Music Therapy

Whether it is just entertainment, a cultural ex-pression or religious inspiration, music is part of everyone’s life. Music has been found to have a profound effect on our physiological and psychological well-being.

Music therapy interventions can be designed to manage stress, alleviate pain, promote wellness, express feelings, enhance memory, improve communication and promote physical rehabilitation. Music has the power to explore the realms that cannot be accessed with words.

The Indian theory of emotions has been usually associated with a literary appreciation of the theory of ‘Rasa’ (aesthetic emotion) based on Hindu psychology. Studies have been made on the analysis of Rasa therapy for the rejuvenation of the mind.

The nine ‘Rasas’ in Indian Music correspond to nine emotional conditions: Sringara (erotic), Hasya (humorous), Karuna (pathetic), Roudra (furious), Veera (valorous), Bhayanaka (fearful), Beebhatra (odious), Adbhuta (wonderous) and Santa (peaceful).

Indian art, whether it be painting, poetry, dance or music has a characteristically inward quality. This is a manifestation of the bias and world-view of this culture. The nature of creation and its forces are not felt and thought about commencing at the point of material phenomena. Indian thought at its deepest, affirms that mind and matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organizations of one conscious Force of Existence. Hence the external and its imitation have had little place in our art. The outside is only a projection of this “Force of Existence”, experienced within and “beauty does not arise from the subject of a work of art, but from the necessity that has been felt of representing that subject”. That is why programmatic music is not considered of really deep quality and it is a recent occurrence in the country, specifically with the ballet and the films. Imitations of thunder and the ripple of water is not great music, just as realistic photographic painting is not great art. The languor of rains after an Indian summer is what Malhar expresses but not the patter of drops on a tin roof!

Music, as well as being the most dispensable of arts, is probably the hardest to throw off. Just as memories and landscapes eventually emerge to make emotional claims upon us, music comes uninvited, and stays. It is the lure of place, the call to belong. So the essential purpose of Music would be to dynamically orient the body and mind in relation to the environment, both consciously and unconsciously. Thus the integrated, experiential nature of music makes it a profound and unique way of knowing, being and being well.

Music is capable of improving happiness, peace, health and concentration. It is however important to know the method and duration for which Music Therapy is to be administered. This knowledge can be obtained through regular experiments and experience. The first step towards this is the correct diagnosis of the disease and then the selection of the precise raga that will be helpful. Procedure, discipline and a systematic method will help to achieve this goal.

It is believed that music stimulates the pituitary gland, whose secretions affect the nervous system and the flow of blood. It is believed that for healing with music, it is necessary to vibrate the cells of the body, for it is through these vibrations that the diseased person’s consciousness can be changed effectively to promote health. The right kind of music helps one to relax and refresh. Even during the course of working, light music improves efficiency. Listening to music helps control negative aspects of our personalities like worry, bias and anger. In addition, it can help cure headache, abdominal pain and tension. Music therapy is one of the most effective ways controlling emotions, blood pressure and restoring the functioning of the liver.

The latest findings, presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Los Angeles, underscore how music as an almost universal language of mood, emotion and desire, orchestrates a wide variety of neural systems to cast its evocative spell. “Undeniably, there is a biology of music,” said HarvardUniversity Medical School neurobiologist Mark Jude Tramo. “There is no question that there is specialization within the human brain for the processing of music. Music is biologically part of human life, just as music is aesthetically part of human life.”

Overall, music seems to involve the brain at almost every level. Even allowing for cultural differences in musical tastes, the researchers found evidence of music’s remarkable power to affect neural activity no matter where they look in the brain, from primitive regions in all animals to more recently evolved regions thought to be distinctively human. Music exists in every culture, and infants have excellent musical abilities that cannot be explained by learning. Mothers everywhere sing to their infants because babies understand it. Music seems to be part of our biological heritage. From enhancing concentration and memory to dealing with diabetics as well as boosting ones immunity, music therapy lends its healing touch. The passive form of music therapy, (listening) has a beneficial effect in almost all ailments whereas the active form, (participating) is especially helpful for neurological problems. Music integrates mind, body and spirit and provides opportunities for self-ex-pression.