Better than Valium - right there in your CD collection...
When you were growing up, do you remember hearing your favorite song on the car radio and feeling your mood zooming? Do you ever catch yourself humming along with music in a pub or restaurant? Have you ever thought back to a night out and felt glowing memories of a song you heard? Is there a soundtrack to your high school or college years? These are everyday reminders of the powerful link between music, memory and our moods.
Basically we are wired to respond emotionally to music. It has been part of our human makeup for millennia. Now new research is shedding light on the connections between music and our brain chemistry. That wiring goes way beyond what we might have imagined a few years ago. Listening to music can release mood-altering brain chemicals in much the same way as pharmaceuticals. It's like having your own special meds, but on your iPod instead of a prescription. The nice thing is that you can get all the mood-elevating benefits with none of the side effects of drugs!
The Music Still Plays Down Deep
Music lights up deep parts of our psyche, and can stir up memories and buried emotions - these can be felt as positive or negative. Old wounds can be brought to the surface to be dealt with. On the other side of the coin, we can also access our youthful vitality and joy. This illustrates how music serves as a direct conduit to our unconscious and the powerful emotional resources that reside there.
When listening, our memories of the music can bring up feelings and associations from our early years. We can glimpse ourselves in a younger or more vulnerable state. This can offer us the opportunity to bring out the compassion and inner authority of our adult selves. It can allow healing of the hidden programming behind our automatic responses to life. This makes music a valuable therapeutic tool for accessing and healing the past.
We can also use music to reconnect the high-voltage wiring of our essential urge to life. Remember the explosive life energy you had when you were a kid? This came out as exuberance, enthusiasm, playfulness, curiosity and love. You can revisit this basic impulse by watching six-year-olds play. What happened to that?! For many of us the stresses, losses, disappointments and compromises of adulthood have weighed heavy on our hearts. So often our hearts have been blanketed and armored, and our vitality and excitement for living have been smothered.
Tapping the Springs of Renewal
One of music's greatest gifts is its uncanny ability to find and tap the deep springs of our aliveness. It drills down through the layers of our emotional armoring and taps into our essential life energy. Where once there was desert there can be a lush forest of aliveness! Emotional renewal is a natural outgrowth of a regular practice of playing or listening to music. Taking time to meditate with music can get you there even faster.
Music can do its deepest healing when we are the most engaged and engrossed in it. Being able to lose ourselves in the music depends on a number of things, including our past associations, our familiarity, our musical tastes and our mood in the moment. Some people relax with pop, others with classical or trance music. The key is to find music that puts you in "the zone." You know what does it for you!
Your Own Personalized Healing Prescription
There's no doubt that music can be a powerful mood-altering agent. For most of us there are songs or pieces from our past that still affect us in powerful and positive ways. These can become the recipe for a simple daily meditation that can make a big difference in how we feel. A regular practice can help us establish new grooves in our neural network and renew our emotional well-being.
When you were growing up, do you remember hearing your favorite song on the car radio and feeling your mood zooming? Do you ever catch yourself humming along with music in a pub or restaurant? Have you ever thought back to a night out and felt glowing memories of a song you heard? Is there a soundtrack to your high school or college years? These are everyday reminders of the powerful link between music, memory and our moods.
Basically we are wired to respond emotionally to music. It has been part of our human makeup for millennia. Now new research is shedding light on the connections between music and our brain chemistry. That wiring goes way beyond what we might have imagined a few years ago. Listening to music can release mood-altering brain chemicals in much the same way as pharmaceuticals. It's like having your own special meds, but on your iPod instead of a prescription. The nice thing is that you can get all the mood-elevating benefits with none of the side effects of drugs!
The Music Still Plays Down Deep
Music lights up deep parts of our psyche, and can stir up memories and buried emotions - these can be felt as positive or negative. Old wounds can be brought to the surface to be dealt with. On the other side of the coin, we can also access our youthful vitality and joy. This illustrates how music serves as a direct conduit to our unconscious and the powerful emotional resources that reside there.
When listening, our memories of the music can bring up feelings and associations from our early years. We can glimpse ourselves in a younger or more vulnerable state. This can offer us the opportunity to bring out the compassion and inner authority of our adult selves. It can allow healing of the hidden programming behind our automatic responses to life. This makes music a valuable therapeutic tool for accessing and healing the past.
We can also use music to reconnect the high-voltage wiring of our essential urge to life. Remember the explosive life energy you had when you were a kid? This came out as exuberance, enthusiasm, playfulness, curiosity and love. You can revisit this basic impulse by watching six-year-olds play. What happened to that?! For many of us the stresses, losses, disappointments and compromises of adulthood have weighed heavy on our hearts. So often our hearts have been blanketed and armored, and our vitality and excitement for living have been smothered.
Tapping the Springs of Renewal
One of music's greatest gifts is its uncanny ability to find and tap the deep springs of our aliveness. It drills down through the layers of our emotional armoring and taps into our essential life energy. Where once there was desert there can be a lush forest of aliveness! Emotional renewal is a natural outgrowth of a regular practice of playing or listening to music. Taking time to meditate with music can get you there even faster.
Music can do its deepest healing when we are the most engaged and engrossed in it. Being able to lose ourselves in the music depends on a number of things, including our past associations, our familiarity, our musical tastes and our mood in the moment. Some people relax with pop, others with classical or trance music. The key is to find music that puts you in "the zone." You know what does it for you!
Your Own Personalized Healing Prescription
There's no doubt that music can be a powerful mood-altering agent. For most of us there are songs or pieces from our past that still affect us in powerful and positive ways. These can become the recipe for a simple daily meditation that can make a big difference in how we feel. A regular practice can help us establish new grooves in our neural network and renew our emotional well-being.
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