music and music therapy can be such an aid. I wonder why it is that music can help change our state, our mood, our feelings and thereby reduce stress.

I am intrigued…. what is it about music therapy that makes it so brilliant?

Although music has been used as a therapeutic and medicinal healing agent throughout history, music therapy has only become recognised relatively recently. Apparently, according to Breitenfeld, music can promote physical rehabilitation, manage stress, improve communication, enhance memory, alleviate pain, and help to express feelings. During my work with people dealing with Dementia I have even seen how music can help people dealing with this most hideous disease.

The Philosopher Kant called Music The quickening Art. He thought of music as an aid to reawakening the mind and I think we could all agree that music does change our mood sometimes for the better and sometimes the worse. But using Music as a therapy is an exciting avenue to go down whether we think we need ‘therapy’ or not!

In an article titled Music Therapy from Grove Music Online I learned a lot about what music therapy is. According to the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), “Music Therapy is an established healthcare profession that uses music to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals of all ages. Music therapy improves the quality of life for persons who are well and meets the needs of children and adults with disabilities or illness. Music therapy interventions can be designed to: promote wellness, manage stress, alleviate pain, express feelings, enhance memory, improve communication, and promote physical rehabilitation.”

I love this!

Music to promote wellness? Alleviate pain?,,,,,heck why not use it for all this and more!

Music therapists can be found working closely with psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors. You can find one here: www.bamt.org but if you don’t want to go to, or use a therapist, why not become your own!?

Breitenfeld says that “Music as an auditory art reflects a basic human need for pattern, form, and organization. Music can provide an aesthetic way to control and enhance the auditory environment. Human responses to music include the physiological, affective, cognitive, and associative. There are few individuals for whom music of some type does not have an attraction.8

I know myself that a single song has the power to change my mood and different chords release different endorphins in the body. A minor chord usually has a sound that the human mind relates to as sad or dark whereas a major chord sounds happy and light. Some songs are so moving to an individual that they cause a person to cry for reasons they cannot explain. This phenomenon illustrates the strong psychological affect that music can have on a person.

It’s easy to understand how music can be used as a therapy to release emotion or used as a way to learn how to relate to others through emotional music. Music can also be scientifically used to access different parts of the brain that aren’t normally used.

One story I heard was of Gabrielle Gifford went through music therapy treatment to help her regain her speech after she was shot in the head. Gifford suffered from aphasia — the inability to speak because of damage to the language pathways in her brain’s left hemisphere. But by layering words on top of melody and rhythm, she trained her brain to use a less-travelled pathway to the same destination. Although the part of the left hemisphere of Gifford’s brain had been damaged, she was still able to regain her speech by using the musical side of her brain. The part of your brain that is used for speech is entirely separate from the side that processes music. Gifford was able to regain her speech by focusing on the right hemisphere of her brain and teaching it to associate words with music. This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity; the brain’s ability to pave new pathways around damaged areas. Without music therapy Gifford might not be able to speak again. This is a perfect example of how music therapy is effective and can improve the lives of the people it services.

In a world where stress is prevalent and we are constantly being offered medication to address the issue how about we start to use the magic of music to heal ourselves. How about the next time you feel a bit wound up, out-of-sorts or in a funk instead of heading for the vino or the Valium find a favourite tune and use music as YOUR therapy.

I know that when I need a boost its ITones and Dance Monkey for me, whilst Louis Armstrong and It’s a Wonderful World reminds me how joyous our world is when we take time to appreciate it.

Louis is HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWzrABouyeE

ITones HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0hyYWKXF0Q

I really hope you’ll use music to turn down the volume of stress and turn up the volume of your own happiness. A more confident and happier you might simply be a dance or a wiggle away!!

 

And, if you need a feel-good…..take a look at how Music helped Henry to enjoy the ‘Awakening of Music

 

References:

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2257019.

https://www.explore-life.com/en/articles/the-power-of-music-as-the-quickening-art

Moisse et al.,“Gabby Giffords: Finding Words through Song,” abc News (2011): n.p., accessed October 13, 2014, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_MindBodyNews/gabby-giffords finding-voice-music-therapy/story?id=14903987

Darko Breitenfeld, International Review of Music Aesthetics and Sociology, Vol. 1, No.2 (Dec., 1970), pp. 212-213