“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or to bend a knotted oak.” It’s also a healer that soothes and relaxes troubled minds, reveals T V Sairam, a well-known author on varied subjects and an authority on the therapeutic effects of music.”
Indian music is both emotional and intellectual. The unique merger of swaras and their partials and mathematically precise laya and tala systems, lend the music its intuitive as well as intellectual flavour respectively. It’s a well-known fact that the Indian classical music attaches great importance to serenity and a thoughtful state of mind as its primary goal. As such, it helps in balancing the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which are assigned the functions of analysis and intuition respectively by the neurologists.
Psychic Importance of Drone
In the Indian systems of music – both in Hindustani and Carnatic – drone is an essential requirement. The drone that emanates from tanpuras can be compared to the state of equilibrium as it fully represents the essence of the musical scale on which ragas can be conceived. Drone offers the basic framework akin to a balanced mind, which has its inherent capacity to fall prey to emotional upheavals, ascendance or decadence, the same way a raga could meander.
Healing Ragas
According to an ancient Indian text, Swara Sastra the 72 melakarta ragas control the 72 important nerves in the body. It’s believed that, if one sings with due devotion, adhering to the raga lakshana and Sruthi Shuddhi, the raga could affect the particular nerve in the body in a favourable manner. Certain ragas do have a tendency to move the listeners – emotionally as well as physically. An unintended nod of the head, limbs or body could be manifest when lilting tunes are played. The real impact of sound is more evident when there’s a metallic screech, which nails the nerves and makes the body undergo a sudden shiver!
Simple melodic structures, slow tempo, low-pitched notes repeated over bhajans and kirtans, have been found to be soothing and relaxing. Such musical pieces are found to impart a sense of relaxed spaciousness, besides reducing stress, deepening the breathing process, leading the listeners to consciousness frequencies akin to the Earth’s electro-magnetic field. While the descending notes in a raga (avarohi) are found to create inward-orienting or introverted feelings, the ascending notes (arohi) represent an upward or expansive mobility. Thus, music played for the soldiers or for the dancers has to be more lively and uplifting with frequent use of arohi content. More ascending notes are found in war music or in joyous dance music all over the world. Similarly, melancholic songs should opt for’ ‘smooth’ avarohis. Although it may not be a rule as such, most of the Western tunes based on major keys play joyful notes, while those composed in minor keys tend to sound more melancholic or serious. Certain Indian ragas too have a direct impact on emotions, as they can create awe, joy, suspense or pathos. They can, depending on their form or gait, work even as a stimulant or a depressant.
Recent Experiments in India
In India, music therapy is still in its infancy, though tremendous potential exists in its systematic study and application. In other words, Indians are sitting on a virtual gold mine of great music traditions that promise curative results. It’s only in recent times that some psychologists (Dr B N Manjula of NIMHANS), biophysicists (Srirama Bharathi of Chennai), neurologists (Dr B Ramamurthy) and a few other scientists are showing interest in this ancient art, notably among them Dr Raja Ramanna. They exist side by side with spiritual healers such as Ganapathi Satchidananda Swamy of Mysore, who for example, has developed his own system of music for healing, which he says soothes 72,000 nerves and 14 essential nadis. Swamy himself plays Roland synthesizer to his audience with accompanying musicians.
Music for Asthma
Pandurangshastri Deshpande, a musicologist-cum-ayurvedic practitioner from Pune has explored the beneficial impact of sounds of mridangam and Pahadi ragas for those who suffer from breathing problems such as asthma. He has also carried out various experiments with ragas such as Bhairavi. Records of this raga, sung by nine different maestros were, in an experiment, played before nine potted ‘touch me not’ plants daily for a month to observe their impact. The plant exposed to Abdul Karim Khan’s Bhairavi was found to exhibit a record growth of 430% compared to others.
Relieve Anxiety Neuroses
Dr B N Manjula, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-sciences (NIMHANS) is reported to have used music (an hour of listening to sitar every day and bhajans at night) along with minor doses of anxiolytic drugs to cure anxiety neuroses effectively. It is reported that this form of therapy can aid in de-addiction.
Music and Herbs of Srirama Bharathi
The biophysicist-turned therapist Srirama Bharathi of Chennai has conducted a unique experiment with ‘sound and herbal therapy’, in which patients were made to simultaneously view ·a picture, intake a herbal paste and listen to music. According to him music by itself may not be therapeutic unless combined with other forms· of medicine. He follows a traditional form of music therapy called ‘arayar sevai’ in which the songs used in temple rituals are sung.
Stress Relief for Police
It’s on record that the police personnel in Maharashtra found listening to music aids in relieving stress.
Music and Ayurveda
Ayurveda views all diseases as aggravation of doshas. As each of the three doshas kapha, pitta and· vata refers to specific functions such as maintenance, transformation and dynamic action respectively, it’s pertinent to have an idea of the approximate time of a day in which each of them would, normally, be found in-imbalance. According to Pandit Shashank Katti, who have worked with an anaesthetist, Dr Himalaya Pantvaidya, and an ayurvedic practitioner, Dr Sanjay Chhajed, an approximate time chart could be drawn indicating the time of the day when a particular dosha remains aggravated, as indicated below:
| Imbalance of the Dosha | Timing I | Timing II |
| Kapha | 7 AM to 11 AM | 7 PM to 11 PM |
| Pitta | 11 AM to 3 PM | 11 PM to 3 AM |
| Vata | 3 PM to 7 PM | 3 AM to 7 AM |
An inference from the above could be drawn that an appropriate morning raga could help in addressing the problems of kapha aggravation, whose imbalance is common between 7 to 11 am. Similarly, pitta imbalance (predominant during 11am to 3 pm) and vata imbalance (which is at its peak during 3 pm to 7 pm) could be addressed by selecting appropriate afternoon or evening ragas, as the case may be. After listening to the prescribed raga regularly for about 20-25 days, twice or thrice a day, patients were found to derive desired results. Disorders like arthritis, depression, insomnia, joint muscular pain, sciatica etc. are reported to respond well to music, although disorders like asthma, diabetes and hypertension take longer to get cured.
Pandit Shashank Katti has also found premature babies responding to music and gaining weight. He identified the role of music for easy delivery of babies in nursing homes. His team has brought out audio-analgesic cassettes for arthritis-back pain, joint pain, muscular pain, spondylitis etc. besides for a host of ailments: acidity, asthma, colitis, diabetes, easy child delivery, health promotion, hypertension, insomnia, liver diseases, migraine etc.
Chaitanya Series
Dr P Bharathi has recently initiated an extensive research on music therapy in collaboration with the Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai. The culmination of her efforts in the Chaitanya series. She has worked with post-operative patients for treatment and management of pain and found that patients in the post-operative stage are more receptive to music. It could be because pain makes one more aware of his or her body emotion. Added to this is the deep desire to be cured. All these factors along with physical immobility and lack of mental distraction, contributed to a remarkable recovery of many patients, when music was made available to them.
Therapeutic Carnatic Ragas
To cure insomnia, one listens to bits and pieces of Nilambari raga; likewise martial fervours are believed to be instilled in people by making them listen to pieces in Bilahari or Kedaram; Sriraga, when sung or listened, after a heavy lunch is said to aid in digestion and assimilation; While Sama raga restores mental peace, Bhupalam and Malayamaarudham when sung before the dawn serves as an agreeable invitation to people – including the Lord of the Seven Hills – to wake up from their slumber. Relief from paralysis is reported by listening to pieces of Dvijaavanti raga. Those prone to depression are often recommended with a dose of lilt in Bilahari to overcome their melancholy. Nadanamakriya, yet another raga, is supposed to ‘soften’ adamant people and even hardened criminals. Some of the ragas are taken here for a musical analysis to uncover their secrets. Readers may test these suggestions and see for themselves how far these concepts hold good. The same way a mother sings a lullaby with the hope that the child would be pacified by it!
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Even if one member of every Indian Family had studied music, the country would never have been partitioned – Bade Gulam Alikhan.
MUSIC washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life – Berthold Auerbach
Music Speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul…” It’s as if this is meant for me. When I was going through a bout of ill-health, unable to sleep, it was the soothing instrumental music that put me to sleep with its lilting strains – Nalini Saha.
This article was published in DIGNITY DIALOGUE, FEB 2007, Pages 10 to 12
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, june 28, 2021