Music Therapy
evawhite on July 4th, 2008
For me, the term ‘music therapy’ sounds odd, simply because for me music is something that gives me joy, something that I have to have in my life all the time. For music to be termed as therapeutic or to have a medicinal value of some sort simply seems, like I said, odd!
But music therapy is a systematic and organized therapy and there are training courses to this end. Off the top of my head I would say that perhaps music would be useful to relieve stress or to put you in a better frame of mind, taking your mind off your problems; certainly it does that for me. Music therapy can do that and much more apparently: it promotes wellness, eases pain, helps in expression of feelings, enhances memory, helps improve communication skills and also helps in healing or physical rehabilitation. It can also, like the picture indicates, help relieve stress in newborns and help them stay healthy.
Now I would imagine that in case of music therapy what is one man’s meat may well be another man’s poison. By that I mean, that while one person find sound of a gurgling stream wonderful and stress relieving, I for one would actually find it stressful because I would keep thinking “Water’s being wasted somewhere, how do I stop that!”
I would also imagine that there are cultural connotations to music. For instance while a Chinese person may find Chinese music wonderful and uplifting, a person like me who has no knowledge or familiarity with Chinese music would have a fairly indifferent reaction to it thereby negating any therapeutic value of the music.
It is therefore that music therapy is highly individual oriented. It can include activities such as singing, listening, playing instruments, composition, moving to music, and music and imagery exercises. So, music therapy is developed on the basis on the subjects’ individual weaknesses and strengths, keeping in mind the effect that the music will have on that particular individual.
Music therapy also has general applications; like music is said to relive pain during dental procedures so a lot of dentists play music. Often certain work environments have music playing because it is seen to reduce stress while working. Music frequently accompanies meditation and yoga and it always accompanies aerobic and other exercises because it motivates you in your goal of mental and physical fitness.
If you are really interested in the idea of music therapy and would like to incorporate it in your everyday life, take a look here ; there are some interesting pointers about how you can use music to relive stress or when you need stimulation etc. Perhaps music therapy is not quite as odd as I originally thought. Your thoughts?
