HERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO THINK ABOUT MUSIC IN YOUR LIFE
Just before the holiday season, I had the opportunity to deliver a talk about music therapy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness San Diego. Despite the assurance from the university that any mental health practitioner is capable of speaking on the latest research, my mind darted among all the possibilities for meaningful engagement in this topic.
Reviewing the research as I prepared, I learned that music is linked to a long history of evidence-based practices that provide benefits for health and wellbeing. The American Music Therapy Association provides ample resources and data from researchers who demonstrate the therapeutic properties of music.
At the UCLA Herb Albert School of Music, researchers who explore the use of music as medicine have discovered how the human brain responds to music stimuli and all the chemical conversations that quietly take place within our bodies. Music can reduce pain in fibromyalgia patients, decrease the progression of Parkinson’s disease, provide support to patients living with cancer, and significantly contribute to lowering stress levels, to name a few.
But rather than focusing on expert-based knowledge ironically, I turned to the beat of my own heart drumming in the key of a A minor to explore the transformational effects of music in hopes this writing could inspire you in similar ways. As someone with a membership in the human species (with a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences that somehow legitimizes my ideas), I subscribe to the fundamental assumption that life loves and pains. So, alas, we humans are bound to develop deeper connections with musical experiences as part of the complex domains and systems that constitute our lives. Our hearts alone respond to the musical presence that we barely notice in our fast-paced society. As I wrote these lines, I sipped a cappuccino in one of my favorite coffee spots in Kensington, and listened to the soundtrack of the December rainstorms.
Music begins in you and me, and we find it in everything that connects us. For example, when was the last time you cried hearing your favorite love song? Or danced with abandon to an upbeat song as if no one were watching? Have you stopped to notice the rhythm of the ocean as water oscillates in waves? Or perhaps slept undisturbed by the gentle pinging sound of rain that tapped your bedroom window?
I invite you to reflect on your own experience. Can you stop and seek out the musical masterpieces you have unknowingly collected throughout your personal history? If yes, by deliberately tuning in to create unique spaces to attend to our human experiences, we might just be able to comprehend the meaning of our own existence with much more discernment.
Consider this: Is there something new about the physiology that music creates in us that might allow us to learn more about ourselves? If so, what experiences could become available in times of contrast, for example, when our hearts sink to our stomachs while we experience injustice, sadness or suffering? Similarly, what experiences might become available when we are in harmony with ourselves and all our hearts want is to sing and dance to the beat of joy?
I invite you to expand your relationship with music and perhaps build on the concept of using music not only as a psychological strategy to cope with challenging experiences, but rather as the link that propels you as the protagonist of your own story by evoking the atmosphere that will do justice to your efforts of living life. Let music come to you to remind you of its power to bring you back home to your own heart.
Finally, if your life were no longer fragmented experiences and you could connect the musical pieces that have been playing in the background as the soundtrack of your story, no longer inaudible or taken for granted, what might you learn about the significance music has had and still has in your life?
I invite you to reflect on your own experience. What are the musical masterpieces you have unknowingly collected throughout your personal history?
Carter is an assistant professor at the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University. In her clinical work as a therapist, she helped children and adolescents experiencing self-harm and suicidal behaviors. She is originally from Brazil, and now lives in San Diego County.