Music Healing Power

Music Therapy

Music has the power to facilitate physical, mental, emotional and spiritual healing by reducing anxiety and stress, alleviating dissatisfaction, promoting clarity and peace, increasing focus, and restoring balance and hope. Some studies have found that music therapy can lower heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate and that it can relieve chemotherapy-induced nausea, vomiting and depression. By doing these things, music can dramatically improve your quality of life and overall sense of wellbeing. Although music cannot cure disease or illness, its positive effects can be maximized by using music therapy in connection with physical exercise, yoga, meditation, massage therapy, aromatherapy, and in other parts of your daily life.

Music Therapy

The beauty of music has the power to heal mind, body and soul. Music is often considered the medicine of the mind. This universal language of the mankind not only bridges borders made by human beings, but also has a profound effect on human psyche and body. The power of music that can cure the heart and mind is now being used in certain healing therapies as well. This had led to the birth of the term ‘Music Therapy’. The interpersonal process in which music and all its facets are used by the therapists, to help their patients in improving or maintaining their health, is termed Music Therapy.

What Is Music Therapy

Music Therapy is a branch of psychology wherein its mental, physical, emotional, social, aesthetic and spiritual, all the aspects are, individually or combined, to address people’s needs. The needs of the client or the patient can be addressed either through the direct use of music or through the relationships that develop between the client and the therapist. Music therapy can be used with individuals of all ages, to help the body fight various diseases and conditions.

Music therapy is considered as one of the expressive therapies which entails the use of creative arts as a form of therapy. Turco-Persian psychologist and music theorist Al-Farabi discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul, as early as, the 9th century in his treatise "Meanings of the Intellect". In India, music therapist Rajasree Mukherjee has used Indian classical music as an integral part of meditation techniques. The usage of music to heal is gradually gaining momentum and becoming a growing field of health care.

How Music Therapy Works

Brain waves respond to different kinds of music in different ways. Strong beats stimulate the brain waves, while a slow tempo promotes a meditative and soothing state of mind. Music therapy can also counteract the damaging effects of chronic stress by altering the breathing and heart rate. Music helps keep anxiety and depression at bay by bringing more positive state of mind. Listening to music can enormously increase optimism and control pessimistic aspects, like worry, bias and anger. Controlling emotions, lowering blood pressure and restoring the functioning of the liver are some of the benefits that music therapy boasts of.

The Benefits

As music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways, it is being used to help cancer patients and even children with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Music Therapy can also be designed to:

• Promote wellness
• Manage stress and pain
• Ward off depression
• Alleviate pain
• To calm patients
• Enhance memory
• Improve communication
• Promote physical rehabilitation
• Ease muscle tension

The Areas

In this fast paced and rapidly changing world, the importance of music therapy is also on the increase. Public awareness about this therapy is necessary on a much wider scale, so that people enjoy increased access to quality music therapy services. Some commonly found areas where music therapy is majorly being used include developmental works with individuals with special needs and songwriting and listening in reminiscence/orientation work with the elderly. It is also used for physical rehabilitation in stroke victims by relaxation and brainwave synchronization.

Music to overcome Depression

Depression has become a common terminology being utilized by everyone alike. Unable to comprehend the incidents or events in the right spirit may be one of the reasons for landing in depression. Comprehending the activities of others in the social situation, either in the classroom, in the midst of peers, understanding the concepts toward studies, even it applies while learning to play a new game in the case of children. Every individual should be trained to develop a clear thinking process as habit. Too much negative thinking may also lead to depression.

Depression in the clinical sense is the extreme version of the more ordinary emotion of sadness and low spiritedness. During depression the activities of brain is considerably reduced especially in the frontal areas. On account of this, activities pertaining to the frontal areas of brain may not be able approached or comprehend clearly. The number works and planning will be of substandard level. To come out of this there are many techniques available in the health awareness field. With out much side effects and positive after effects, Classical Music with specific notes enhances activity in the frontal areas of brain.

Learning takes place only with memory. Learning is the process of building up memories for future use. Neural basis for retention is termed as ‘engram’. Memory is the ‘static residue’ of past activity in a neural pathway. Each learning trial involves reactivating the same neural circuit. Eventually, the circuit is in some sense permanently modified, and when it is stimulated only partially later, the entire circuit is reactivated.Music enhances the bio-chemical nature of the memory. The swaras/notes of the selected ragas are played in such a way to activate the potential chemical agent. The individual memory is the prime satisfying aspect in the therapy. Music as a refined sound gets into the neural circuit to take its own specified neural path. There are a number of chemical substances are involved in the “memory molecule”.The selected ragas given in this album are very special with its effects with regard to its notes/ swaras and the way it has been essayed. These ragas helps to activate the neural circuit and enhance the concentration of the individual.

Music to overcome Fear and Anxiety

Patients undergoing surgical procedures often experience anxiety in anticipation of events that will be unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or have undesirable results. Even minor surgical procedures can produce anxiety in patients, which can affect their postoperative recovery and risk for physiological complications. Music is an easily administered, nonthreatening, noninvasive, and inexpensive tool to calm preoperative anxiety.

1. Music helps to achieve a deep state of relaxation.

2. Music relieves insomnia.

3. Music enables patients to recall suppressed memories.

4. Music helps to achieve lower blood pressure.

5. Music normalizes cardiac arrhythmia.

6. Racing heart beat/rate will slow down and synchronize with music’s rhythm.Exposing to classical music regularly facilitate few positive benefits in patients.Music helps to attain comfort from a discomforting condition.Music gives familiarity in a strange environment.Music paves way for distraction from fear, pain and anxiety.