What Makes a Music Sedative?
Sedative music, we all know, is that type of music which has a sustained melodic line at a tempo of around 60 beats /minutes (almost at the slow pace of the human heart-rate). Usuallly devoid of ‘analytical’ lyrics, the rhythms here are weak, vague and at times even faltering inducing soporific ambience.
Often percussions are not necessary for this type of music
For instance, many of the chants (mentioning the names of God), which do not stimulate the thinking faculty of the brain do fall under this category.
In India, there has been a long time-tested (rather time-honored) tradition of using a thousand names (sahastranama) of the lord in simple melodies without complicated beats: archika, (melody constructed with only one note, gathika (melody of two notes) and samika (melody of three notes), which are not really ragas, but can be referred to as proto-ragas. (To qualify to be a raga, at least five swaras or notes are expected to be present in the raga scale).
Many of the slokas and other vedic recitations are rendered in proto-ragas, which have a direct impact on controlling (or shrinking) the mind, unlike the elaborate (fully developed) raga scales which help us in expanding the process of mental thinking, improving our analytical ability.
The Advantage of Mental Shrinkage
By shrinking the thought processes, sedative music helps us in concentration. It helps us in focusing our mind, thereby strengthening our thoughts, words and action. Besides, this genre of music has proved analgesic effects too.
A Recent Scientific Experiment
In an experiment conducted recently by Voss and his co-workers (2004) used sedative music to determine whether such music would reduce anxiety, pain sensation and pain distress in the postoperative setting following open heart surgery. A total of 61 adult, postoperative, open heart surgery patients were randomly assigned to receive 30 minutes of sedative music (n=19), scheduled rest (n=21), or usual treatment (n=21) during chair rest. During the experiment aspects such as anxiety, pain sensation and pain distress were measured with visual analog scales at chair rest initiation and at 30 minutes.
It was concluded that in the sedative music and scheduled rest groups, anxiety, pain sensation and pain distress all decreased significantly, whereas there were no significant differences in the treatment-as-usual group. After chair rest, the patients in the sedative music group were found to have 71% less anxiety, 57% less pain sensation and 69% less pain distress than the patients who underwent scheduled rest. This study also supports the previous studies that reported that sedative music is more effective than scheduled rest or usual treatment in reducing anxiety in setting.
This study thus confirms that no pharmacologic interventions offer multiple benefits in this critically ill patient group, and thus there is an urgent need to re-introduce unverbalized chants for their soothing effects as a part of post-operative health care in all hospitals and nursing homes in this country.
Motivating and engaging patients towards a musical experience of the sedative genre would stimulate the relaxation response, provide comfort, or distract them from feelings of anxiety and pain towards more pleasant sensations. Such a step may also modulate noise annoyance associated with the busy surroundings of coronary care units.
It is interesting to note that Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our Nation, had made it a point to have a daily prayer session in the evenings, when people used to congregate and sing several songs composed in sedative raga pattern.
Perhaps, this tryst with sedative music must have made him and his followers adopt and stick to non-violence as the basic theme of the freedom struggle. It is no exaggeration to say that the right kind of music imparts the right behavior. In this context, it is also relevant to recall here the extent Sanskrit text Raga Chikitsa which is reported to contain specific prescriptions of ragas for alleviating various ailments. As the body of evidence in favour of music therapy grows in leaps and bounds, it is necessary that more hospitals at least make a beginning to consider sedative music therapy as an adjunct not only to the care of postoperative heart patients, but also the other stress-prone people from all walks of life: ranging from students facing competitive examinations and the IT personnel burning the midnight CDs. Even medical personnel such as physicians, surgeons and nursing staff badly need a ‘dose of appropriate music’ before they start their day with patients! While prescribing therapeutic music, sufficient care has to be exercised in formulating the right kind of tonality, pitch, duration, timing and (more importantly) volume of such music, taking into consideration the clients’ constitution and his or her expectations.
The article was published in My Doctor – July 2005 – Page 46 to 48
Edited by Geeta shreedar, Mar 18, 2021