Music, for a majority of people, plays a big part in our everyday lives. It’s a form of entertainment, a passion and/or hobby, and sometimes even a career. But music can be so much more than just the sounds playing in the background of stores, restaurants, and your home, and it can be much more than just a pastime or job. What people may not realize is how music affects our everyday lives and our bodies. In fact, music can be used as a form of therapy to provide support and treatment for patients.
Music therapy utilizes multiple avenues of music such as singing, playing instruments, and listening to music, to address patients’ psychological needs, which can vary from emotional, physical, social, etc. This is just the very basics of music therapy. There is a lot to learn about music therapy and its relations to improving our emotional levels, motivation, and expression! For example, studies have shown that music therapy has improved social skills and awareness of children with autism, which I find amazing.
To bring it on a more relatable level, we, as humans going about our daily lives of work or school, all deal with stress. We all have different ways of dealing with stress and some of us are better at handling the situation. Say that you have a test coming soon, or possibly an interview, and you feel that your brain is getting muddled up, or least that’s what mine does. I end up thinking about all the things I need to do and everything seems to get stuck in a messy ball somewhere in my brain. When this happens, heart rate and blood pressure can go up, which of course, we don’t want. What music can do is decrease these rising levels and stimulate a decrease in the production of stress hormones in our body as well. Isn’t that fascinating? The fact that merely listening to calming music can diminish the stress we feel goes to show that music can be a very powerful and beneficial tool in our lives. Plus, it’s free, and don’t we all love free things? So the next time you feel down in the dumps, stressed, or perhaps someone you know needs that extra motivation to listen in online Zoom classes, consider the effectiveness of music therapy and play some music! 🙂
We’ll have more on music therapy soon from our very own Oclef students!
Until next time,
Amy Yan
Oclef Piano Instructor
