Happy New Year from Find Your Voice Music Therapy! Here is the last post from the series on self-care. This time of year many people take time to reflect and re-evaluate the past year. Often New Year’s resolutions are created with the aim of creating more balance in life. One may be focusing aspects of physical revitalizing including food, exercise, sleep, or medical care. Perhaps emotional revitalization pertaining counselling, journaling, meditation, prayer or relaxation is important to address. Also, relationship revitalization could be an area of need. Realizing that it is important for you to nurture relationships in your life that make you feel good and support your authenticity. I wish you well with all your endeavours in the year ahead. I also hope that you take the time year-round to create goals to enhance health and well-counbeing.
In this blog I thought it may be useful to speak of why music can be beneficial in promoting self-care. Music has been used for hundreds of years to restore health and more recently scientific studies are giving credible data through the application of music and health. Here are some areas that I think will be of interest:
– Music is known to stimulate many areas of the brain including both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously. In fact, there is no other activity that does this better!
– Listening to the preferred music of an individual promotes mood, energy, and happiness. Some of the hormones released when listening to music include; dopamine, the pleasure, reward-motivator hormone, and serotonin, which involved with regulation of mood and sleep, as well memory and learning skills.
– A 2010 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found employees with moderate sleep problems cost their companies about $2,500 in lost productivity a year. This study has also shown that listening to soft, slow (about 60 BPM) music like jazz or classical can improve the quality and duration of sleep, as well as improve functioning the next day.
– Research shows that listening to 30 minutes of soothing music may produce a calming effect equivalent to taking 10 mg of Valium. (WebMD reports. CBS News, Jul 21, 2010) This could explain why soothing music is often integrated into many relaxation practices as well as meditative and prayer traditions across the world.
I hope that some of these ideas as useful to you as you move forward with your journey of self-care. Wishing you happiness, good health, and many blessings in 2015!
References:
Buchanen, J. (2011, March 8). Music Acts Like a Drug. Retrieved December 18, 2014, from http://jbmusictherapy.com/mm9-music-or-valium/
Buchanen, J. (2013, April 23). Music Improves Productivity. Retrieved December 18, 2014, from http://jbmusictherapy.com/music-tips-to-boost-your-productivity/