Are you looking for healthful alternatives to treat a specific disorder? Music can have a very powerful influence on your health, and is always available. You won’t even need a prescription! Your inner sound system – your choice of music for listening, your ears, voice, instrument or any self-generated sound – can change your vibrations and energy from dissonance to harmony. You will benefit the most from music you like, and all you have to do is put in a CD or turn on your iPod.
Turn Dissonance into Harmony
The most beautiful and healing music resolves dissonance into harmony. This is also a pattern in life – dissonance, then harmony. Why listen to irritating, dissonant, atonal music that will transfer to your energy? In both life and music, we need harmony, contrast and balance: yin-yang, feminine-masculine, major-minor, loud-soft, reflective-joyful, pleasure-pain, dissonance-harmony. Ideally, music will strike a balance between the head and the heart (intellect and emotion). If the music is too intellectual, it will be cold and abstract. If it’s too emotional, it will be sentimental, “gushy,” and too sweet. Music that’s harmonic and beautiful makes us feel in harmony and in good spirits.
Ancient temples taught that certain sounds, vibrations and tones could heal by breaking up blockages and disturbances in the body. Music has been used for thousands of years for healing, and is becoming very popular again as alternative medicine. More and more hospitals, convalescent homes and other health facilities are using music as a complementary method for traditional medicine and surgery.
Slow or moderate-tempo music is used to lower blood pressure, basal metabolism and respiration rates. Listen to your favorite music for at least 30 minutes a day to boost your immune system. Music lowers the stress hormone cortisol by as much as 25 percent. Music increases endorphins in the brain, which makes you feel good and helps to reduce pain. Music also raises levels of immunoglobulin, which fortifies the immune system, speeds healing, reduces infection, and controls heart rate. This helps to reduce the chances of catching a cold or an upper respiratory infection. Music is sometimes used in drug and alcohol detoxification and as an aid for those with learning disabilities. It has also been helpful with Alzheimer’s patients, as well as the chronically or temporarily ill, the injured and the dying.
Pablo Casals, the world-famous cello virtuoso, suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and emphysema in the last part of his life. His wife had to assist him getting out of bed in the morning, and even had to help him dress. Just before his 90thbirthday, Casals was visiting his friend Norman Cousins in Puerto Rico. One morning, Casals shuffled slowly across the room to the piano, sat up straight on the piano bench and uncurled his swollen hands. His breathing became noticeably more relaxed as he began to play Bach’s “Wohltemperierte Klavier” (Well-Tempered Clavier). Casals then played other difficult pieces with skill and agility. His whole body became fluid, as well as his fingers. After he finished, he arose, seeming to be several inches taller, and went for a long, comfortable walk on the beach with his friend.