How Playing Music Changes Our Lives (And Impacts Our Health Outcomes)

The Greeks believed music had the power to help heal the body and soul. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus was given a lyre by the god Apollo and was instructed in its use by the muses, hence the word “music”. Sounds are used to create music. Sounds produce changes in our body and mind and are involved in modulating simultaneous changes in the autonomic, immune, endocrine, and neuropeptide systems. 

It is necessary to appreciate the principles and theories of sound to understand fully its tremendous capacity to achieve therapeutic psycho-physiologic outcomes such as the reduction of psycho-physiologic stress, pain, anxiety, and isolation. It helps clients achieve a state of deep relaxation, develop self-awareness and creativity, improve learning, clarify personal values, and cope with a variety of psycho-physiologic dysfunctions. 

Our atoms and molecules, cells, glands, and organs all have a characteristic vibrational frequency that absorbs and emits sound. Thus, the human body is a system of vibrating atomic particles, acting as a vibratory transformer that gives off and takes in sound. 

Our entire body vibrates at a fundamental inaudible frequency of approximately eight cycles per second when it is in a relaxed state. During relaxed meditation, the frequency of brain waves produced is also about eight cycles per second. Moreover, the earth vibrates at this same fundamental frequency of eight cycles per second. This phenomenon is called Schumann’s Resonance and is a function of electromagnetic radiation and the earth’s circumference. 

Thus, there is a sympathetic resonance between the electrically charged layers of the earth’s atmosphere and the human body. Therefore, “being in harmony with oneself and the universe” may be more than a poetic concept (Music Therapy: Nursing the Music of the Soul).

Yes! Music DOES change our thinking and our way of responding to the world around us in a good and necessary way. That is why the pursuit of music is critical. Music serves as an important vehicle in achieving the relaxation response required for the removal of one’s inner restlessness and quieting ceaseless thinking. It can stop the mind from running away and enable our thinking to achieve inner quietness and relaxation. 

Want to change your life, your health outcomes and your very way of being? Pick up an instrument and  start learning music TODAY.

“And we must learn that to know a man is not to know his name but to know his melody.” - Anonymous

Guest contributor Linda Tippett teaches piano, keyboard and music theory. She believes that music is both food for the brain and food for the soul. Book a FREE trial lesson with Linda.