Music Therapy: Healing Through Music

Magical greetings everyone! Welcome to another Fireside check in with Flute! It's great to see you. Today's topic is on Music Therapy: Healing Through Music:

Icebreaker: What's your favorite way to listen to music, ex downloading, streaming, CD, or mabey even old school vinyl? Anyone still listen to cassettes or 8 track tapes?

A1: For the most part I either download or stream. I probably spend wayyy!!! To much time on YouTube lol 😆! And yes I've listened to cassettes and 8 tracks.

Music is as old as humanity itself. Archaeologists have found primitive flutes made of bone and ivory dating back as far as 43,000 years.

Music is that good ol 'rock and roll that soothes the soul, it's the country song that goes a walking after midnight, it's the pop song that says "Hit me Baby One More Time" Music is the "Wrecking Ball" that crashes into our soul! with no boundaries or limitations!.

Music is a language of emotion in that it can represent different feelings. People are always challenged by the fact that “no one understands them” or knows how they “really feel” so they turn to music.

So what is Music Therapy?

The clinical definition is "Music Therapy is the clinical & evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program."

In simpler terms Music Therapy is the process of using music in a therapeutic setting.

Music therapy can take many different forms. What can you expect from Music Therapy?

1: Creating music, You might compose music, write lyrics, or make up music together

2: Sing music. Use your voice to share a piece of music.

3: Listen to music. Enjoy the sound and lyrics.

4: Move to music. It can be as simple as tapping your toes together or as complicated as a coordinated dance.

5: Discuss lyrics, Read or listen to the lyrics of a song and talk about their meaning.

6: Play an instrument, Use an instrument like a piano, guitar, drums, etc. to share music.

Modern music therapy history starts in the 18th century. In 1789, where an unknown author published an article entitled “Music Psychically Considered” in what might be the first article on music therapy. Interest in music therapy continued to gain support during the early 1900s leading to the formation of several short-lived associations. In 1903, Eva Augusta Vescelius founded the National Society of Musical Therapeutics. In the 1940s, three persons began to emerge as innovators and key players in the development of music therapy as an organized clinical profession. Psychiatrist and music therapist Ira Altshuler, MD promoted music therapy in Michigan for three decades.Willem van de Wall pioneered the use of music therapy in state-funded facilities and wrote the first "how to" music therapy text, Music in Institutions (1936).

How can music therapy help? Good question, let's find out shall we?

A few benefits are

Lowering blood pressure.

Improving memory.

Enhanced communication and social skills through experiencing music with others.

Self-reflection. Observing your thoughts and emotions.

Reducing muscle tension.

Self-regulation. Developing healthy coping skills to manage your thoughts and emotions.

Increasing motivation.

Managing pain.

Increasing joy.

Music acts as a medium for processing emotions, trauma, and grief, but music can also be utilized as a regulating or calming agent for anxiety or for dysregulation. Music can be used to help bring the body into a state of relaxation, activating the Parasympathetic nervous system (this helps with resting and digesting), and deactivating the Sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze). Live music along with spoken guided relaxation gives the body a chance to enter into a state of relaxation; thus, giving the body a break from being in constant stress.

Trauma survivors suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be unable to verbally express the trauma that has happened to them .However, in order for healing to occur, these individuals must externalize their stories if their traumatic memories are to be reconstructed and positively transformed,Thus, the creative arts therapies may be particularly effective in the treatment of PTSD because they offer a sensory means for children and adults to express traumatic memories.

There is a long and rich tradition of using music to cultivate resilience and facilitate healing in the wake of violence and oppression. Songs and chanted hymns often accompanied physical labor to coordinate movement and boost resolve to complete arduous tasks.

Music does more than just put us in a good mood. It's a wonder drug that sets a lot of things right: It energises your mind, eases stress, evokes emotions and soothes your soul.

Thanks for reading this check in, I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I look forward to seeing you at the next Fireside Check In, Remember we're all in this together, your friend and forum supporter Flute.

A few links for your consideration

Hurrian Hymn No 6

Malek Jandali

Neuro Science News

Article: Speech or Song? Identifying How the Brain Perceives Music

American Music Therapy Association

The American Music Therapy Association is a resource and organization dedicated to professional music therapists.

Professional Requirements for Music Therapists

Sweet Relief Musicians Fund

Sweet Relief Musicians Fund provides financial assistance to all types of career musicians and music industry workers who are struggling to make ends meet while facing physical or mental health issues, disability, or age-related problems.

Raven Drum Foundation

Raven Drum Foundation exists to serve, educate, and empower Veterans, first responders, and trauma survivors in our focused effort to prevent suicide through innovative wellness-support programs. We contribute to global healing and community through advocacy, storytelling, and the promotion of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Everything Music Forum

My personal forum, hope to see you there!

Crab 🦀 Rave

A very cute video

oldest musical instrument

Why Getting Into the Groove Is Good for Your Brain

Article

A few quotes for your consideration!

"Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”

Haruki Murakami, Japanese author

“Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.”

Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

“The best music… is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.”

Bruce Springsteen

While researching this piece I found this, I hope you enjoy!

The earliest fragment of musical notation is found on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet, which includes instructions and tunings for a hymn honoring the ruler Lipit-Ishtar. But for the title of oldest extant song, most historians point to “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” an ode to the Goddess Nikkal (Nikkal is the Canaanite Goddess of fruits and fertility) that was composed in cuneiform by the ancient Hurrians sometime around the 14th century B.C. The clay tablets containing the tune were excavated in the 1950s from the ruins of the city of Ugarit in Syria. Along with a near-complete set of musical notations, they also include specific instructions for how to play the song on a type of nine-stringed lyre.Hurrian Hymn No. 6 is considered the world’s earliest melody, but the oldest musical composition to have survived in its entirety is a first century A.D. Greek tune known as the “Seikilos Epitaph.” The song was found engraved on an ancient marble column used to mark a woman’s gravesite in Turkey. “I am a tombstone, an image,” reads an inscription. “Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.” The column also includes musical notation as well as a short set of lyrics that read: “While you live, shine / Have no grief at all / Life exists only for a short while / And time demands its toll."

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