Relaxation leads to the lowering of blood pressure and an increase in the body's immune response
"SCIENCE IS uncovering roles for music in everything from releasing tension and improving mood to helping brain damaged stroke patients regain their ability to walk," said a recent report on BBC.com.
The report quoted several experts in the medical field who note that, over the past decade, major strides have been made in figuring out the neurological basis for music's beneficial effects, helping music therapy and its practitioners make the move into the mainstream.
Because music is so strongly linked to emotions, some music therapists use it as a tool for processing moods. Using what is known as "isomoodic" therapy, a therapist and a patient will decide on a piece of music that the patient wants to hear that fits with their current mood, and then gradually work towards more positive selections.
Address issues
Researchers say that, if one is angry, over the course of 45 minutes, you work into something which is much more calming and soothing to the point where you relax. During the course of such sessions, music can help people address issues, like what made them so angry in the first place.
Music therapists allow patients to pen lyrics to songs and use that as a vehicle of self-expression. Because of music's ability to evoke feelings that may be difficult to verbalise, its use as a therapeutic vehicle for emotions makes a lot of sense to some researchers.
The potentially calming and stress relieving benefits of music have also been explored for improving behavioural problems related to obsessive compulsive disorder, autism and attention deficit disorder.
One does not necessarily need a therapist to evoke music's soothing powers. It's healing potential is something that anyone can easily tap into, with no harmful side effects. It's one of the best self-help remedy.
The benefits of music can also transcend the psychological to the management of symptoms like pain and nausea during invasive procedures like bone marrow transplants.
Because of the influence that music has on the emotions, Dr. Winsome Miller-Rowe says it is capable of energising, exciting or calming and certain types could result in aggressive behaviour.
This musicians CD catalogue includes the following:
Music for relaxation and joy Original instrumental music with calming music as well as relaxing Caribbean rhythms
Quiet times Calming, inspiring compositions with the sounds of running water, birds and waves
Music for the imagination High frequency sounds like strings and violin, induces creative thought as well as from new nerve cell connections.
Music for meditation reflective and inspiring for meditation, prayer and relaxation.
Affects
Different types of music affects individuals in different ways. If you want to know what your response is to music, concentrate on how the music is making you feel. Do you feel aggravated, calmed, or loved?
By this method, you can make your own catalogue of music that soothes, that helps in introspection, motivation, stress release and relaxation.
"Instrumentals are key. Lyrics tend to distract you and work against the relaxation response," says Dr. Winsome Miller-Rowe. "The voice brings in the element of the analytic, which you do not really need, if you intend to relax."
Stop all voices. Find a quite place, unplug the telephone and let the music soothe you.
Information source: www.ABCnews.com and interviews.
Relaxation leads to the lowering of blood pressure and an increase in the body's immune response.
Anything that brings about the relaxation response can be complementary to healing, the doctor says.
Miller-Rowe was among a team of Jamaican doctors who visited China in April of last year to examine traditional Chinese medicine. They attended the Xi Yuan Hospital in Beijing which is a WHO collaboration centre and which offers Western Medicine as well as traditional Chinese medicine. There we saw, Acupuncture, Tui Nah which is Chinese massage, Chi gong, music therapy as well as other modalities.
Miller-Rowe was specially interested in Chi Gong which she has started doing last year. The experience resulted in the creation of a musical video called Chi Gong, featuring music by Miller-Rowe and Chi Gong exercises.
"The word Gong in Chi Gong is the practice of gathering and directing chi in our bodies to increase energy, open and strengthen the meridian pathways, transport energy to the vital organs, relieve tension from those areas that are stressed, promote sharper minds, peace, happiness and longevity.
"At the basis of Chinese medicine, literature, music and philosophy are the knowledge of Chi which is the Life force or energy. This energy exists in us, the part of us which cannot be seen and also all around us. The Chi travels in the body in channels or meridians with collaterals, and is stored in high energy areas, the main one being Dantian, which is four finger-breaths below the navel," explains Miller Rowe.
Replace the energy
The doctor recalls, "Professor Cai Jun was our Chi Gong master teacher and here he gave us an exercise to replace the energy which our patients drain from us, to improve performance, develop flexibility, co-ordination and ease of movement and enhance our ability to work with healing energy. I wanted to share this with all who need it."
The movements are graceful, slow and calming. The music is complementary.
Chi Gong is one of several videos and CDs produced by Miller-Rowe for relaxation. The videos feature nature scenes which also accelerate mental relaxation.
"Echopsychology or environmental psychology is now telling us that looking at the beauty of nature is also health enhancing. We are a part of nature and when we are taken from it into the concrete jungle we behave abnormally," says Miller-Rowe.
Information sourced from interview and paper presented at UWI, St. Kitts by Dr. Winsome Miller-Rowe.
