The Healing Power of Music

[Chris Drinkwater]

I recently came across this article which I thought might be of interest. I personally find that listening to certain types of music, can be very therapeutic. Thoughts and comments welcome.

 

Harnessing the Healing Powers of Music

 

Dear Reader,

 

Nothing really engages the human brain like music.

 

The left brain enjoys rhythmic structures, chord progressions, and the way lyrics fit nicely. While the right brain soars on melody and emotional responses produced by the infinite combinations of instruments and voices.

 

But music's effect on the brain may go far beyond enjoyment. In fact, more than 5,000 certified music therapists in the US base their professional practice on the healing properties of music.

 

Along with these specialized therapists, neurologists have been conducting research that's already revealed evidence that music is a multipurpose therapeutic tool.

 

Less confusion, less depression

 

In a recent news article, US Harvard neurologist Dr. Gottfried Schlaug explains that when an area of the brain is disabled due to trauma or disease, music provides a unique way to reach that area, sometimes restoring impaired functions such as movement, memory, and speech.

 

For instance, researchers have found that music can establish a steady pace that helps patients with advanced Parkinson's disease initiate walking.

 

Music therapy has also been used to temporarily open up areas of memory for Alzheimer's patients. And in one study, mood and function significantly improved in subjects with dementia who learned that when they pushed a button they would be rewarded with a familiar song.

 

In research conducted by Dr. Schlaug, stroke victims who developed speech impairments were taught to improve speech fluency by expressing themselves with a chant-like form of singing.

 

Previously, I told you about a University of Helsinki, in Finland, study that examined 60 stroke patients. Divided into three groups, some patients listened to whatever music they liked, some patients listened to audio books, and some patients had no specific listening plan.

 

After three months, focused attention and mental operation abilities improved by nearly 20 per cent in the music group, but didn't improve at all in the other two groups. Verbal memory scores in the music group improved by a very large margin, and subjects were less confused and less depressed compared to the other groups.

 

One stroke expert told the BBC that more research is needed before widespread use of music as therapy can be recommended for stroke victims. This caution is laughable unless someone can produce any evidence at all of a single adverse side effect of music.

 

Chris

[catty]

I worked for a couple of years as a musician in a long-term health care facility ("nursing home" in the US) playing music sometimes as much as seven hours a day...for groups, large and small, as well as for individuals. Nothing was as effective as music for relaxation and healing, as well as evoking powerful memories and emotions in people. I had some profound experiences with some folks in their last days, as well as with their families. I even had a couple of different people on different occasions tell me they'd thought they'd died and gone to heaven--many folks have been deprived, through whatever unfortunate circumstances, the simple pleasure of sitting quietly and listening to music, or singing a song--many have never experienced the pleasure at all..

 

The following statement applied most aptly to this work:

 

"There's important work to be done anywhere...in the most unusual of places. That's the bard's mission: uplift; bring joy; mend the heart; put the overwhelming and irreversible heartbreak of life in context...celebrate to best of it."

Edited April 28, 2010 by catty

[Ken_Coles]

And music heals us emotionally too - I know it has helped me many times.

 

Chris Timson may share his own interesting experiences with healing via playing music. Chris?

 

Ken

[Leo]

I was told to play an instrument to help slow down a degradation in short term memory. It's supposed to work on two levels: technical and artistic.

 

Thanks

Leo

[bellowbelle]

Sometimes I have been upset about something and have managed to actually 'play myself to sleep' with the concertina. (Of course, it helps to be sure it won't fall on the floor once I'm 'out.') This usually means playing very free-form, random improvisations.

 

Listened again today to the cd 'Points Of Light' (not concertina), by Boris Mourashkin... that's definitely effective. I don't know exactly how deliberate his science is, but the music (bio-energetic psychotropic, it's called) seems to work.

 

Sometimes, too, it's the lyrics that are more centered on the healing, which helps. Recently listened again to cd 'Jazz Aviary' by Susan Krebs, which has a very soothing song 'The Peace Of Wild Things.' The music alone is effective, but with the positive boost of the words, it's very good medicine.

 

And there's more....

 

...also listening to Tierney Sutton's 'On The Other Side' cd, which has happiness as a running theme throughout the whole thing.

 

But... I confess, I DO listen to music while driving in my car, though some recommend against this. It's one of the few times I won't be interrupted and taken away from my listening! And yup, I keep my eyes on the road. And drink coffee...

[chris]

Hi

I think it's ok so long as you aren't playing concertina while driving!!!!!!!!!!!

I do wonder, tho' whether some of the sort of music which can be heard coming from cars (especially the very loud Bass & Drum type) is a major contributor to road rage

chris

 

 

But... I confess, I DO listen to music while driving in my car, though some recommend against this. It's one of the few times I won't be interrupted and taken away from my listening! And yup, I keep my eyes on the road. And drink coffee...

[Randy Stein]

I have played for years in Nursing Homes and long term care facilities. Many patients/residents are suffering from dementia and Alzheimers. Yet when I play music they recognize the light up, energize and begin to move to the music, clap, or remember lyrics and sing along.

I always listen to music in the car, usually R&B though I really like todays rock music (Passion Pit, Greenday, Phish, Vampires Weekend). Just in case though, I have Lunsa and Rachmaninoff in there too. And yes, always I have a cup o' joe.

rss

[michael sam wild]

My mum got confused in her 70s woud always go back to a more lucid time with a tune or song and it made her happier.

 

 

I was in a Morris team and we brought a lad out of a prolonged coma after a bad motorbike smash

 

 

I also played at a local gala and a boy who was completely autistc loved it- his carer always brought hm to listen to the melodeon , I couldn't see a difference as he was blind and immobile and in a wheelchair but the carer knew him so well. I made him a few tapes.

 

 

I did read somewhere, maybe in Musicophilia by Oliver Sachs that minor key tunes can invoke melancholy.. I did get worried when my son got depressed in his teens he was very involved in hip hop tunes and a lot were very repetitive and minor key music. Of course it may have been quite a few other factors associated with that lifestyle. He's pretty OK nowadays and still a musician, going to University in London to do a course next year. Not bad for a lad who dropped out of school at 16. The music has seen him through a lot. (Still not come back to trad yet!)

Edited April 28, 2010 by michael sam wild

[bellowbelle]

.............................(Still not come back to trad yet!)

 

 

'CoOl' fades with youth and beauty...trad lives on.

[michael sam wild]

Yep! My dad played Irish music and was pigsick when I started playing rock and roll and things. Now I'm back to the roots.

 

 

Re the thread. I just remembered when I went to see The Mary Rose , flagshipof Henry VIII which they pulled out of the sea. The musicians' quarters were next to the surgeons and they said it was part of a holistic healing approach. Maybe the men got better quick to get away from the noise

Edited April 29, 2010 by michael sam wild

[Kautilya]

Yep! My dad played Irish music and was pigsick when I started playing rock and roll and things. Now I'm back to the roots.

 

 

Re the thread. I just remembered when I went to see The Mary Rose , flagshipof Henry VIII which they pulled out of the sea. The musicians' quarters were next to the surgeons and they said it was part of a holistic healing approach. Maybe the men got better quick to get away from the noise

No need for scientific surveys, however interesting. Just listen :) :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdv_PcqBBI

 

be nice to have a 20-button playable score.... v diff to play.

The words

Art thou troubled? Music will calm thee,

Art thou weary? Rest shall be thine,

Music, source of all gladness,

Heals thy sadness at her shrine,

Music, music, ever divine,

Music music calleth with voice divine.

When the welcome spring is smiling,

All the earth will flow’rs beguiling,

After winter’s dreary reign,

Sweetest music doth attend her,

Heav’nly harmonies doth lend her,

Chanting praises in her train.

 

(Rothery's translation from Handel's Rodelinda, 1725.

Edited May 3, 2010 by Kautilya

[Fiddlehead Fern]

A friend of mine who is a piano tuner has sometimes gotten yelled at by patients in nursing homes when she's working for "not playing it right", as anyone who's heard a piano being tuned will know, it can be a slightly disconcerting experience and is not at all pleasing to the ears.

When she's done tuning, however, she always plays music for them and has found that the patients with Alzheimer's and similar conditions will remember hymns and Christmas carols perfectly and respond to them in a positive way.

 

As for myself, I know that listening to and/or playing music has probably saved my life a few times. Whenever I hit a rough patch, what always seems to pull me out are the people I love, the everyday beauty one notices when contemplating ditching it all, and the music that I love to hear and play. Melodies, harmonies, lyrics, whatever it is, it definitely has an impact, sometimes if for no other reason than the realization that someone else, at some point, has felt exactly the same way as I have, and managed to create some beautiful thing out of it.

And when I'm happy I'm always making some sort of noise. Singing, humming, tapping fingers or toes, skipping, whatever goes.

[catty]

A few more observations from my days providing music as palliative care.

 

Regarding Alzheimer's and other dementia: as Fern mentioned, music is particularly evocative. Folks with these compromised capacities and diminished short-term memory commonly recall lyrics and melodies more readily than aything else. One patient I worked with was very disoriented and usually had tremendous anxiety, yet was able to recall and sing hundreds of songs from her childhood, which immediately rendered her in very positive affective states. I've sat with dying persons who were largely unresponsive--but would summon strength to lift their head slightly to sing a stanza of a well-known song, then close their eyes and return to unresponsiveness. This obviously provided them with something very meaningful. This is a very powerful thing when a family watches their loved-ones suffering for days and weeks, then suddenly appear peaceful and even joyous for brief moments.

 

I found that the most effective instruments were violin and mandolin--probably because higher frequencies are more easily heard, and of course in the case of the violin the mimicry of the voice; concertina was effective as well, perhaps for these same reasons, as well as familiarity. Tunes and repertoire are important, but often the instrument itself can be very evocative, as sometimes persons with these deficits can relate with and be affected by sound and vibration in a very fundamental way.

Edited May 4, 2010 by catty

[michael sam wild]

That's reaally moving and uplifting , thanks.