Sharing an article, a curated #mentalhealth playlist and my thoughts.
The healing power of music : “Across the history of time, music has been used in all cultures for healing and medicine,” said health psychologist Shilagh Mirgain, PhD. “Every culture has found the importance of creating and listening to music. Even Hippocrates believed music was deeply intertwined with the medical arts.” Scientific evidence suggests that music can have a profound effect on individuals – from helping improve the recovery of motor and cognitive function in stroke patients, reducing symptoms of depression in patients suffering from dementia, even helping patients undergoing surgery to experience less pain and heal faster. And, of course, it can be therapeutic. “Music therapy is an established form of therapy to help individuals address physical, emotional, cognitive and social needs,” said Mirgain. “Music helps reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure and cortisol in the body. It eases anxiety and can help improve mood."
Some of the other benefits of music are:
- Reduce medical anxiety
- Improve your mental game
- Improve sleep
Technology gives us so much access to all kinds of music that we play through music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Youtube music, apple music, Soundcloud etc. We live in an age that our recent history has been solidly recorded on both analog and digital formats. Do you have a playlist of feel good music? If not, I recommend that you playlist of feel good or favorite tracks to ground yourself when you are feeling stressed/anxious/overwhelmed/ *insert other negative feelings here*. Music hits an emotional note for the individual listener, so it's whatever song/beat/genre/vocals that you gets you.
Here's a Spotify playlist that I've created that's filled with songs about #mentalhealth. This playlist has been carefully curated by me with some suggestions from friends, and I welcome any suggestions to add to this compilation.
If you play an instrument and enjoy it, it's another form of music therapy as playing the instrument will keep you present and focused with potential to get you into the flow state. I currently don't play any instruments but I'm learning how to play the drums this year, got quite a bit of theory to learn first. Those are my thoughts on music as therapy, let me know your thoughts about it in the comments section. Thanks!
Sources: Shilagh Mirgain (2019),UWhealth.org website <https://www.uwhealth.org/news/the-healing-power-of-music >
Beverly Merz (2015), Harvard Health Blog <https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/healing-through-music-201511058556>