By creating soft sounds in your space through music or the sounds of nature, you can “drown” outside sounds such as cars, trains, or sirens. Muffling these sounds can help you improve your sleep patterns, mood, and even blood pressure. And this idea of using the benefits of music therapy for its healing House powers really catches on! It has a rapid impact on the music industry, which is beginning to turn “wellness music” into a newly formed genre. Now you can find music on services like Spotify®, Apple Music®, and YouTube that aim to help you meditate, focus, reduce your stress, improve your sleep, and more.
Music therapy improved patients’ overall mental state, depression, anxiety, and social interaction. Music therapy is a safe alternative or can be combined with medication administration in patients with PTSD. While it can reduce the severity of PTSD symptoms, its effects are less specific.
Everyone listens to and loves music, but few people know about its powerful health benefits. Listening to music lowers blood pressure, improves athletic performance, relieves anxiety and depression, and more. Read this post to learn more about the health benefits of music and the research behind it. Playing music, instead of listening to music, can also have a calming effect. In studies with adult choristers, singing the same piece of music tended to synchronize their breathing and heart rate, which caused a calming effect throughout the group. In a recent study, 272 premature babies were exposed to different types of music three times a week, whether it was lullabies sung by parents or instruments played by a music therapist while recovering in a neonatal ICU.
Music therapy is a creative and holistic approach to healing and developing constructive and positive coping strategies. It has been shown to play an important role in helping patients recover from negative events and experiences, as well as people suffering from PTSD. Music is processed in the part of the brain called the amygdala, which is directly involved in mood and emotions. Listening to music increases the production of the hormone dopamine in the brain.
Levitin and his graduate researcher, Dr. Mona Lisa Chanda, also found that listening to and playing music reduces levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the body. No matter how old you are, what your musical tastes are, or whether you can read a note or not, there’s never a bad time to learn to play an instrument. Music therapy is a clinical, research-based practice in which music is used to improve a person’s mood and overall well-being. Music therapists are trained to record a variety of music-making methods while supporting and working with their clients to achieve good mental health.
In another study, music therapy was beneficial for emotions in Parkinson’s patients. After three months of music therapy, the patients’ symptoms improved compared to the control group.
Patients who listened to their own music or worked with a trained therapist experienced reduced anxiety, pain, and their mood and quality of life improved. Current research does not make a clear distinction as to whether it is the act of playing music or the act of listening to music that benefits patients. For example, if a patient gets better after playing songs on a keyboard, singing in different tones, or singing his favorite song, does he benefit from musical notes or playing music?