5 Ways Music promotes Health and Well-being

“Music appears to be the one universal language we share on this planet. Its power to move us may derive from the fact that it is a metaphorical phenomenon, mysterious, and a way of symbolising affective existence.”

Leonard Bernstein

Music is a universal phenomenon used by all cultures around the world from the beginning of human civilisation. The earliest known instrument, a reindeer bone flute excavated at Haua Fteah, Libya, is more than 60,000 years old (Lawergren 1988, p.41), with music thought to occur prior to speech and song (Montago 2017, p.1).  The ancestors of our modern instruments arose sometime later with the emergence of Homo Sapiens around 40,000 years ago (Lawergren 1988, p.41). It appears music is innate, linked to deep psychological and brain processes, and a critical expression of our social consciousness. The 19th century philosopher Schopenhauer believed music was intricately linked to the impulse to life (will), stating that music“expresses the innermost nature of all life and existence” (Schopenhauer, 1958, p.97). In 1938, in his book Music Psychology (Musikpsychologie), Edmund Kurth continues this line of thinking, suggesting that music expresses psychic force: an inner psychological tension and movement (Hsu 1966, p.7, 9).

Indigenous cultures traditionally use music to heal and promote social and spiritual well-being, as shown in the journeys of Baniwa Shamans of Upper Rio Negro Basin of Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia, which believed music enables passage between earthly and spirit dimensions (Wright, 1992, pt.1, p.36, 39). Recent scientific research is confirming the healing properties of music, showing that music is important for health and well-being on a personal and societal level. Daniel Levitan, in his book ‘Music as Medicine’ (2024), alerts us to the variety of ways music is being used by therapists to treat a variety of maladies and diseases including Alzheimer’s, stress, depression, trauma, Parkinson’s, Dementia, stoke, pain, neurodevelopmental disorders, and memory loss. These latest scientific findings suggest that music has an important role in our Western society, not only entertainment or commodity, but as a healing agent capable of providing health benefits beyond the use of pharmaceuticals. In this article, we explore 5 ways that music promotes healing and well-being, expanding the understand of music and its role in our lives.

1. Emotional Catharsis

“Catharsis means purgation, purification, the removal from the body, and by extension from the psyche, of what is harmful. The result of catharsis is the restoration of bodily or mental health, and the experience of relief .”

Constantine Cavarnos

From the times of ancient Greece, music has been used to provoke emotional catharsis, with Aristotle suggesting that sacred and passionate rhythms and melodies purify the soul and release one from inner tensions (Cavarnos 1979, p.58, 59). This link between music and emotion appears in many other cultures. Indian ragas are categorised by their association of emotions with different musical scales (Miner 2015, p.387).  The psychologist Heinz Kohut believed that music releases disease-causing stress restricted and held within the body. Kohut saw music as having a symbolic framework that was able to circumvent the personality and purge underlying pockets of stored tension, making it critical for religious ceremonies and cultural rituals.  According to Kohut (1957, p.393), healing occurs when deep layers of emotional repressions are accessed consciously through rituals or events that move us to a pre-verbal state, often associated with movement, dance, or being lost in the moment. This type of therapeutic treatment is used in music psychotherapy, where repressed emotions and unconscious materials are re-experienced in the present leading to catharsis (Crowe 2004, p.262). Through the use of musical pulse, rhythm, and form, the repressed states of emotion and feeling are accessed and re-experienced in the present leading to catharsis and healing.

2. Social Cohesion

Music has long been associated with deep experiences that unify humans within social settings. Entrainment is the technical term given to the synchronisation of human biology to the same pattern through the use of rhythm. Entrainment entails that the human nervous system starts to resonate ‘in sync’ with a rhythmic stimulus (Large, 2005, p.94). This occurs in drum rituals that aid social cohesion and unity among its members.

Entrainment colours cultural practices, for example among the Nigerian Yoruba, which do not separate rhythm from dance but see them as a holistic entity (Villepastour 2017 p.268, 284). This perspective is true to how biology synchronises to rhythm, intricately linking to movement and sound to communicate collective cultural meaning. Maria Witek (2017, p.138) provides an interested perspective as to how humans interact with music in a holistic manner. According to Witek, as we dance to music we are unconsciously contributing to its rhythm structure, filling in the gaps with our bodies and minds. We become one with the music, and as others do the same, whole networks of human participants are synchronised to the same beat. A room of people moving as one to the rhythm of music creates a cohesion like no other, evoking states of community and kinship that break the ‘normal’ societal frameworks that separate people. This idea is supported by recent studies of Henkjan Honing (2009, in Levitan 2024, p. 297). Honing’s brain research with monkeys and humans found that beat perception is an innate mechanism rather than a learned phenomenon, part of the biological capability of human musical capability. It suggests that our human connection to music lies beyond culture, at the deepest roots of our biological disposition and part of the evolutionary advantage we developed from our earliest ancestors.

3. Treatment of Pain and Trauma

“We tend to see healing as the province of doctors, and music as entertainment. Perhaps it’s time to reunite two of the most intimate parts of our lives.”  

Daniel Levitan

Music has long been associated with the treatment of pain and trauma. For example, the Wagogo people of Central Tanzania use music as an analgesic to soften the pain of the cut during boyhood circumcision rites (Vallejo 2007, p.12). Scientific research has found that the analgesic effects of music last for up to an hour or more after listening ends, making it useful for treating pain (Levitan 2024, p193). These effects are more pronounced if one has the ability to choose one’s own music, showing that locus of control is an important factor in the treatment of personal pain. It is believed that pleasant or unpleasant music influences the pain modulation pathway, increasing or decreasing pain perception respectively (Levitan 2024, p193).

One of the ways music affects pain is through distraction, but recent research shows a more profound impact of music on pain, with reduction in pain long after the music has ended. An experiment by Daniel Levitan (2004,p194) suggests that music affects pain through a variety of means including 1) distraction, 2) elevation of mood, making pain more bearable, 3) activation of neurochemicals and nervous system circuits involved in pain perception, and 4) through the placebo effect. Emerging theories of pain indicate the contribution of cognitive construction in pain sensation, dependant on interpretation and context. For example, a sensation on your foot is interpreted differently depending on whether you stepped on a rock or are in a foot spa. Music may serve to recontextualise experience, in the same way that a film scene is totally transformed by the type of music accompanying it (Levitan 2024, p.198).

The effects of music therapy have been linked to pain inflammation, tissue repair, sleep quality, and increased immune function, leading to overall health and well-being (see studies in Levitan 2024, p.198). Furthermore, studies show that music contributes to increased arousal and attention, while strengthening the immune system’s ability to fight off infections and possibly cancer (Levitan 2024, p.199).

Trauma, both biological and psychological, changes the neuroplasticity of the brain, altering connectivity profoundly. But music therapies can help to reverse those changes and rewire the brain  (Levitan 2024, p.140). Trauma is a subjective experience, differing for each individual and often leading to entire portions of the brain shutting down. The defence mechanisms developed from traumatic experiences include PTSD, vigilance, stress, and hyperactivation of fear centres in the brain. Music can help disarm these defence mechanisms, freeing the mind from trauma and returning one to the present moment.

Playing or listening to music has been shown to sooth us, reset our mood, create pleasure, stimulate neuroplasticity and brain recovery, and normalise the stress response (Levitan 2024, p.140-141). Treatments for PTSD and other forms of trauma include writing music, with research showing that collaborative songwriting improves PTSD symptoms of avoidance, depression, hyperarousal, and hypervigilance (Levitan 2024, p.142). Similarly, group drumming is powerful because it bypasses language, allowing us to move into the body and beyond thinking and planning centres. Reports show increased feelings of unity, togetherness, belonging, connectedness, and openness after drumming sessions (Levitan 2024, p.143). Music listening treatments are effective and transformative by enabling trauma sufferers to process deep emotions and gain insight into their psychological states, potentially resolving those that are troubling (Levitan 2024, p.143).

4. States of Transcendence

Transcendence is an experience beyond normal or physical levels, often associated with altered states. States of transcendence are critical for evoking the feeling of a higher purpose or sense of God, often leading to alterations in beliefs systems. These heightened states are typically produced within religious rituals, but are also available in non-religious settings as shown by electronic dance parties. Transcendent secular experiences are centered of social connectivity (Graham St John 2017, p.14) and result in rapture and alterations to the perception of time (Till 2009, pp.3-5).

Robin Sylvan (2009, 127-128) recounts how clubbers experience trance states on the dance floor, facilitated by DJs that manipulate tempo and mood using music to cause “palpable energy surges on the dance floor”. Sylvan (2009, p.137) compares the transcendent experiences produced through these peak moments to trance and possession in Nigerian possession rituals, where the host is being overridden by a supernatural entity.  In trance states, transcendence is produced by the emergence of a new personality, one with greater awareness, confidence, and natural movement, seemingly distinct to the normal state of being. The feeling of transcendence is associated with spiritual elation and heightened awareness, a moment when the energy of the music ‘clicks’ with everything around it and one is transported into another experience of altered Self.

5. Increased Imagination, Intelligence, and Empathy.

“In order for any society to build a world having the values and qualities in which it would like to live, you must first imagine it. Only then can you build it”.

Northrop Frye

Music, and the arts, is intricately linked to intelligence through its role in facilitating imagination. Every creation of man evolved from an initial thought derived from the imagination of a human being. We must first imagine in order to create, and the role of music and the arts is to aid imagination and creative visualisation. This same skillset aids our ability to imagine new possibilities, facilitating empathy that is critical to tolerance and seeing the viewpoints of others. As Daniel Levitan (2024, p.320) describes: “Art has a great power to change the way we see the world, our friends, ourselves”.

Conductor Kent Nagano (Levitan p. 321) makes the interesting point that employers in the field of business often look for skills such as being social, communicative, approachable, thoughtful, self-reflexive, value-oriented, disciplined, empathetic, attentive. No employee is required to play a musical instrument, be a dancer, or painter. Yet, Nagano argues that the imaginative qualities developed through these skills is precisely what enables workers to excel in roles that require creative thinking and innovation. He suggests that the ability to imagine is linked to intelligence. Nagano goes further, stating that a lack of imagination often leads to fanaticism and bigotry, determined by an inability to think for oneself, of others, and of the larger picture. Healthy societies thrive on creative imaginative thinking, while dictatorial societies stifle imagination, typically as an assault on the arts and the beauty it evokes.

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References

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