In recent years, music therapy is emerging as a scientific discipline, dedicated to prudent use of sounds and rhythms for individual health as well as for overall human welfare.
Music, we all know, is a series of sound vibrations consisting of compressions and rarefactions.
Through a process called synchronization, these vibrations pervade into the very core of our body.
When prudently administered, they are capable of transforming our thinking processes, mood compositions and attitudinal traits, and in consequence our behaviour towards ourselves and others.
A powerful, but flexible approach to life is what all we gain in life with music. But in terms of its usefulness, what we gain is much more than whatever the best, life has got in store for us!
Music can brighten us when we get dull or depressed. It may even slow down our mental pace, when the mind becomes overactive with unhealthy selfish thinking mode.
Scientific research conducted in recent years, goes to show how rhythms in music could coincide with those in the human brain altering the neuro-physiological functions and thereby our health and well-being.
It is since scientifically established that music could be a safe alternative tool, in the armoury of physicians, for fighting many a battle of sustenance or survival.
Self-Music Therapy: The Procedure
A trained music therapist acts primarily as a facilitator for diagnosing the health conditions and for prescribing musical inputs, treatment schedule such as timings and duration etc., in a therapeutic setting using well intended music.
However, it may not be always possible to position a music therapist next to a patient – 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The next best course therefore would be to train the patient himself or herself on the basics of music and infuse enough confidence in them to be responsible for their own health – and perhaps eventually, for that of their family and their community.
How beautifully Independent and responsible a socially-rejected man or woman – lonely, aged, infirm, traumatized or terminally ill would feel if he or she comes to know that they can be responsible not only for their own healthy behaviour, but also for their kith and kin! After all, it is the feelings of responsibility that transform an ordinary Siddhartha into a Buddha and the next-door Mohan Das into a Mahatma!
Music, nevertheless, is never a full-fledged medicine. It can be at the most, a proto-medicine which in
combination with other forms of medicine and intervention can prove medically useful.
While conventional medicine treats the body organs as the “automobile” parts, music gives the requisite human touch – a sense of care, concern – which is like prana, life-sustaining.
As rhythms in music resonate with one’s heartbeats, the feelings cached in music elevate his or her level of moods, re-shaping a person from a computer-prompted robot to a ‘healthy’ human being, prompted and pampered by love and inner joy.
How to Select the ‘Right’ Music?
Selecting music may appear difficult initially, but eventually one can master it.
The musical piece that loves you, or makes you love is the right medicine – a real specific- for you. Never select the genre of music with which you are not comfortable. Never go by other’s standards or fads of your friend or spouse. Select the one, which really makes you feel good in an unbiased manner. You must be 100% comfortable with it.
The piece that suits your taste and temperament, ideas and aspirations alone could be effective to you. So never allow sages and strangers, Sairams and Tomatises to decide on this!
Having selected a music genre (say, in your case, the film music) go for those tunes that touch your
heart straight.
Try to build a music library of such pieces for instantaneous retrieval. They should be capable of shaking you away from frustration to joy or from slumber to activity or from tension to peace. Even procure those numbers which have made you feel romantic or melancholic. While conveying sadness, music would never show any bitterness, sourness or disharmony. Such music can be of great help in breaking the emotional blocks that inhibit your personality, as you will realize in a matter of a few days. Music, so selected may caress you, hug you or pamper you with such a maternal touch even if you are old and worn-out, having made long innings in your ‘second childhood’ as well for, you still have the ‘inner child’ in you, craving for the very same love and affection, caress and chiding with which you grew up during your ‘first’ childhood!
Self-checkup: The First Step
Before using any music, close your eyes, take long breaths, sit or lie comfortably after pampering yourself with a light snack or a soft drink – for that matter. Having pampered yourself culinary, now it is the time for observing your mood- level!
Observe your moods dispassionately – as a witness who Is outside your being.
Are you left with any tinge of ill feelings, disappointments, frustrations causing hopelessness, jealousy or anger left in you? Then imagine (rather believe forcefully) that the music you are going to play now is going to transform all those things; ill-feelings to love, disappointments and frustrations in life to thankfulness (”God, I am thankful for the sufferings you gave to me, without which I wouldn’t have known those of others”) anger and Jealousy to compassion.
Now play the music like saying prayers! Allow the tones and vibrations cleanse the dirt which has accumulated over years, brush and cleanse them with the beats and rhythms in music vigorously and wash them with the flow of melodies. As the dirt is melted and driven away for evaporation, feel the emerging joy or bliss inside your heart. As the music ends, now it is the time for you to enjoy the silence around! For silence is as important as music, if not more. After 2 or 3 minutes of your “performance” (let’s call it “active listening”) all you do need a good degree of silence and rest, preferably in savasana, the most easy and difficult of the asanas, easy because your body is made inactive, difficult because the mind too has to be made inactive!
Now that the dirt in your mind has been washed away by the river of music, and your body and mind has been dried, get yourself prepared for facing the day ahead.
Use joyful beta tones and music (eg,, haughty folk songs of goa with that Portuguese touch) to bring in sunshine and light in your mindscape. For ‘musicscape’: influences our mindscape. Make music your companion for life and love it so that you are always loved back.
This article was published in SADGURU’S BLESSINGS June 2005 – Pages 35, 36. Also published in ‘Ayurveda and All’ June 2005 – Page 38, 39
Edited by Geeta shreedar, mar 18, 2021