Sound is used as an adjunct therapy in helping people recover from strokes and head injuries. It eases the side effects of chemotherapy – it’s especially effective in controlling nausea and pain. In operating rooms it’s often used to help relax patients and stabilise their body systems.
Music Therapy and Children
The sensory stimulation and playful nature of music can help develop a child’s ability to express emotion, communicate, and develop rhythmic movement. There is also some evidence to show that speech and language skills can be improved through the stimulation of both hemispheres of the brain.
Music Therapy for Labor, Mentally Ill and Hospice
Music and the Mentally ill
Music can be an effective tool for the mentally or emotionally ill. Autism is one disorder that has been particularly researched. Music therapy has enabled some autistic children to relate to others and have improved learning skills. Substance abuse, schizophrenia, paranoia, and disorders of personality, anxiety, and affect are all conditions that may be benefited by music therapy.
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Music Therapy for Adults
The geriatric population can be especially prone to anxiety and depression, particularly in old home residents. Chronic diseases causing pain are also not uncommon in this setting. Music is an excellent outlet to provide enjoyment, relaxation, relief from pain, and an opportunity to socialise and reminisce about music that has had special importance to the individual.
Music Therapy: Riddle of the Mozart Effect
You must hand it to the Chinese. They never fail to use body parts whatever the occasion! Now they are producing musical albums with some curious titles. Obesity and Constipation are two. Insomnia is another. There’s Liver, Heart, and Lungs, and also an orchestral piece that has been nicknamed The Kidney Bladder Suite by Don Campbell, a trained classical musician, composer, and author.
Music Therapy: Music as Medicine
Music enters the body through the ear, and the bones of the body act like a tuning fork. The neurological fields of the body are then stimulated by music. Music is a means by which all people can feel these healing vibrations. Even people with profound handicaps can benefit from music healing effects. Research in physiological responses to music supports the hypothesis that listening to music influences a person’s autonomic responses.
Music Therapy Impact on Emotions
Music is the harmony of the universe in microcosm; for this harmony is life itself; and in man, who is himself a microcosm of the universe, chords and discords are to be found in his pulse, in his heartbeat, his vibration, his rhythm and tone. His health or sickness, his joy or displeasure, shows whether his life has music or not. ~ From the Sufi Message of Nazrat Inayat Khan
Music Therapy: Healing Capability of Music
In recent years, the music of Mozart (1756-1791) has become part of many doctors’ pharmacopoeia as they’ve seen patients rebound under its influence. Krissy, for example, weighed just over one-and-a-half pounds when she was born prematurely in a Chicago hospital with a life-threatening condition.
Music Therapy for Stammering
Alfred Tomatis, MD, a celebrated French physician, has spent five decades studying the healing and creative powers of sound and music, the Mozart Effect in particular. Many of his patients call him Dr Mozart. Tomatis has tested more than 100,000 clients in his listening centres throughout the world for listening disabilities and vocal and auditory handicaps, as well as learning disorders.
Music Therapy: The Transformative Powers of Mozart
Why not call the transformative powers of music the Bach Effect, the Beethoven Effect, or the Beatles Effect? Does Mozart’s music have unique properties, eliciting universal responses that only now are yielding to measurement?
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