Music as a healing tool

Music therapy has ancient roots. According to my research, Pythagoras used music as remedy for physical maladies in Ancient times. The Greeks were the first to document this, but I’m sure that way before them music was part of many healing rituals all over the surface of the earth. We can responsibly say that those were the precursors of Music healing as we know it today.

Thanks to technology, neuroscientist have the skill, knowledge and tools to treat a variety of health issues using music as treatment. Have you ever wonder when an infant start to respond to music? The response is actually inside the womb, in the last trimester of gestation the baby began to hear external sounds. Sound that comes through from speech and from music alike. Some scholars say that baby respond differently to stories and sounds they have previously heard inside the womb. Taking this into consideration, that implies that those are the early signs of memory inside their malleable minds.

There’s no doubt that this form of memory will help the child to develop speech and language skills, and at last but not least, musical skills. Brain images of babies helped us realize that babies can detect rhythm in music. Children are born with that capacity of detecting and feeling the rhythm. They may not know how to describe what they feel, but they simply feel it.

If we go back in time, ancient civilizations have used rhythm to facilitate mundane tasks. A way to work as a simple unit to achieve a common goal. Let’s take as an example the Sea Shanties old sailors used to sing when lifting the heavy anchor. The rhythmic quality of the chants served and motivation and encouragement to some extent. Can you imagine what it was like to hoist a massive sail? Load or unload tons of cargo? And what about rowing? For all of that they had the sea shanties as motivation.

Neuroscientist take this innate bound we have for rhythm to help people to walk again after a stroke. They add music and our brain and limbs to their part, fascinating right? Mickey Hart the famous drummer of the legendary band The Grateful Dead has a wonderful story to tell about this.

His Granmother had a stroke, after the ordeal her mind was severely impacted. She didn’t remember names, not even her own name. He did an experiment and brought some drums on one of his visits. As soon as the rhythm started, she began to remember his name and his grandson’s name, the veil that numbed her mind was being slowly lifted with each stroke of the mallet. That was an eye opening experience for him.

He began to get involved in neuroscience, deep into research of rhythm as medicine. He even recorded an album using his brain waveforms to create rhythm. The music he created on his 'Superorganism' record is simply mind-blowing. Can you imagine? Music create by the active parts of your brain as you play. Music that feeds on music.

There’s no doubt that music can cure, music is fun, and carries deep meaning to what in the end could become the true understanding of the human mind. We all can use music to find motivation and find relaxation. Neuroscientist and Music therapists use music to help us overcome the great obstacles on our lives. What about using music to find our center and deliver our best? What about music as a way to calm us down before surgery. Music can be used for all that and more. There’s so much we still need to find regarding this topic.

As an example, I use music for relaxation. I play piano and to be able to surrender in front of the ivory keys is simply overwhelming. As soon as I began to play, nothing else matter, I can feel how my mind focuses on playing, nothing else enters my zone. I’ve read that there’s a lot going on when you play a musical instrument. But I think that we can address this topic in a future post.