Re: Music Therapy
Awesome post! YES! I am a strong believer in not just music to listen to for therapeutic reasons, but also performing and creating sound, regardless of your level of musicanship or skill. I am a sound designer/composer/musician and music has helped me heal from so very much that there isn't enough bandwidth in all of curezone for me to convey how much it has aided healing. It is also BEYOND words and this crude monkey brain language to even BEGIN to describe its meaning to my consciousness and soul. :)
A few things I LOVE which are easy for the novice to play with are Tibetan Prayer Bowls and the like and drums. Any drum works although my favorite (besides Tabla which is difficult to learn) is the KANJIRA which is also from india. It's cool! I view these instruments as different forms of SACRED SOUND. The Tibetan Bowls especially have been used as prayer bowls for thousands of years and often the very same bowl you buy has been used for hundreds of years for prayer and meditation, often by Monks an Lamas which is beautiful, healing, soothing and tapping into all sorts of healing colored light from deep within the collective. :) There is a real power and divinity manifested when playing with an instrument which has been played by others as powerful healing allies. It's wonderful as not only was the actual instrument in your hands played and prayed upon by Monks and such, but also there is the bigger picture of "collective meaning" due to the adoration of such sacred instruments within the cultures as a a whole for thousands of years.
As far as CD's and such things, besides the more mainstream sorts of meditative musical tapestries one can find (which are BEAUTIFUL), there is also an entire genre of purely meditative-relaxation-stress reduction related CD's you can find which guide you into various states of consciousness. Many of them use what are called "binaural beats" which are really cool and sort of train the brain to flow into slower, deeper brainwave patterns of relaxation, meditation, etc.
My two favorite companies in such veins are "Centerpointe"
http://www.centerpointe.com/ which calls the binaural layout "Holosynch" and "The Monroe Institute"
http://www.monroeinstitute.com/ which refers to the binaural layout as "Hemi-Synch". Both companies havea huge catalog mixed with some stuff which is very musical and others which sound little more than Ocean waves, wind chimes, and such things. I agree that they are very relaxing and work great!
In case you or others do not know the mechanics of this stuff, this is the way it works:
Long ago researchers like Robert Monroe discovered that when certain sounds are played to the brain via the ears (usually in stereo with headphones on) the sound waves will actually influence the brainwaves and cause them to change and sort of "imitate" the sound waves. I believe it was once called "frequency following response" and it literally means this. A frequency is played into the ears which casues the brainwaves to change.
But the methodology is fascinating! What they do it this:
Let's say one wants to relax into the "Theta State" which is generally considered to be the state of consciousness/brainwave activity between 4 and 8 Hertz. So that is 4-8 cycles per second. So if you tap your foot in second intervals and sing "wa wa wa wa" 4 times per each tap, you are kinda_sorta creating a 4 cycle per second sound/beat.
Anyway, a real 4 hertz tone is not audible to the human ear, so the way they introduced this differnece of frequency to the brain to influence consciounsess was to choose an arbitrary tone (like 440 hertz, the note of A) and have a slightly different tone in each ear so the DIFFERENCE is 4 hertz.
Confusing? I know! ;)
Anyway, let's say you have a tone of 440 hertz going to your RIGHT EAR though headphones. Now in your LEFT EAR is a tone of 444 Hertz. So when you have the headphone on, there is a slightly different tone being fed to each ear. So when you listen to both of them together, you actually HEAR THAT 4 CYCLES PER SECOND BEAT. So you hear that wa wa wa wa pattern (one cycle of 4 beats each second) in your brain. It;s actually pretty freaky as it sounds like "vibrato" but when you lift up one of the headphones, the vibrato sound disappears. This is because each headphone is playing a pure "non beat" tone and it is only when both headphones are on that you hear the freakiness.
What is so beautiful about this is that it not only introduces the Theta state to the brain, but it forces the 2 hemispheres of the brain to operate in synch. The 2 hemispheres communicate their slightly different tone, and in the center of the brain, the "X crossover" is where the difference of 4 hertz manifests which then causes a 4 hertz brainwaeve to be created.
And as 4 hertz is the theta state, one can then become nicely relaxed and meditative. The "Theta State" is actually what many Masters and Healers refer to as "the gateway to the soul".
Often times though, on these CD's, the binaural beat frequency is quite low and not obvious. All it sounds like is a soothing mountain stream with some wind chimes in the background (or something to that effect). But regardless if you can discern the binaural beat (or stacks of multiple beats) they are there and they are quite poweful.
One beautful way to experiment with these things yourself without paying a lot of money for these specialty CD's is to check out the brainwave generator website and freeware software. It's not as sonically pleasing as some of the stuff you can buy (and not nearly as cool as the tibetan prayer bowl binaural beat soundscapes I create! ;) ) but it works!!
Here is the website. I urge you to play around as many of the little pre-sets are just fine. And it is not only the theta state which is desirable. There are binaural patterns which help focus, make you more alert, reduce stress, help one enter the dreamworld, aid in lucid dreams if you listen while sleeping, etc. Fun stuff!!
http://www.bwgen.com/
Please check it out! And anyone reading this who wants to hear some of my prayer bowl binaural compsition soundscapes, FEEL FREE TO ASK!! :)
Sorry if this had nothing to do with your comment or if I completely lost you. heh. It just seemed like a good opportunity to elaborate on some of these tools which can very much help relieve
Depression and much more. Much of the binaural beat programs as well as sacred sounds in general actually cause a NEUROCHEMICAL response in the brain and can cause boosts in seroronin, dopamine, norepenephrine, etc.
Of course, listening to Bach and/or all other music you love can cause the same types of responses in the brain.
But these are highly focuses programs which specifically target these things and also cause the hemispheres of the brain to operate in unison.. Hence: "Hemisphere Synchronization"
In addition, they have performed brain scans on Enlightened Yogi's and Monks and it seems that their 2 hemispheres are often very much in synhc.
http://www.monroeinstitute.com/research/hemisync/hemi-sync.html
So this is all sort of like building training wheels to experience the Enlightened Yogi mind/consciousness, and teach your mind to retain this state after one trains for a while.
I hope this helps and has not completely confused you!
Peace, Light and Sacred Sound,
Brian