A Key Note Presentation
Esteemed friends,
I am very happy to be amidst the most distinguished Music Therapists of the Country in the Conference, first of its kind opening in this dimension in India organised by Nada Centre for Music Therapy, Chennai.
Go for Music, when Lifestyle gets Affected!
When life-style feels affected, we feel frustrations, deep shock or trauma, depending on our resilience. In the case of Tsunami survivors, the intensity of mental shockwaves is unthinkable and more than the physical shockwaves experienced by the victims of this tragedy!
For the Tsunami survivors, life-style is just not truly affected, rather shattered and bruised fully beyond recognition.
For, many of our brethren who have just managed to survive the Tsunami’s fury are still in a state of shock and this will continue for several days, months and even years, if their problems are addressed now. People have lost their near and dear ones, kith and kin, acquaintances and friends – just like that in a major disaster affecting our countrymen and our brethren in this part of South Asia and even Africa.
Music is a time-tested – rather, time-honoured means by which emotional extremes that may lead us to hypertension and depression (eventually leading to suicide in extreme cases) are regulated and controlled.
The sablest cloud, they say, has a silver-lining.
I consider today’s conference as one such great event for the cause of not only Indians, but for the entire human race affected by the fury of Nature, who had a tryst with it in and beyond our coasts.
I will request all the top music therapists, music lovers and music enthusiasts, who are assembled here today to deliberate more on how best music therapy could be immediately made use of to alleviate this human tragedy.
What we need is succour, love, protection and compassion through music. Like a healing touch, we must bring forth all the hidden healing qualities in music in our deliberations today and work out a practical program which should be time-bound to help the victims overcome their misery through music.
Offering either a lip-service, or a month’s salary or even clothes, food and medicine are just not enough to pacify the people who are under great trauma due to this tragedy.
There is a need for deploying an army of voluntary social psychologists and music therapists to visit the affected people and offer them their support through words and deeds, through music and love.
Victims may be in a state of shock, suffocated by an inexpressible emotional blockade. At times, they may exhibit even a mixed emotional profile viz., anger, frustration, delirium, depression, helplessness, hyper-sensitivity and intolerance – all these to be understood by these volunteers and treated with dedication, compassion, love and understanding through music.
Music: Audio-Analgesic?
In many African countries, music has been used for endurance of labour pain, faced by the women at the time of labour. Friendly ragas, emanating from the friendly instruments such as veena have been used in the past, in south India, when the pregnant women face the labour travails.
By diverting one’s mind from the pain location, such soothing music has worked as an ‘inner most’ companion – as a friend in need- to the mother of the new-born. In the advanced countries, music is used as a complementary medicine to supplement (if necessary) anaesthetic drugs.
The Rhythms in Life
Music is an intrinsic part of every one of us – irrespective of the fact whether we are singers or listeners. In the words of Kabir, “Nada is a music which plays in the body without strings.” Rhythm is the first organizing structure in the infant’s experience. Modern science acknowledges that pulse and rhythmic patterns found in our heart-beat, in our breathing and in our body, movements are just a few indicators of rhythms with which all our life-processes are intrinsically linked. There is an inherent rhythm everywhere – in and around us. If we could focus our attention, our body rhythms become transparent to us. We could feel how our breathing cycles, heart beats and our baro-receptor feedback loops are made of resonance and rhythms which simply go on and on, till Death deprives us of them.
As far as melody goes, it is built in our laughter, cry, screams or songs – all following a fixed rhythmic pattern. A whole range of emotions could be captured and communicated through a wide range of rhythms, tones and melodies drawn from diverse cultural milieux and musical styles, schools and systems.
As in the case of any biological system, nature too is made of cycles and rhythms: seasons change in a cyclic manner and life functions in a cycle of births, growth and death: A cycle without a start or an end. Within the human body itself, life-processes are carried out in a pure rhythmic fashion. Various kinds of rhythms viz., endogenous rhythm, muscular rhythm, pain wave rhythm, pulse-breath frequency, rhythms involved in the processes relating to blood circulation, digestion, respiration, sleep, etc., are well known to the World of Science and Medicine.
All biological processes including our breathing, food-intake and excretion, energy exchange, metabolism, circulation, action of nerves, reproduction – all follow a basic pattern in an orchestrated manner. It is interesting to note that scientists have discovered a musical symphony in the process by which chromosomes condense and segregate during mitosis (nuclear division). It is likened to a musical symphony produced by an orchestra in which several instruments working individually or in unison make an attempt to produce a collective piece of elegance and beauty – as one may come across in a Bach or a Beethoven, in a Mozart or a Mendelssohn. As a conductor ensures that each musical instrument enters the symphony at the appropriate time, with a wave of the baton so the conductors of the so-called mitotic symphony called ‘checkpoints’ prevent errors in chromosome segregation that can lead to disease such as Down’s syndrome or cancer. (David Cortez and Stephen J Elledge 2000).
The Rhythmic Expansion
Rhythms cannot be confined to intracellular functions alone; complexities of periodic rhythms grow right from cellular levels to the tissue levels and onwards to organs and to the entire organism. The nada yogis visualize their impact even beyond the confines of their bodies on the firm belief of their influence over the Universe. The present-day Physicists are discovering that the foundation of the Universe is not just matter, particles or quartz, but movement of energy – the vibrations. Some common rhythms in the body such as heart rate and breathing cycle could be directly experienced as we focus our awareness on them. This awareness is more pronounced particularly when one feels excruciating pain – as in toothache, when a wave of pain sweeps over the affected area, occurring in an interval of say, 15 to 30 seconds. The rhythmic pattern here is one and the same as the one, which forms our sleep cycles during the night.
Musical Rhythms & Body Rhythms
It is an age-old practice in all primitive societies wherein by drumming at the rate of 41″ beats per second, shamanic state of consciousness is induced. Recent researchers like Landreth (1974), Harrier (1977) have confirmed that slow beats modify heart rate and breathing cycle in a significant way. Listening to musical rhythms do have an impact on the brain wave rhythms, which are responsible for our level of consciousness: a stage of alertness (with the predominance in beta waves) or a state of relaxation or deep sleep (with the predominance in alpha, theta or delta waves). A musical-harmonic order called ‘rhythmic functional order in humans’ is responded to and intensified even when a person is sleepy.
It has been experimentally found by this author in a workshop conducted at Delhi on the 22nd December 2001 before an enlightened audience, composed of diplomats, civil servants, yoga teachers and music lovers that by manipulating the rhythmic pace a tabla or a manjira could lead one to a relaxed state.
The literature on music therapy is fast building up confirming that long term musical involvement reaps cognitive rewards – in terms of linguistic skills, reasoning and creativity for enhancing social adjustments love and peace. Music exercises the brain and playing the instruments for instance, involves vision, hearing, touch, motor planning, emotion, symbol-interpretation – all of which go to activate different areas of brain-functioning. It has been observed that some Alzheimer patients could play music even long after they have forgotten their near and dear ones. In the deepest and most general level, the forms of music stimulate the forms of adaptation (that is, assimilation and accommodation) which are deeply rooted in our autonomic nervous system. These intimate connections between our life-processes and music can remain despite illness or disability and are never dependent on our musical skill or mastery. Because of this, the emotional, cognitive and developmental needs of people with a wide range of problems arising from such varied causes such as learning difficulties, mental and physical ailments, physical or sexual abuse, stress, terminal illness etc., could be rationally addressed by selecting appropriate music.
Every one of us responds to music – from the new born to the patients at their death-beds and from physically or mentally strong to those who are the weaklings or impaired.
Music Therapy: A Rediscovery
It is strange that the subject of music therapy has not witnessed a revival in India in recent years. This is particularly surprising for a nation, which had in the past, made great strides in recognizing the therapeutic impact of rhythms, resonance and melodies for the well-being of Body, Mind and Spirit. Those ragas which are therapeutic as in the ancient text of Raga Chikitsa were even codified and celebrated.
Music is interred with the very existence of man. It has been an inseparable companion not only to the primitive aboriginal man who feared Nature’s fury but also to the contemporary man who is under constant threat by his own species. In the words of Carlyle, “music is a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite and let us for a moment gaze in that”.
Even the Science that usually shows scepticism over the very existence of God is dumb before the power of music. No scientific work could question its impact on mind and consciousness or could deny its role in soothing and pacifying one’s mind or in elevating one’s moods. On the other hand, a formidable body of research has been built, all confirming its therapeutic, prophylactic and audio-analgesic role. In this process, even those who have sole faith in modern medicine have started coming out openly in acknowledging music as a ‘complementary medicine’. Having recognized its significant role in a wide-ranging disorder including epilepsy, mental ailments, speech-related disorders, and terminal illness such as cancer and AIDS, music is increasingly regarded as medicine. The patients who have undergone the musical treatment would vouchsafe that they had experienced a neo-sense of dignity with music, during their struggle for survival. Even while awaiting one’s death – as in hospitals or in hospices – the music has lent its dignity in such a way that the passage to the other world could appear more smooth and less painful.
With the publication of Medicina Musica by Richard Browne in 1729, music came to occupy the pride of place not only in restaurants and bars but also in shopping malls, street junctions, automobile and railway coaches etc. Its importance was recognized particularly in those places where one’s patience undergoes its test e.g., in queues, in waiting halls, in ICU’s and CCU’s, and in hospices. Several endroits, such as operation theatres, street-corners, examination halls, board rooms etc where tempers and anxiety run amok have also witnessed a sea-change after introduction of musical rhymes and rhythms.
The ancient Indian civilization, which had prescribed meditation for ‘taming’ the mind so as to reach into higher realms of consciousness, had also devised ways and means to tap the inherent power lying in music for holistic health. The esoteric concepts and practices of Nada Yoga or Laya Yoga not only take into account the gross resonance, captured within the sensory limitations of the human ears, viz., 20 to 20,000 Hz., but also the subtle, anahata which is totally beyond one’s sensory reach, but can be perceived by mastering the techniques in yoga. Music or nada reveals a distinct yin-yang pattern, a characteristic common to all living systems in the universe. Here, the sound and silence – the otherwise two opposing phenomena, which stultify each other, is yoked together under a mystic canopy for their mutual interaction in producing synergy. While the acoustically driven person recognizes it as a mere sound (or a tone of such-and-such frequency range), a musical connoisseur may find it as a marvel. For the nada yogi, however, it may even represent the very manifestation of God or Brahman. The synergy arising out of this strange combination of sound and silence is however considered to be the very building block that constitutes the entire Universe.
The Western Note and the Indian Swara : Affinities & Differences
In the Westerner’s eyes (or, rather, ears), a note is just a note. Nothing more, nothing less. It has to be mathematically correct and mechanically precise. Take for example the amount of care and concern that goes into tuning a piano. The Indian system of ragas on the other hand encompasses not only swaras (lit. “self-shining”), but even their partials, those stacks of subordinate vibrations (semi-tones), which appear for an acute observer of resonance. In fact, it is the selective application of such harmonics to appear themselves at appropriate places, that lends a raga its unique identity in an otherwise virtual ocean of ragas. In other words, it is just not a mere thread of tonal vibration, but a stack of subordinate vibrations that go into the spinning of a raga wick. The subtle way in which the subordinate vibrations in a swara encounter their counterparts in the preceding or succeeding swaras determines the pakad, a short cut involved in identifying a raga by presenting a musical phrase and not a sentence. It is not enough if a student is offered a notation or the solfa-syllables to master a raga. As the selected harmonics cannot be properly reflected in these, the Indian system of music is dependent on guru-shishya parampara and which again makes the Indian system of raga unique in the world of music. It is these partials in swaras that elevate the Indian raga from being a mere mechanistic melody to a lofty divine form. Apart from lending an Indian touch to the music, it is these partials which have paved the way for effective meditation. In the realm of yoga, the concentration on the swayambhu swaras especially during rechaka (exhalation) and kumbhaka (the interval between the incoming and outgoing breath) has heightened one’s experience of one’s own consciousness
Therapeutic Traditions in Ancient Civilizations:
Long before acoustics came to be studied in Europe, the ancient civilizations of the Arabs, Greeks and Indians were already aware of the prophylactic and therapeutic role of musical sounds and vibrations. While the Greek legends glorify the music that healed Ulysses from his deadly wounds, the Arabian writer Ibn Sina had recorded the therapeutic role of music in his various treatises on medicine. The Indian musician Tan Sen is said to have cured the Emperor Akbar’s hypertension with his recipe: the raga yaman. It was widely-known that depending on its nature, a raga could induce or intensify joy or sorrow, anger or peace and capture and communicate a whole range of emotions. All these could be done by manipulating the pace or gait or by exploiting certain swaras or ragas through altering or their methods of rendering as in meend or glissando, staccato, iteration, progression etc.
Indian Therapeutic Music: A Musical Alchemy – Indian music is a combination of experiences, both emotional and intellectual. While a listener’s emotional hunger is met with by selecting the melodies laced with required bhavas, his intellectual thirst is quenched by the mathematical precision involved in the complex and elaborate tala system. It is also a well-known fact that the Indian classical music attaches importance to serenity and thoughtful state of mind as its primary aim. In other words it caters both to emotions and intelligence a la fois, thus enabling balancing of the analytical mind (mastish) and emotional or intuitive mind (buddhi). In other words, by listening to certain kind of music one is able to achieve equanimity, a quality propagated in several schools of yoga.
Music emanating from certain instruments is also regarded for their therapeutic value. The credit here goes to the unique texture or timbre (tone colour). For instance, in South India, sweet strains from veena have been believed to ensure a smooth and safe passage for the baby’s arrival from the wombs of its mother.
Tambura and the Importance of Drone in Music :
Tambura or tanpura, the Indian drone instrument is just not a drone of achala swaras, the tonic and the fifth spilling out monotony all the way! It is conceived to balance the expanding pitches in a raga by repeated basic pitches, which acts as a constant reminder to the performer to maintain the purity of the pitch despite the flow of several consonant and dissonant swaras that may constitute a raga. Further, the harmonics emanating from the heart of this instrument over a period of time – say 15 to 20 minutes a day – also assure harmony and peace all around – an event better experienced than explained in a seminar like this! Bikshandarkovil Subbarayar, a Carnatic vidwan who lived in the late 19th Century, was known for sending his two tamburas to the stage much ahead of his arrival, so that the concert hall is afloat with harmonics and semitones that prepare the mind of the audience to be well-attuned to the relevant shruti. There’s no doubt, when the actual concert began, a great degree of compatibility was already established between the artist and his audience!
Music with Guided Imagery
As the musical melody progresses, the therapist explains imaginative events, situations, characters which are further elaborated by the patient. Several symphonies in the Western classical system, particularly those of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky etc could be utilized by the therapists for activating the imagination of the patient vis a vis the melody played, which not only induces satisfaction in the patient but also greatly helps in overcoming his problems such as depression, trauma and other psychological ailments. Such a method called ‘Bonny Method’ is also reported to have considerable impact in lowering one’s heart rate.
How does Music Heal?
Though the mechanism of healing is still a mystery to modern science, there is a great deal of belief that music stimulates the pituitary glands, whose secretions affect the nervous system and the blood flow. It is also believed that for healing with music, the cells of the body have to be vibrated. It is through these vibrations; it is said that the diseased person’s consciousness could be changed effectively to promote health. Several Psychiatrists have confirmed the usefulness of music therapy for neuroses. Lively music is found to be useful for depression, white melodious music played on string instruments has been found useful for anxiety neurosis patients. Faster music is however reported to be preferred by the patients of mania. European experiments have endorsed that a fifteen-minute session of soothing melodies can lull a patient into a sense of well-being before a painful operation. Music is found to nudge some patients into making voluntary movements, which they cannot do otherwise.
Vibroacoustic and Vibrotactile Gadgets:
Several gadgets such as vibrating platforms, beds, chairs, leg-rests and what not are commercially available in the West which extend a “physical experience” of 25-80 Hz sine wave tones. Thanks to these gadgets, the people with hearing impairment could physically experience (as vibration through their bodies) the middle to low frequency content of music and other sounds. Hearing impaired people can thus enjoy making and experiencing music. The physical experience of vibrations is said to be an effective therapeutic treatment for a variety of ailments such as autistic disability in children, Alzheimer’s disease, Asperger’s syndrome in adults and children, brain damage, emotional disturbance, Huntington’s disease, learning impairments, Parkinson’s disease etc. It is considered ideal for sensory impairment and terminal care. It has also been found that various low frequency sine tones will have localized effects within the body. They are said to be helpful in speech correction and in restoration of metabolic and physiological deficiencies. A frequency range from 25 to 45 Hz is said to be useful for ailments connected with feet, ankle, calves, knees, upper thighs and sacrum; a range between 45 to 60 Hz is said to be affecting coccyx, sacrum and lumbar region, where as 60 to 80 Hz is reported to affect thoracic cavity, shoulders, neck and head region.
The Gift of Music
There is a growing awareness in the West that certain music can provide physiological as well as psychological benefits. Several experiments conducted on the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have revealed that many of Mozart’s sonatas result in increased joie de vivre and quality of life, regardless of one’s age or health conditions. Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, acknowledges the role of music in many neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s because of its unique capacity to organize and reorganize cerebral functions, when it has been greatly damaged. Design music sessions using music improvisations, receptive music listening, song-writing, guided imagery, learning through music have proved to be useful in ensuring emotional well-being besides improving communication and cognitive skills through musical responses.
MUSICAL EXPERIENCE
Musical experience is unique in the sense that it can impart an experience of extraordinary freedom to rise beyond the limitations of one’s physical being. In other words, one’s consciousness level could be increased to the next higher realm, with the appropriate dose of music. Meditative music where melody and rhythms are combined with inspirational words and expressions (lyrics) as in bhajans, kirtans, Veda recitations etc. do enhance meditation and concentration and enable the mind to focus inwards. This form of internalisation or inward looking brings about its own advantages such as strength and security and peace and tranquillity to those who are mentally challenged. Through music and by letting one’s mind go after it, one experiences a deep state of relaxation, which cannot be even guaranteed, with the help of chemical or synthetic drugs without their accompanying side-effects.
Conclusion
There is a growing body of literature, which recognizes the utilization of music therapy as an effective and respected treatment option. It is a well acknowledged scientific fact that expressive music activities like singing or playing instruments improve coping mechanisms and self-confidence. For the terminally ill, music provides greatest solace. Besides a comforting environment, it is found to be of great help in pain management. A combination of touch therapy, imagery and music provides an environment for a peaceful passage. Thus, music therapy has established itself as a dependable health care system using music and music activities. It is increasingly being accepted as a complementary healing system, especially in the advanced countries, where cost of medical cover has gone beyond the reach of the common man. In combination with other healing methods such as acupuncture, anaesthesia, medication, surgery, yoga etc. music is found to be greatly efficacious. Regardless of differences due to age, disability or musical upbringing, it has proved useful to one and all.
Soothing and organizational properties of music helps the mentally handicapped. Limitless creative opportunities available in singing or playing instruments provide avenues for their self-expression, which is, otherwise, unavailable to them. Music exercises aid in organizing one’s thought processes and help in overcoming one’s inhibitions and restrictions. The creative process of music takes over one’s mind and emotion and leads to the feeling of wholeness and completeness with the Universe in all levels of existence: physical, moral or intellectual. It helps in overcoming all forms of inadequacies or frustrations in life. Music as a therapy is not exclusive for just a disease; it is meant for all patient groups. From the terminally ill to the temporary sufferer, it suits everybody as it involves no side effects Alzheimer patients, chronic pain sufferers, premature infants, terminal patients etc all respond to the healing power of music. Symptoms of anxiety, depression and pain in the terminally ill are overcome by the healing power of music.
Thanks to music, multiple handicap patients gain a variety of skills. It provides a solid foundation for learning various skills including speech, language, self-care and adaptation. In long term care settings, music is used to exercise a variety of skills. Cognitive games help with long and short term memory recall. Music, combined with movement as in modern gym and aerobic sessions, improve physical capabilities. Music by itself or in combination with other media such as art, aroma or dance offer unlimited scope for experience for the sensory-deprived, which is often caused by coma, injury or degenerative diseases.
Musical Opportunities
It is the birth right of every child to be trained in singing and music. Every citizen should have an easy access to music – and certainly not to noise during social interactions. In earlier days, the aristocrats in India like Zamindars used to entertain their tenants and labourers with performers and musicians like Yakshaganbayalata, Kathakati, Sadir Katchery, Moothu etc. In the temples, concerts could be arranged on festival days where musicians and instrumentalists using powerful and far-reaching sounds as for example, in nadaswaram, drums, cymbals and the like which touch the nooks and corners of the village even without any amplifier facilities. In some Western countries, low paid workers and those who are to work in noisy factories are given free passes to attend musical concerts. There is a real joy when people attend to live music. Even in factories and offices, melodious music has already started creating conducive atmosphere of harmony and bon homie reducing tension among the clients and the employees. Psychiatric and medical hospitals, hospices, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation facilities, day care treatment centres, community health centres, drugs and alcohol programmes, senior centres, nursing homes, correctional facilities, schools and colleges and all such areas where humans interact can improve their functioning with music, providing a better quality of life to one and all.
Note: The information provided here is offered as a service and is not meant to replace any medical treatment.
Source : Nada International Conference 2006