Music & Healing Concepts

1. Music & Healing
Key Concepts
Chris Baker
www.musicstudentinfo.com

2. The Significance of Music
• Communicates both with lyrics and beyond words
• Tells our stories
• Moves us to laughter, to tears & to dance
• Accompanies important ceremonies
• Provides a gateway to memories

3. Consider this piece of music. Listen with
your eyes closed and allow it to tell you a
story…
• What emotions did the piece evoke?
• What images come to mind?
• What story does it awaken in you?

4. What memories does this piece evoke for
you?

5. Now focus on the physiological response in
your body to this piece of music…
• What did you notice your body doing?
• What did the music remind you of?

6. Healing Benefits of Music
• Reduces pain
• Increases oxygen levels in the blood
• Steadies respiration and heart rhythm
• Reduces anxiety and fear
• Reduces nausea
• Provides a focus different from hospital machines
• Boosts immune response

7. Pain Reliever with No Damaging Side
Effects
At St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, patients in critical
care units listen to classical music.
“Half an hour of music produced the same effect as
ten milligrams of valium.”

8. How does music heal?
Distraction is the divided attention of an
individual or group from the chosen
object of attention onto the source of
distraction.
Entrainment or "brainwave
synchronization," is any practice that
aims to cause brainwave frequencies to
fall into step with a periodic stimulus
having a frequency corresponding to the
intended brain-state for example, to
induce sleep.

9. Distraction
A loud repetitive sound sends a constant signal to
the cortex, masking input from other senses like
vision, touch, and smell.

10. Frequency of Vibrations
• High pitched sounds increase stimulation
• Low frequency sounds are grounding

11. Principles of the Music Practitioner
• Patient is the center of focus
• Intent to provide an environment for healing
• Whole person concept of mind, body, spirit, and
emotion

12. Holistic Health
“Outside of sleep, breathing, nutrition and to some
extent exercise. . . probably no behavior comes close
to the power and diversity of music in eliciting
homeodynamic shifts."
Mark Ryder
The Rhythmic Language of Health and Disease

13. Why Live Music?
• Responsive to the changing state of the patient
• Vibration of live instrument
• Human connection

14. Four Categories of Clients
1. Acutely ill Rhythmic Music
2. Chronically ill All Styles
3. Children and Elders Familiar Music
4. Actively Dying Arrhythmic Music

15. Music Thanatology
The delivery of music has everything to do with leading
a patient from a feeling of safety to openness and
release.
Letting go is some of the hardest work we can do,
either as a patient or as a musician.
Therese Schroeder-Sheker
Chalice of Repose Project

16. Vibrations & Cancer
The pictures above were taken while a xylophone was used over a
period of fourteen minutes playing the Ionian Scale (C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D)

17. "The human voice carries something in its vibration
that makes it more powerful than any musical
instrument: consciousness….
…It appeared that the cancer cells were not able to
support a progressive accumulation of vibratory
frequencies and were destroyed."
Fabien Maman

18. I AM MUSIC Most ancient of the arts. I am more than
ancient; I am eternal. Even before life began upon
this earth, I was here in the winds and the waves.
When the first trees and flowers and grasses
appeared, I was among them. And when people
came, I at once became the most delicate, most
subtle and most powerful medium for the expression
of emotions…

19. …When people were little better than beasts, I
influenced them for their good. In all ages, I have
inspired people with hope, kindled their love, given a
voice to their joys, cheered them on to valorous
deeds, and soothed them in times of despair. I have
played a great part in the drama of life, whose end
and purpose are the complete perfection of human
nature…

20. …Through my influence, humankind has been uplifted,
sweetened and refined. With the aid of mankind, I
have become a Fine Art; I have a myriad of voices
and instruments. I am in the hearts of all people and
on their tongues in all lands, among all peoples; the
ignorant and unlettered know me, not less than the
rich and the learned…

21. ..For I speak to all people in a language that all
understand. Even the deaf hear me, if they but listen
to the voices of their own souls. I am the food of
love. I have taught gentleness and peace; and I have
led people to heroic deeds. I comfort the lonely, and
I harmonize the discord of crowds. I am a necessary
luxury to all I AM MUSIC.