Music can take an individual faster into meditative states.
Music allows us to transcend the everyday states of consciousness and travel to places that we either have a memory of or create in our imagination. This process of transcending the mundane evokes psycho physiologic responses when people shift to altered states of consciousness.
When an individual uses music for relaxation, their abstract thinking is slowed down as they remain in a normal waking state. As they continue with their process of relaxation, the individual moves through the remainder of the six states of consciousness: expanded sensory threshold, daydreaming, trance, meditative states, and rapture.
In these states of consciousness, time takes on a different meaning for the individual. Often during music therapy sessions, people will lose track of time for extended periods, which in turn helps them reduce feelings of stress, anxiety, fear, and pain.
Stress has become, in modern society, the subject of many best-selling books and is often a lead story in the daily papers. Non-invasive and easily accessible ways to deal with stress have now become critical issues. People need to be educated about the remedial effects of music as therapy.
Many still feel that music used as therapy is just another liberal health fad. Despite this belief, music therapy continues to be a growing occupation. There are more than 5,000 certified and licensed music therapists in the United States working in hospitals, rehabilitation units, health-care and educational settings. The American Music Therapy Association now recognises 68 schools in the United States who offer programmes of study in music therapy.
Music therapy is a non-verbal type of therapy, as opposed to other types of therapy where the client talks about feelings and experiences of life. Music therapy presents an alternative to traditional types of therapy, and provides the following benefits to patients:
· More direct access to thinking and feeling states.
· Opportunity to “contain” feelings for periods of time so that these can be explored, examined, and worked through for the individual.
· Non-verbal expression of thinking and feeling states that are not yet within the verbal domain for the individual.
· Elicitation of imagery and associations that are not accessible through verbal means.
· More direct physiological benefits for the individual than verbal methods.
· Freedom to explore and try out various solutions to patient thinking and feeling problems through exploration and creativity.
There are many applications of music therapy in our everyday lives and the fields of treatment are very broad, encompassing psycho-therapeutic, educational, instructional, behavioural, pastoral, supervisory, healing, recreational, activity, and interrelated arts applications.
Barbara Crowe, past President of the National Association of Music Therapy in the United States, suggests that music and rhythm create their healing effects by calming the constant chatter of the left brain. “A loud repetitive sound sends a constant signal to the cortex, masking input from other senses like vision, touch, and smell,” she explains.
When sensory input is decreased, the normally noisy left brain with its internal conversations, analyses, and logical judgements subsides to a murmur, stimulating deeper parts of the brain that are throne-rooms of symbols, visualisation and emotions. “This is the seat of ritual in tribal societies,” she observes. “There is a clear, distinct parallel between traditional shamanism and the practices we do in music therapy today.”
Raymond Bahr, Director of Coronary Care at St Agnes Hospital, Baltimore, contends without a doubt that music therapy ranks high on the list of modern-day management of critical care patients… Its relaxing properties enable patients to get well faster by allowing them to accept their condition and treatment without excessive anxiety.