The famous concert pianist James Rhodes confessed a few months ago in his memoirs that he had been raped at the age of 6 and that later he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, fallen into drugs and alcohol and attempted suicide five times. Fortunately, music came to the rescue. «Music has saved my life in a very literal way, and I think it has also saved the lives of a lot of other people. It offers companionship when there is none, understanding when confusion reigns, comfort when distress is felt, and pure, uncontaminated energy when what remains is an empty shell of destruction and exhaustion. Instrumental, published by Blackie Books, thus became a bestseller and an example of life sound healing.
Not everyone’s life has been saved by music, that’s clear, but it does help us maintain our health and even help us recover from an illness, or in the worst case scenario, help us cope better with it. And that’s something that hospitals have been experiencing in recent years. According to the head of the Department of Music Therapy and Director of the Psychosocial Team of the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Unit of HM Hospitales, Camino Bengoechea, «music connects us with our healthy self, with our experience prior to the disease and with everything we are. , which we have experienced… because music has been part of our lives since we are born. When we are sick our physical part gets sick, but not our whole person does, and music allows us to connect with our physical part, and also with the psychic, social and spiritual part. For this reason, music therapy uses musical experiences to obtain therapeutic objectives.
The benefits of this therapy are reflected in several prisms. Music, from its purely physical dimension, allows our body to experience pleasant or unpleasant sensations. Beyond being a subjective perception, noise has harmful effects on health. “Entering an intensive care unit where the noise of machines and medicine infusion pumps is minimized by the sound of music, of delicate, calm and soft voices, has a very powerful impact on patients,” says Bengoechea. . In addition, music helps improve attention, memory, coordination, etc. While playing music brings a multitude of physical and cognitive variables into play and that makes it a powerful stimulation and rehabilitation tool.
The famous concert pianist James Rhodes confessed a few months ago in his memoirs that he had been raped at the age of 6 and that later he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, fallen into drugs and alcohol and attempted suicide five times. Fortunately, music came to the rescue. «Music has saved my life in a very literal way, and I think it has also saved the lives of a lot of other people. It offers companionship when there is none, understanding when confusion reigns, comfort when distress is felt, and pure, uncontaminated energy when what remains is an empty shell of destruction and exhaustion. Instrumental, published by Blackie Books, thus became a bestseller and an example of life.
Not everyone’s life has been saved by music, that’s clear, but it does help us maintain our health and even help us recover from an illness, or in the worst case scenario, help us cope better with it. And that’s something that hospitals have been experiencing in recent years. According to the head of the Department of Music Therapy and Director of the Psychosocial Team of the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Unit of HM Hospitales, Camino Bengoechea, «music connects us with our healthy self, with our experience prior to the disease and with everything we are. , which we have experienced… because music has been part of our lives since we are born. When we are sick our physical part gets sick, but not our whole person does, and music allows us to connect with our physical part, and also with the psychic, social and spiritual part. For this reason, music therapy uses musical experiences to obtain therapeutic objectives.
The benefits of this therapy are reflected in several prisms. Music, from its purely physical dimension, allows our body to experience pleasant or unpleasant sensations. Beyond being a subjective perception, noise has harmful effects on health. “Entering an intensive care unit where the noise of machines and medicine infusion pumps is minimized by the sound of music, of delicate, calm and soft voices, has a very powerful impact on patients,” says Bengoechea. . In addition, music helps improve attention, memory, coordination, etc. While playing music brings a multitude of physical and cognitive variables into play and that makes it a powerful stimulation and rehabilitation tool.
To specify more. For example, how is depression treated? «A person with depression is normally a person with a significant mental tangle, so the first thing we try is for that tangle to relax, unblocking stress and emotional confusion. To do this, we will try to cleanse and balance the energy field (physical, mental and emotional) to later be able to address with sound aspects of relief for your illness, such as your discernment, your personal power or your intuition. Of course, we must know that what we are working on are the origins of the diseases, so the treatment will depend on the cause that caused it and the emotion that is operating at that moment,” says Pastor.
In specific patients
«In the sessions we do with autistic people who have minimal communication with the outside world, in addition to the usual sound healing session we do a second part dedicated to them experimenting with the instruments. The results are incredible. It is amazing to see these people who do not speak and barely communicate their feelings dance, laugh, get excited… common reactions in sound healing sessions but here they are even more exciting and significant,” adds González.
And as Bengoechea evidences, «today we have many articles that relate the practice of music therapy in communication disorders such as autism, attention deficit, learning disorders, etc. And also in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, oncology… In fact, recently my colleague, Dr. Esperanza Torres, presented her doctoral thesis that demonstrates the benefits of music therapy in the field of fibromyalgia. The important thing is that science is being built that values and evaluates a systematic way of working with music and human beings and that shows very valuable results.