The Sweet Sounds of Music Therapy
By Jackie Christensen, BS, HHP, NC, MH
Faculty Member of GCNM
The use of music as a healing medium dates back to ancient times and is evident in thinkers such as Pythagoras and Plato. Ancient civilizations such as Egypt, China, India, Greece and Rome understood that different kinds of music had different effects on the mind and body. Currently music is used in therapy to facilitate the process of moving toward wholeness in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual self in areas such as: independence, freedom to change, adaptability, balance and integration. As the musical elements of rhythm, melody and harmony are elaborated across time, the therapist and client can develop relationships which optimize the quality of life and bring about desirable changes.
The profession of music therapy in the United States developed during W.W.I when music was used in Veterans Administration Hospitals as an intervention to address traumatic war injuries. Veterans actively and passively engaged in music activities that focused on relieving pain perception. Numerous doctors and nurses witnessed the effect music had on veterans' psychological, physiological, cognitive, and emotional state. Now nearly half a century of research in music therapy supports the effectiveness and it is used as a means of facilitating movement and overall physical rehabilitation; motivating people to cope with treatment; providing emotional support for clients and families; providing an outlet for expression of feelings. No two people will interpret music in the same way because musical meaning is related to a whole host of factors such as past experiences, musical training, cultural perspective, and cognitive development.
Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. So for someone who is daydreaming and in an unfocused mood a little Mozart or Baroque music in the background for ten to fifteen minutes can help to steady their conscious awareness and increase mental organization. For those who are analytical and find it hard to improvise, romantic jazz, and New Age music can produce the opposite effect, shifting awareness from the left to the right hemisphere.
Music can also be used to help regulate breath. A slower deeper rate of breath will contribute to calmness, control of emotions, deeper thinking, and better metabolism. By slowing down the tempo of music or by listening to music with longer, slower sounds, one can usually deepen and slow the breath, allowing the mind to calm down. Gregorian chant, New Age and ambient music commonly produce this effect. So whether you are writing as essay or trying to unwind from a hard day of work put on a little background music to help harmonize the mind, body and spirit.
_______________________________
Book Review
Healthy Aging: A Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-being
By Dr. Weil, M.D.
Dr. Weil is a 67 year old medical doctor that majored in Botany and is now one of the leading experts on natural health interventions. He has authored many books including Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Spontaneous Healing, Natural Health Natural Medicine, The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life and Spirit, Health and Healing: the Philosophy of Integrative Medicine and The Natural Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to the Drug Problem.
In his book Healthy Aging he provides a very useful and relevant guide for maintaining physical and spiritual well-being as we age. His philosophy of aging is to let nature take its course, while doing everything in our power to delay the onset of age-related diseases. He provides us with an abundance of information on what we can do to "live as long and as well as possible, then to have a rapid decline at the end of life".
Dr. Weil believes we can live well, age with grace, delay the onset of age-related diseases and discomforts, and maintain our health and vitality, as long as we can, through proper diet, the use of supplements, herbal medicines, gentle yet effective exercise modalities, such as walking, and by engaging in mind/body medicine therapies including self-healing techniques, such as mediation, breathwork, guided imagery and sound healing, just to name a few of the popular ones.
His view is that we can live healthier and longer than our parents because we have access to information that enables us to choose to develop healthy lifestyles, we have better medical treatments for age-related diseases and by living well we are able to reduce the period of morbidity and the period of decline at the end of life.
Dr. Weil stresses that aging brings rewards as well as challenges and losses. He advises us to direct our focus to connecting thoughts of being old with this being a good thing, providing excellent examples such as old trees, old wines, aged cheeses, antiques, with somewhat of a unique sense of humor, and suggests we seek and identify corresponding characteristics in people. Aging brings us a depth and richness of character, complexity, serenity, wisdom, power and grace. All great stuff isn’t it?
He cites attitude as the major obstacle to aging gracefully and encourages us to accept that it is desirable to age, and to take the necessary steps to ensure we maintain good health mentally and physically by adopting positive attitudes and maintaining good relationships throughout our lives. He recommends that we come to understand the aging process for what it is and not deny it, and suggests that it is our negative attitudes about death and dying that make aging a fearful thing.
Dr. Weil includes very interesting chapters to explain the science of longevity. One chapter entitled Immortality provides us with the modern era history of cell biology and DNA that has lead to the research on stem cells. Another entitled Shangri-Las and Fountains of Youth explores theories and evidence of various populations that tend to live longer than most. His favorite population seems to be that of the Japanese, specifically the Okinawans from a beautiful pacific paradise island at the southernmost tip of the Japanese islands where the population tends to have an unusually high number of centenarians and health elderly people. He discusses these people in several of his works and provides information on their lifestyles that support healthy aging. The Okinawans consume more pork than other Japanese, but it is simmered a long time to remove the fat, they eat a type of tofu that has a higher fat content and Dr. Weil claims it is the best he has ever tasted. They also consume sea weeds such as Mozuku which is a fine brown one, Nemacystus decipiens and Cladosiphon okamuranus, usually eaten pickled, Goya or Bitter Melon (Momordica charantia), Ukon or Turmeric (Curcuma longa) commonly drunk as a cold unsweetened tea. They consume a lot of purple sweet potatoes that are antioxidant rich. They consume a local alcoholic beverage called awamori distilled from rice and aged in ceramic jars. They drink a lot of Jasmine tea.
There is a chapter on Anti-aging Medicine that includes information on the controversy involved in various thoughts about what prevents aging. He points to practices from history, such as the use of mushroom of immortality developed over centuries by the Taoists traditions of from China and Korea, and caloric restriction related to the ancient practices of the sadhus from India, and the recent use of hormones and anti-oxidants to prevent or slow down aging.
There are also some amusing theories such as Laziness as a path to longevity, as it conserves the life energy, in which it is recommended you avoid exercise and stress, and limit your ambition.
The chapter called Why We Age discusses the effects of caramelized and browned foods, excess carbohydrates, and most interestingly, the pathology of diabetes where individuals have intermittently high blood sugars levels and the evidence of accelerated age-related diseases, such as cataracts and atherosclerosis noticed in diabetics, stating that much of this pathology is due to the chemical reaction known as glycation, the result of chemical reactions of glucose and proteins which eventually will cause a class of compounds called advanced glycation end products or AGEs to damage DNA and RNA.
In The Denial of Aging, he touches on the harsh cosmetic interventions that those desperate to not show the natural sign of aging will resort to. This chapter exposes the negatives that are engraved in the minds of the many. Dr. Weil stresses that denial of aging is the obstacle to learning and implementing the very strategies that can help us manage the process aging and reduce age-related diseases and discomforts. He does a great job of exposing the wildly unfounded false claims about the expensive cosmetics available to remarkably restore youth and desirability to us, particularly targeting women who are more often judged by their appearance of youth, beauty and sexual attractiveness. He also includes information about the damaging effect of over exposure to harsh sunshine as the cause of unnatural wrinkling of the skin.
There is so much more in this book that I highly recommend it for everyone, but especially for those who are aware that they are having issues and concerns about their own aging and choose to have a change of attitude to the positive side and enjoy the later years of life and all the joys and rewards that come with healthy aging.
Reviewed By Moira Khouri NC, MH, HHP, CCP
Faculty Member of GCNM
Motivational Tips
Exercise of the Month
Exercise Description:
Seated Good Mornings
Area Targeted:Erector Spinae
Instructions:
Begin the exercise by sitting down on a chair or bench. Make sure you are sitting up tall and straight with feet planted on the floor and abdominals tight. Feet should be slightly wider than hip distance apart. Sit towards the front of your chair or bench. Do not let your chest touch your lap at any point during this exercise. Fold your arms across the chest. While you focus on keep your spine erect, bend forward with the upper body and lift the upper body back up to its original sitting position. **Imagine the bend coming from the hips.
To make the exercise more challenging you can add weight by holding a dumbbell in your arms.
___________________________________
Paradigm Shifts, Change The You See Things And The Things You See Will Begin Change
by: Cody Butler
I first came across the idea of paradigm shifts I believe in Stephen Coveys book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", which as I have mention on a number of occasions I highly recommend. Since then I have found the topic cover by Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer and a number of other authors in the personal development field.
The idea is this, you cannot always change a situation that you find yourself in, however, you can always change the way in which you interpret that situation and apply meaning to it. This change of meaning is the paradigm shift. Perspective would be another good word to describe a paradigm shift, to change your paradigm is to change your perspective.
To illustrate this Stephen Covey uses a great example of a man on a train with some very noisy and poorly behaved children. A fellow passenger becomes more and more irritated at the parents inability to make any attempt to control his children, believing that the parent just doesn’t care the passenger becomes very upset. Finally the angry passenger snaps at the parent demanding that he controls his children. The parent responds with an apology and an explanation that their mother had just passed away hours earlier and neither he nor his children really knew how to deal with the situation. Immediately the passenger changed his attitude from anger and frustration to one of sympathy and understanding. This change in attitude was the paradigm shift, you could also say he gained a new perspective of the situation and found new meaning.
As you can see, the situation this passenger found himself in did not change at all, what changed was how he view and interpreted what was happening in that situation. To quote Wayne Dyer, “change the way you see things, and the things you see will start to change”. The lesson here I think is this, if a situation seems poor, do not immediately judge it at face value! Look for paradigm shifts and look for alternative meanings. Take a second and ask the question “what else could this mean? What else could possibly be happening here?”. Sadly it is very easy and natural to jump to conclusions, often the wrong conclusion, by asking yourself some good questions it is possible to change your perspective and generally make life easier and more enjoyable.
_______________________________
About The Author
Cody Butler, personal development author and founder of http://www.dream-life-coaching.com and http://www.investment-for-beginners.com is committed to providing the best resources available to aid you in your growth.
Article Source: http://www.articlecity.com
Search online for values in the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.
