Healing Music Enterprises Blog

Tune Your Life with Music

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Lullabies for Mothers and Others

January 7th, 2010 · The Lullaby Effect

Pregnant women are concerned about lots of thing; some they can do something about and some they can’t.  Often, the more psychologically aware women are worried about bonding with their baby, especially if it’s their first child.  One of easiest and most enjoyable things you can do is to begin listening to some lullabies yourself.  Mothers have lulled their babies to sleep since the beginning to time.  It’s the most natural thing in the world for a mother to hold her baby close and hum, croon, or sing to that precious child.

New mothers worry if they’ll be able to soothe and comfort their infants when they begin to cry.  Knowing 5 or 6 different lullabies is a good way to feel a little more prepared and even reading the words can be very calming for the mother-to-be or new mother.

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of lullabies from around the world and from ancient times until the present.  Many of my adult clients and patients who suffer from insomnia and they listen to lullabies themselves to get to sleep each night.  Sometimes they listen to music on a CD player or perhaps an MP3 player.  Whatever is most convenient and comfortable for mother and child is best.

Once the baby is born, singing to your child is the very best way to calm him or her.  If your baby heard these same lullabies in utero they will calm down even quicker because they sound familiar to baby and bring back memories of security, warmth and comfort.

Below is a quaint poem called “My Mother”. It was written by Ann Taylor (1783 –1866). She’s the sister of Jane Taylor, the author of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Ann and Jane published books of rhymes and poems together.

The illustrations below were done by Walter Crane. Here’s what Crane wrote about it in 1910:

“My Mother” is mid-Victorian-just after crinolines had gone out-but mothers are always in fashion, bless them…

My Mother

Who fed me from her gentle breast,

And hush’d me in her arms to rest,

And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?

My Mother.

When sleep forsook my open eye,

Who was it sung sweet hushaby,

And rock’d me that I should not cry?
My Mother.
Who sat and watched my infant head,
When sleeping in my cradle bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My Mother.

If you are pregnant now, or the mother of a newborn, do begin listening to and singing lullabies!  Your child will thank you and will benefit greatly!

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Tune Your Heart with Music!

January 6th, 2010 · Love, Music and Cardiovascular Health, Music and Emotion

Today, music therapy is  commonly used for people undergoing a cardiac procedure and for those recovering from a heart attack or learning to cope with heart failure or other cardiovascular condition.

At the Mayo Clinic, for example, the Healing Enhancement Program offers music (along with massage and relaxation therapies) for people having heart surgery. “We encourage patients to listen to music before, during, and after surgery,” says Susanne Cutshall, a clinical nurse specialist who heads the program. Studies there indicate that music helps ease pain and anxiety and blocks out distracting or disturbing hospital sounds. The program’s team is working with Chip Davis, founder and leader of the rock group Mannheim Steamroller, to create relaxing music that includes sounds from nature. “This soothing music makes you feel like you are outside in a large, open space instead of confined to a hospital room,” says Cutshall.

Another important application of music therapy is helping people cope with a cardiovascular condition, whether they are recovering from a heart attack or living with angina, heart failure, or claudication. “Heart disease can be very stressful, and makes some people feel as though they have little control over their lives,” says Suzanne Hanser, who chairs the music therapy department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Music therapy can alleviate stress, provide a pleasant coping strategy, and impart a feeling of control, she says.

There are several ways to let music into your heart. One is to work with a music therapist or a music healer.   Think of a music physician as a guide, someone who can help you find the music that evokes from you the most relaxing responses as well as the most positive ones. He or she may help you become a more active listener, using music to help you ward off negative thoughts, release anxiety, and summon energy. A music healer may also encourage you to make music with bells, drums, your voice, or other instruments.

Do-it-yourself music therapy is another option. Find some music that makes you feel good. Pick some calm, relaxing pieces, as well as a few stimulating ones. If you are feeling stressed, sit and listen to the soothing music for 20 minutes or so. If you need a pick-me-up, play something energizing. Observe how the music makes you feel, and give in to those emotions. “The goal,” says Dr. Suzanne Hanser, “is to stop thinking of music as a treatment and make it an essential part of your everyday life.”

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Talking with Mayo Clinic about Surgery Headphones

January 5th, 2010 · Music and Surgery

Talks with Mayo Clinic have begun!

Let me start out my saying that this is not going to be a quick happening but at least it has begun!  I talked with my second “official” person at Mayo Clinic today about the possibility of getting my headphones in use there.  They are already definitely in favor of people using music before, during and after their surgery but are not aware of my self-contained, wireless, pre-programmed headphones.  I’m awaiting calls now from two people who might be in a position to make a decision or at least a decision to gather more information.

In the meantime, if you have not seen the latest info at http://www.surgicalheadphones.com/, please go there NOW and find out how beneficial and even potentially life-saving, music with surgery can be!

Will continue to keep you posted!

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Mental Illness and Art

January 2nd, 2010 · Music and the Brain

Many famous composers, performers and artists were definitively diagnosed with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia.  Robert Schumann died in an “asylum” in Germany after attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Rhine river.  Many composers suffered from severe depression and alcoholism.  These illnesses have no correlation with intelligence or talent.

Today I was introduced to a fantastic website of art by people suffering from mental illness.  These painting are amazing and each tells a powerful story!  Please take a look and leave me a comment!  (Thanks to Tamara Ikenberg!)

The progressive escape of reality towards delusion is expressed in the pictures below. They were painted by Louis Wain, an European artist in the beginning of this century. Since Wain was young, he used to draw and paint cats for calendars, albums, postcards, etc. When he became 57 years old, he  was affected by an unknow mental disorder , which overtook his life as well his art. The last 15 years of his life were spent in psychiatric institutions. His cat’s paintings started to change and to show startling images. Quite revealing of his psychotic condition were the cat’s eyes. See how they become fixed with hostility, even in the earliest paintings, because the psychotic probably tends to think that the world is looking upon him in a menacing way. Another sign is the fragmentation of the cat’s body. They become altered in a strange way under the psychotic’s gaze, and almost always are represented as distorted and phantastic shapes

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/gallery/gall_leonardo/fig1-a.htm

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Noted Boston surgeon to participate in voice seminar

January 1st, 2010 · Announcements

On Jan. 22-24, noted Boston throat specialist Dr. James Burns will be a guest faculty member at the third annual Contemporary Commercial Music Seminar offered by the UMass Dartmouth Music Department.

Burns, a partner of world-renowned voice specialist Dr. Steven Zeitels, is a staff surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation. The clinic cares for the voices of many celebrity clients, including singer Steve Tyler of the rock band Aerosmith.

Burns will discuss vocal anatomy and health for CCM singers who perform rock, pop, jazz, gospel, music theater and other commercial styles Jan. 23.

The weekend seminar will be taught by N. Y. singing voice specialist Jeannette LoVetri. The seminar is coordinated by jazz vocalist and educator Marcelle Gauvin, on faculty at UMass Dartmouth and an instructor at LoVetri’s Contemporary Commercial Music Institute at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va. The work featured is Somatic Voicework, LoVetri’s 21st century method for teaching contemporary commercial music styles. The technique rests upon voice science research, vocal health practices and mor than three decades of LoVetri’s teaching experience. The course has garnered rave reviews from teachers of singing, performers and related professionals such as choral directors and speech pathologists, and now has over 400 graduates nationally and worldwide.

For more information, contact Gauvin at mgauvin@umassd.edu, Michelle Cieto at the UMD Music Department, (508) 999-8568, or go to www.umassd.edu/cvpa/areas/music/ccm.cfm for course and registration details.

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Music Therapy Effective at End of Life

December 31st, 2009 · Music and Dying

THURSDAY, Dec. 31 (HealthDay News) — Music therapy is used to help Alzheimer’s patients remember and autistic children calm down. Now, a University of Alabama student is using her voice and guitar to comfort dying patients in hospice.

Families gathered around the bedside of a dying loved one often request hymns, such as “Amazing Grace,” while others ask for favorite classic rock songs, such as songs by the Beatles, that evoke happier moments, said Sarah Pitts, a senior majoring in music therapy.

“I want to be with people when they need someone to provide them with some type of comfort,” Pitts said. She recently played for an older woman who was just hours from death. Gradually, the woman’s breathing began to slow. Her family gathered around to say their goodbyes. “The family later said hearing the songs she liked made things a little bit better.”

Music therapy is about more than playing pleasant music, said Dena Register, an associate professor of music therapy at the University of Kansas who has also worked in hospice. Instead, it’s aimed at improving a patient’s quality of life, using music as the medium.

“We are not teaching people how to play the guitar or the piano, or singing just to entertain,” Register said. “There is always a more targeted goal. In hospice care, it can be any number of things: pain management, to repair relationships or to help a patient express their wishes to family and friends.”

An increasing body of research is providing evidence of the power of music. A 2007 study found music therapy dramatically improved the mental and physical condition of patients receiving palliative care.

In the study, some 200 patients aged 24 to 87 with chronic or advanced illnesses, such as cancer, pain disorders, AIDS and sickle cell disease, received music therapy sessions, in which they were able to choose the type of music they wanted to hear played on a keyboard.

Physical and psychological tests done before and after the sessions found that music therapy decreased patient anxiety, pain and shortness of breath. More than 80 percent of the patients said the music improved their mood, as well as that of their family members, according to the study by researchers at the Cleveland Music School Settlement.

Pitts was motivated to reach out to patients at Hospice of West Alabama after her brother learned he was facing a potentially fatal heart defect and needed immediate surgery. “While I was in that waiting room, I felt like I needed somebody there to play a song,” Pitts said. “It’s simple but it could be a huge thing for a family dealing with this type of death or a trauma.”

Her mentor, Andrea Cevasco, an assistant professor of music at the University of Alabama, was impressed with Pitts’ willingness to tackle such a challenging and potentially emotionally wrought assignment.

“As an undergrad myself, I never pictured myself doing any kind of hospice work,” Cevasco said. “Personally, I wasn’t ready to deal with death and dying as an 18- to 22-year-old.”

Music therapy can be used in many settings and for all age groups, from premature babies to children with disabilities to seniors with dementia. Certified music therapists, who have training in music, psychology, physiology and other disciplines, are called on to help with a wide range of physical, emotional and social issues. Music therapists are often versed in music from many genres to match the preferences of patients, Register said.

Children with cerebral palsy, for example, might play the drums to encourage them to stretch and use muscles in a way that might seem painful during physical therapy, Cevasco said. Singing can be used with special education students to help them learn to vocalize sounds properly or to teach social skills such as taking turns. For dementia patients, music from their earlier years may be used to help orient them in time and evoke pleasant memories, Pitts said.

“Music therapy can be fun and take away the monotony of whatever it is we are trying to accomplish,” Pitts said. “Music provides a certain emotional and even a physical response. For people in hospice, it can give them a moment to come together as a family, to remember a wonderful time and to have one positive thing come out of that person dying.”

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Two Major National Hospitals Now Recommend Music for Surgery

December 30th, 2009 · Music and Surgery

In the past two months, both the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio have come out advocating music! The Mayo Clinic said:

“Research on the effectiveness of music therapy dates back to the 1920s, when a study reported individuals’ blood pressure dropped when listening to music. Currently, our program is conducting a research study to measure the effects of music therapy on pain, anxiety and tension. As part of the Cardiovascular Surgery Healing Enhancement Program, rooms for cardiac surgery patients have music systems. A selection of CD music is available at each cardiac surgical unit. ”

The Cleveland Clinic said:

“Research on music and the brain has shown that it can reduce stress, alleviate pain and promote relaxation. And new research from the Cleveland Clinic shows that music can even reach into deep brain structures unrelated to hearing and memory to literally soothe nerves.

Patients receiving deep-brain-stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and several other conditions have to be awake for much of the surgery to tell surgeons if their symptoms improve when electrodes are placed deep in their brains.

All of this is very exciting news to me as I am hoping to make my surgical headphones standard in hospitals around the world. Right now I am selling them online at http://www.surgicalheadphones.com/, but I hope eventually to sell them to hospitals so that they can give them to all surgical patients. Stay tuned! The big launch will be in 2010!

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Cleveland Clinic researchers find music can have a soothing effect during brain surgery

December 27th, 2009 · Music and the Brain

If you’ve ever come home after a long day and turned on, say, Brahms to relax, or jacked up the volume on Queen’s “We Are the Champions” to get psyched for a workout, you know that music can change your mood.

Research on music and the brain has shown that it can reduce stress, alleviate pain and promote relaxation. And new research from the Cleveland Clinic shows that music can even reach into deep brain structures unrelated to hearing and memory to literally soothe nerves.

Patients receiving deep-brain-stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and several other conditions have to be awake for much of the surgery to tell surgeons if their symptoms improve when electrodes are placed deep in their brains.

Neuroscientist Damir Janigro took advantage of this conscious period to play clips of music for the patients to see what effect it had on their brain function and on their stress levels during the surgery, which can be many hours long.
Janigro decided to play music for these patients after his own experience in a noisy operating room this year. While being prepped for spinal surgery, he thought of how dentists often give patients headphones to listen to music or a TV to watch to ease anxiety.

“The reason why they do it — I asked my dentist — is because [the procedure is] easier, and you go home faster,” Janigro said.

Janigro presented his findings Oct. 30 at the Music and the Brain symposium in New York. Janigro is one of many specialists who work in the Clinic’s Arts and Medicine Institute, which is studying how the arts can be used to enhance healing.
Dirk Hoch, 52, of Delphi, Ind., agreed to participate in the music study without hesitation. Hoch is a former postal worker who had to retire in 2005 due to essential tremor, a neurological condition that causes involuntary shaking, particularly evident during voluntary movements like holding a fork.

During the April surgery, Hoch listened to different music clips and told Janigro how he felt.

Like all the other participants, about a dozen in this initial study, Hoch preferred the melodic music clips to the others. Janigro also offered purely rhythmic music and a clip that combined rhythmic and melodic music.

To eliminate the possibility of any emotional associations with the music related to memory, Janigro had Gregory Bonanno of the Cleveland Institute of Music compose the clips.

Hoch said the music was a welcome distraction from the pain of the halo-like metal clamp that held his head in place during the surgery.

“You were at ease and at peace with the surroundings, which, given the circumstances, is something,” he said. “I mean, after all, they’re drilling holes in your head and inserting electrodes. It just really made a huge difference.”

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