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MUSIC AND WELLBEING
Music is more than a casual leisure, an art or the new way to increase the benefits of a company. It is all of that and even more. The music industry is a rich ecosystem in which everyone and everything has a specific place. From the composer to the listener, from psychology to spirituality, from art to science, get insights on each field of music, learning about craft or history, about human behavior or consciousness. A place is also given to ethical questions.
MUSICAL CULTURE IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS
Independently of any medical context and beyond any music genre, determine which type of music can awaken your mind and your soul! Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and take a moment to return to self-growth.
Decreasing pain
‘Spiritual’ is a word that is, in some ways, confusing, whatever the context in which it is employed is, including in music. For instance, the musical genre named Spirituals or African American Spirituals, which is antique gospel music, generally appears to be a music genre created by African slaves to comfort themselves. They were said to find in Christianity and hymns a powerful way to endure pain. But how did those concerned perceive their own story? Some slaves became Christians because it really helped them, however some conversions were forced too. Slaves, being forbidden to speak their mother tongues and to practice their traditional religion, were thus forced to use a language and to practice a religion that, originally, was foreign to their ways of thinking and acting.
Anyhow, two types of religions and two groups of languages blended to give birth to a music whose healing power is widely recognized. The repertoire of Spirituals is immense: it includes shouts, sorrow songs, work songs, escape songs, signal songs as well as teaching songs. What are the main characteristics of African American songs at the musical level? Major elements are vocal syncopation and the use of counter-rhythms, for instance indicated by clapping hands during performances.
Music for transitions
The Spiritual is a form of music which, by nature, had to ensure a transformation. Although this transformation, which was first cultural, was not wanted and led to dramatic incidents, it really was a fusion between ways of life totally different and a priori incompatible. Such a forced fusion caused terrible losses in terms of social identity, for the early African American communities. Yet concerning music, it offers a lesson that even people that did not experience it can understand, at least at the intellectual level: music can be used as a tool of transformation during life’s turning points at which individuals must get a deeper understanding of who they really are. In season and out of season, music has something to say to souls and minds. It is about being aligned with the self.
When they listen to music, as well as when they sing, listeners learn to protect their brains. Especially when minimum living standards are not ensured, in terms of physiological safety for instance, when food or shelter is missing. That protection offered by music against an environment that is hostile begins with the breath, as a music researcher interested in the phenomenon of 'Spirituals' explained. It makes the brain work better and more consistently: discernment is increased, the cognitive functions operate in simpler ways and emotional responsiveness is higher. As the brain is more flexible, it has more space for new experiences and it can reload faster. Such benefits manifest themselves in terms of better choices, notably long-term ones.
Spirituals and transformation through music
Independently of any medical context and beyond any music style, determine which type of sound can help you to relax. Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and enhance your well-being.
Music therapy to empower patients besides traditional therapies
Relieving pain
Music therapists sometimes choose music that does not contain a beat in order to relax their patients. Yet other ones may precisely use rhythm and tempo to help their patients, for example those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease: the musical beats, which introduce the element of predictability in the mind of such listeners, help them to focus and relax, for example during dance. Music mainly based on rhythm can also help women in labour to focus on contractions when they are ready for delivery. Who can prescribe such music? Music therapists trained in the field of rhythmic auditory stimulation.
Why is music useful to relief pain? To answer to that question, it is necessary to understand pain. Pain is not really a physical phenomenon and it is not processed in a specific part of the brain, neurologist Ronald Melzack explained. It has a multitude of aspects and is linked to our history, our culture or to motivation and other psychological factors. What does it imply? That the neurotransmitters which convey pain can also convey music for instance. And as music evokes sensations, images or memories, instead of focusing on pain, patients can concentrate on the joy that music brings. Their stress is relieved and they enjoy positive peak experiences: they experience the peaks of their existence.
Integration in other types of treatments or care
Music therapists translate the experience and knowledge they have acquired in fields like music therapy and musicology into simple terms so that their patients get the most out of it in their own life. As medicine has stopped talking in terms of disease and disability and to be a problem-oriented processing, it is all about wellness and empowerment, becoming a mind-body medicine, music can now occupy a place alongside other types of therapies and contribute to healing people. And sometimes music is even integrated in other styles of treatments. Results are amazing: music helps to reduce the use of opioids as well as post-operative pain or pain intensity and anxiety. Music enhances the mood and the quality of life of patients that have undergone surgical operations.
Actually, engaging in music, all listeners, and not only patients, can feel new sources of energy. Some decades ago, therapists needed permission to use a radio cassette recorder in a room where a woman was in labour. Today, it is more usual to deliver while music is played and therapists have data that help them to practice some kind of experimental design in order to help each woman to find a personal way to control the rhythm of delivery with the help of musical rhythms. One main target in that case is to reduce pain with music, and it works: statistics show that music decreases the number of pain responses during a delivery.
Independently of any musical context and beyond any music genre, discover which type of music can give you energy! Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and experience sound!
Music to overcome negative emotions
From 1945, music was used in American Army hospitals to boost the morale of convalescing veterans returning from World War II: it was included in various therapeutic programs like physical reconditioning or occupational therapy. Amongst veterans, many recover within a manageable time period, however, for some of them, it is more difficult, especially when they had to face issues like family conflict before the war they were involved in. Having abilities and skills to support them, music therapists assist them so that they can increase their level of resilience. Notably, music therapists listen to what veterans have to say: how many friends or family members a veteran lost during the war, because of the enemies or because they committed suicide.
Currently, thousands of soldiers are committing suicide each year, a veteran said. That is to say that the work of music therapists who practice in such contexts is not useless. Sometimes, soldiers learn to play music and it helps them to deal with family life: in fact, even when they have supportive wives and children, it is hard for some soldiers to meet the requirements of day-to-day life, especially in the field of relationships, because they are often afraid and do not want to express their emotions verbally.
Spreading well-being and comfort
Music is an ideal way for veterans to release feelings of pain without being aggressive, without engaging in any inappropriate behavior. The change can be radical and, sometimes, quick: from hating life, some can suddenly recover interest in very simple things like eating or talking with their relatives. They simply come back to the present instead of being stuck in the past! And it may happen that some of them are so impressed by their own transformation that they share their recent discovery of music with other veterans, notably through online programs. Such spontaneous healings are enlightening: people who have had to face such severe psychological injuries can inspire average citizens in their daily battles to overcome negative feelings. Without being unhealthy or having unmanageable concerns, everyone must overcome one-time annoyances, and music can give them some comfort.
Let us notice that, independently of music therapy, soldiers always supported soldiers with music: a lot of military music was written on the battlefield to encourage the troops. Sometimes, it was to intimidate the enemy. A part of that music relied on sheet music, but numerous pieces were composed and taught by ear. The most common instruments used in military music are drums, trumpet and bagpipe. Amongst the main types of martial music are march music and marching songs. The largest proportion of that music is commemorative and that is why well-known military songs are still played on a regular basis. For instance, John Philip Sousa, who served twice in the Marine Corps, had the rank of Sergeant Major but was also the leader of the Marine Band in Washington and, as he was a conductor, Sousa contributed to produce 60 recordings. He also composed two famous pieces: ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’, which became later the official National March of the U.S.A., and ‘The Liberty Bell’.
Music and music therapy to relief soldiers and war veterans
Independently of any medical context, experience well-being through music! Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and find new sounds to relax.
The appreciation of music therapy in society
Music therapy, which can be presented as the systematic use of music to spot disease or to reduce the causes and effects of disability, became a profession in the United States at the end of the 18th century. During the 1950s, it became an academic discipline: the first students were taught in order to homogenize practices. In fact, music therapy had greatly developed during World War I and World War II, when therapists were linked up with veterans presenting severe traumatic injuries.
As music therapists are working with others’ inner lives, their training is important: in fact, they establish a professional relationship with people in and through music, hence music is not a trivial medium: it is a powerful way to manipulate inner energy as well as to influence behavior, according to the approach chosen by the therapist. Music therapy students learn how to bring music to their patients so that they can make the most of it in terms of health and well-being. They study techniques that are useful when, for instance, they learn how to vocally guide the imagery in the mind of the listener while they use music, making appropriate comments and asking specific questions. They also learn how to use them with different types of persons according to the particular diseases they have.
Music therapy in practice
What, exactly, do music therapists with their clients? It depends on the therapist. They naturally can improvise and create music with them, depending on their listening and their feedback. Sometimes, the results are very rapid and visible: the listener can cope more easily with pain, their anxiety is reduced, they can relax with music. In one word, music literally helps them to forget their pains. Yet it is not so easy to assist people in writing a piece of music, and sometimes, it is better to arrange an existing song. Anyhow, vocalizing a melody or drumming can have very satisfying effects on people who do have the ability to structure their thoughts, like patients afflicted with dementia or autism.
Sometimes, music therapy takes place in the framework of other treatments like psychotherapy. Why is music useful? First it is more fluid than words and goes beyond the intellect. For that reason, it can help attentive listeners to feel better emotionally or even spiritually. Therapists are there to help them to open up but also to control that openness and to be more aware that music listening may touch their conscious but also their unconscious self. In that context, the role of the body may be important: therapists must position themselves in a way that is engaging for their counterpart, inviting them to enter into the therapy.
The developments of music therapy as an academic discipline and as a source of well-being
Feel the energy of the sound! Try the YMusic search engine, your free personal assistant (it includes musical criteria to select music), and find music that carries you away.
From hearing to self-hearing
Boosting energy into sounds
Before birth, human beings hear before they see. Before writing and reading, they communicate by sound, when they speak to each other. To communicate by sound, they perceive sounds that make a meaning and, then, answer. That perception basically depends on how they listen and also, of course, on the way sound moves.
In fact, sound is a pressure wave travelling within the air, each wave having a specific length and speed. What does it basically mean? That sound is a form of energy reaching the human ear. Hearing sound, even when the listener is not attentive, is never totally passive: the ear is sorting out the sounds, the lowest ones being treated by the outer side part of the inner ear, while the highest sounds are processed by the innermost part of it. In one word, the ear boosts energy into sounds. It is notably made possible thanks to cells named ‘hair cells’, that are sorts of battery-powered force generators: these cells vibrate from down to up according to the types of sounds that reach the ear and they adapt the voltage of the electric field that circulates inside the ear.
Sound processing from the Big Bang to the inner ear and self-hearing
Some researchers in the field of physics consider that sound was present at the beginning of the universe. They talk about the measured primordial sound spectrum and explain that the Big Bang was not really an explosion propagating sound waves as it is sometimes seen in science fiction movies or in pseudoscience posts, that are most of the time reports of practices and beliefs that are not really scientific. What happened then? The Big Bang was an expansion of space within which energy and matter were embedded. Sounds were present in the young universe, as the study of cosmic microwave background shows: telescopes can now detect peaks of sound waves through the gas circulating within the universe and scientists explain that these sound waves were present not at the origin of the universe, but they appeared quickly, as the launching mechanism of the Big Bang had some roughness: some regions in expansion were more dense than other ones. So the Universe emerged in a quiet but slightly rough way that left some place for gas through which sound can travel.
Let us notice that nowadays, recordings of what happens inside the ear when the ear is listening can be made easily; scientists record sounds being processed in the ear of human beings who can hear their ear playing or, sometimes, animals. To what end? In collaboration with musicians, specialists try to explain how the ear evokes the sounds. In practice, such research related to self-hearing can lead to the conception of new kinds of loudspeakers or headphones, which designers suppose that will be more comfortable for the human ear.
From hearing to self-hearing