Music is the ultimate mood drug. It can soothe, energize, stimulate and uplift. Whatever mental state you want to be in, music can take you there. Music has been used as a healing modality for a long time. Now, neuroscientists are beginning to understand the curative role of music in the brain: how and why it works, beyond its ability to alter a person’s mood. We already know that the mind can heal. And, we know that music influences the mind. It appears that the vibrational nature of the universe has something to do with it.

Music and Mood

If you feel scared or negative, you are more likely to focus on your pain and you will be slower in healing, so if music can transport you to a happier frame of mind, you’ll  heal faster. The old phrase, “laughter is the best medicine” is actually based in fact! The fact is, a positive mindset accelerates healing and a negative mindset can delay or even prevent healing. Recent research has proven that thoughts actually have an effect on a person’s DNA! This means that prolonged negativity causes undesirable physical changes and prolonged positivity causes desirable physical changes. Doctors often use mood-altering medicines to improve a patient’s mindset – but music has the same potential, at a fraction of the cost and without nasty side-effects and unwanted drug interactions.

Now, science is going deeper into the physics of sound and why it is directly beneficial for healing. The common theme is simply this – vibration:

“You can look at disease as a form of disharmony. And there’s no organ system in the body that’s not affected by sound and music and vibration.” – Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., Sounds of Healing

Music and Healing

The various components of music (pitch, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) engage different parts of the brain. This may mean that using specific music may allow healers to ‘access’ or stimulate certain parts of the brain that are damaged or that correspond to a damaged body part or function. This is exciting stuff! If a component of music engages the part of the brain important in speech, for example, stimulation of this area through music may help stroke patients recover speech.

In The World is Sound, Joachim-Ernst Berendt said, “At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. We know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular frequencies, its singing. Before we make music, music makes us.”

We live in a vibrational universe where everything is made up of vibrating energy. If physical health is represented by a specific vibration, using sound with that specific vibration creates a new, positive vibration in the body. Like the brain’s response to brainwave entrainment, the body has a “frequency following response” where the body synchronizes its vibration and activity (such as heart rate and respiration) to an outside stimulus. If you’ve ever been at a dance club, you know how this feels!

We do not hear music only through our ears. The entire body is engaged in ‘hearing’ sound – or rather, feeling its vibration.

Music permeates your entire being! You know that music can energize you and make your heart beat faster; and it can soothe you, calming your nervous system and slowing the heart rate. So just imagine how carefully directed vibrations can influence healing, not only by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system but by creating the necessary healthy vibration of specific body parts.

How the brain knows, and how the body responds to the right energetic message, is still on the frontier of science and medicine. For example, since everything is energy, it’s fascinating that the brain can differentiate between the wavelengths of sound and the wavelengths of light – in other words, between what we hear and what we see. It’s all just energy with different vibrational qualities!

Using Music to Heal

Use the Silva Alpha Sound when you need to relax your nervous system to promote healing. Stress is known to cause or worsen all physical, emotional and mental ailments. Step one to healing is removal of stress. You can use any music to relax, but the Alpha Sound is precisely engineered to put your mind in the tranquil alpha brainwave state, where healing begins as the parasympathetic nervous system becomes more active and the sympathetic nervous system becomes less active. Anxiety, depression and other negative emotions are highly destructive to the physical body. That’s why playing uplifting, soothing music and changing your mindset is a necessary component of healing. Studies have shown that the body produces dramatically smaller quantities of stress hormones when ‘listening’ to soothing music.

You intuitively know what genres of music make you feel happy and relaxed. Those are the ones to seek out whenever you need healing! In fact, listen to your intuition because you want to surround yourself with the right vibration for a particular need. Your body is far more attuned to the vibrations of life than you are consciously so spend as much time as you can, whether you’re healthy or not, listening to music that makes you feel GOOD.

Other benefits of music healing:

• Cost. If you already have the right tunes at home (music that makes you feel good), this therapy is free. Music is an investment in your general well-being so like uplifting literature and art, don’t skimp on it!
• Improved sleep patterns
• Improved memory in stroke patients
• Better pain management; less need for painkillers and sedatives because of decreased pain perception
• Dramatic increase in growth hormones, which help the body regulate metabolism and in cell growth and regeneration

Whether you like Mozart, the Alpha Sound, the natural sounds of crickets and ocean waves (Nature is a musician too!) or another genre, use music to heal.