Siren song, under the spell…extolling the virtues of music
Photo Credit: fiddling, originally uploaded by jamie_marie.
As illustrated in Homer’s Odyssey, the power of music is formidable. Music often creates a soundtrack to our lives. The matrix of our personal history is interwoven with specific songs that stand out like constellations in our memories. There is no question of the emotive, entertaining, nostalgic, intellectual, and mood-creating properties of music. However, music has also been a long-standing therapeutic modality to facilitate healing. From the drumming healers of India to the five tonal traditional healing music of the Sufi’s, music is one of the oldest healing arts. The first accounts of the influence of music on breathing, BP, and muscular activity were documented in the Renaissance (Munro and Mount, 1978).