Music is a powerful healing therapy

Take two concertos and call me in the morning-
Why music is winning a wider audience in medicine.

excerpt:

"For decades, psychotherapists have used music to treat people with psychological and behavioral problems. More recently, though, music-based therapy of the kind experienced by Richter has become a popular complement to surgery and drugs. In the U.S., doctors use music to help stroke victims relearn to talk. In Canada, it’s employed to make surgical procedures involving spinal anesthesia more bearable. German physicians use it to ease migraines. In Israel, it has been shown to improve cognitive function in schizophrenics. And in Switzerland, music is used as a treatment for geriatric patients with -cognitive problems.

Music and medicine share a long history. The oldest evidence of musical therapy goes as far back as the third millennium BCE, when Sumerians composed temple hymns to cure the sick. Healing incantations and musical instruments were also prescribed in ancient China and Egypt. In The Odyssey, Homer describes how a healer’s chant stopped a wound from bleeding. Music remained part of the curriculum for aspiring physicians until the 17th century, when it was employed to treat disorders. It was only in the 19th century that music lost its link to medicine.

But music’s physiological effects are as pronounced as its psychological effects..."

© Ode Magazine USA, Inc.

Read on, by clicking the title link, about the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine (IMMM) and more innovative uses of music (both listening and active playing) as a path for healing.