Dakota Beacon

“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks or bend the knotted oak.” (William Congreve).  Music also hath charms to help regulate heart rhythm and breathing, blood pressure and now we learn that it also can help us to restore speech and memory.

The celebrated visionary, Edgar Cayce, once prophesied that sound would be the medicine of the future.  As with many of his predictions, he was astonishingly accurate, but it has taken a while to be realized.  I realized it some twenty years ago myself.  

My husband suffered a stroke which affected his speech.  The event was devastating to him - he had always been a public speaker and this was a big part of his life and his identity.  He was also a musician and this combined with his inability to play the piano or use his hands normally was an overwhelming disaster to him.  First, while he was still in the rehab hospital, I brought his keyboard up. About all he could do for a time was look at it. But knowing his love of a challenge, I knew he would be playing again - eventually.  

The speech was a bigger problem.  He was avid with his speech therapy - and really disappointed when at his last session the therapist told him, “There’s nothing more we can do.  We’re trained to help patients be able to be understood - you can be understood. We really don’t know anything more to do that will help.” It was crushing for him to hear that because, yes, he could make himself “understood”.  But he didn’t sound “right”, not like himself. He seemed to have lost an important part of his identity. He would never want to speak in public this way. So I told him, “Never mind. They’ve helped a lot but we’re not done yet,” and I got him not one, but two vocal coaches.  Well, he was also a good singer, so I thought this would bring back some more “memory” of vocal control.   It did. One of the coaches helped greatly with breathing and breath control. Actually, they both did. The other, an opera singer, had him working on patter songs from Gilbert and Sullivan and his success was enviable for even a good singer with no stroke to deal with.  In short, a couple of months later, even people who knew him well could not believe he had had a stroke. (As a follow up, one day he went back to the rehab hospital cafeteria and played the piano for them.)  

So that was my personal experience with music therapy.  We also played music constantly during his lunch and dinner times.  One therapist, on her way back to work after lunch, said, “Oh, we really enjoyed the music.”  (I played cassette tapes on a small player at the table.) I said I hoped it hadn’t disturbed anyone.  She said, no - it was very pleasant. So I said to her, “You know, I think it would help people here if you just played some good quality music during meal times.  It is both relaxing and helps people to focus.” I had been reading about music and studying, for kids. She agreed but thought it would be difficult to find music that pleased everyone.  I responded that maybe it could be different kinds of music depending upon what studies were showing were most beneficial. People who are recovering from strokes must re-learn how to swallow.  This is important so that they don’t “drown” when they eat or drink. It is very, very difficult to go through this. When you are training yourself to swallow you obviously can’t carry on a conversation, like one normally does.  Music would so greatly ease tension in such a situation. It would provide a needed distraction from clattering trays and the jumbled noise of a crowded room. So far, nothing has ever come of my suggestion there, but maybe someday it will.

So - back to today.  I now play the harp at a memory care facility.  Yesterday some of the ladies actually began singing along with my harp - “What Child Is This”.  It was a surprise. I said, “That was really nice! It’s more fun when I hear you singing along.  I’m going to play it again so you all get in on it.” I did, and I heard more voices singing along.  They had fun and they were remembering song lyrics. We finished our visit with “Auld Lang Syne”.  

Last week my brother told me about a radio show he heard.  NPR last week aired a story about a woman whose mother was severely stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.  Almost completely unresponsive to her daughter’s efforts to communicate with language, when she heard her singing and playing Christmas carols on the piano, she began singing along, laughing and joking and reconnecting with her own past.  

This is really impressive.  But so is the fact that music helps to regulate all of our physical systems - our heart rhythms, our breathing, our blood pressure (perhaps, in time we will discover it affects our body chemistry as well).  This has been all around us since the beginning of time. Shamans used chants and percussion - rhythm - to heal. They were probably unaware of why they worked - it was probably credited to magic - but it had a beneficial effect on physical symptoms (and perhaps causes) of various ills.  Now we are finding clinical evidence which backs up the ancient healing rites and just our own observations about how music makes us feel better. The work of Jonathan Goldman is teaching us how intonation and vibration affect our physical and emotional health.  

As to the function of the brain, not only do stroke patients benefit from music, so do those like Congressman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a catastrophic brain injury when she was shot.  It is truly amazing the many benefits we can realize from something as beautiful (and free of unwanted side effects!) as music. In the operating room music is helping patients avoid excessive anaesthesia and improving results in everything from spinal surgery to cataract removal.  Music not only helps the patient, by the way.  Surgeons benefit as well from the same kind of relaxation and focusing that helps children in the classroom.

The  future could hold many wonderful advances in the treatment of everything from ADHD to Parkinson's to cancer.  If we could avoid completely the unfortunate and life-long effects of psychotropic drugs which are used for everything from inattention in the classroom to depression in adults by substituting music for drugs, or at least augmenting our treatment of some of these disorders by using music it could mean both improved results and people in a much happier state of mind.

Everyone should incorporate music into his life - sing, play an instrument, listen to others perform as often as possible.  Personally, I can’t get enough of good singing (not being a singer myself) so I play my favorite music, whether opera, instrumental or maybe latin ballads, when I do an otherwise boring task like washing the dishes.  Who looks forward to a sink full of dishes? I do. I look forward to losing myself in the music while I get my work done!  

Someday, if I can afford it, I’d like to study harp therapy (this is entirely different from “music therapy”).  There is something particularly effective about the way the sounds from a harp affect the body. It might be the way sound waves are like ocean waves.  We know that tides (the moon) have effects on us, and the human body is mostly made up of water, so it should not really surprise us that sound regulates our body’s internal systems.

That’s it for now.  Think about it. Listen to some great music, note how it makes you feel - energized?  Relaxed? Optimistic? Find music that speaks to you - different music for different needs maybe.  As my granny would say, “Can’t hurt. Might help.”  

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