Music, the Mind-Body Connection, and The Relaxation Response!

Music can be used as a valuable stress management and relaxation tool. Relaxation music creates an ambient oasis of peace and tranquility enhancing vital relaxation.


Music is a great accompaniment for holistic therapies and very powerful tool for relieving stress. It also enhances the production of guided meditation or hypnotherapy. Soothing music helps a person calm down, lower the heart rate and by design create additional alpha brainwaves with its special rhythms.


Music with a magical tempo of 60 beats per minute enhance a restful sleep, speed up learning, improve immune response, decrease the need for anesthesia during surgery and has even been known to reduce blood pressure.


The experience of most people and science points out the significance of baroque music in offering relaxation. Studies indicate that baroque music played at 60 beats per minute enables the brain to generate increased alpha brainwaves offering a relaxation effect.


To choose the relaxation music, which works best for you, start by testing the various types of soothing music available. It is likely that what one considers relaxing may be irritating to another. Choosing appropriate calming music is a matter of personal preferences, but though one’s personal preferences go into the equation, some kind of music is more relaxing than other music.


The brain primarily produces brainwaves at 14 to 30 cycles per second (hertz) known as beta waves when in normal consciousness. Brainwaves with frequencies of 8 to 14 cycles per second are alpha waves that are present when one is more relaxed. Around 4 to 8 cycles per second is the theta waves that present a deeper drowsy and meditative state. Finally, when one is asleep, delta waves of fewer than 5 hertz are produced.


Normally, alpha brainwaves stimulate a relaxing state, but meditation encourages a more relaxing consciousness state especially if practiced regularly. For those who have no time or inclinations to meditate, music embedded with particular beats works in a similar way. This is the source for brainwave entertainment technology, which alter one’s brainwaves giving a rapid relaxation response. Relaxation music affects the soul. People don’t just merely hear it, they also feel it.


When trying to use relaxation music to calm the body and spirit it is most important to choose music that is relaxing to you. There are various styles and genres of music and the style that is comfortable for one person may be completely different from the style that relaxes another. Trial and error will help to gauge which style is best for your mind.

found on http://www.blueorbitmusic.com/?p=430

How does music affect YOUR mind and body?

It's no secret, music affects us all differently. Even the same piece of music affects different people in vastly different ways. Let's take,for example, Michael Jackson. Like many pop musician, whether you like him or don't is oftentimes a matter of what generation you're a part of? Are you now a senior citizen? Chances are you're NOT a fan. Are you in your 30's or 40's? I'll be you probably do like a lot of his music.



How we react to this piece of music probably will even be different in the future because it is currently being re-recorded by newer world-famous musicians as a fund-raiser for the children of Haiti! For me, hearing this piece again brings to my mind all the images of abandoned children wandering the streets of Haiti and makes me want to help them.

Music can affect people by calming them, energizing them, reminding them of their spiritual connection or inciting them to fight and riot in the streets! How will music affect YOU today?

Holy Angels Gift of Music

Gift of music thrills Holy Angels

New program enables people with disabilities to perform with even the slightest motion.

The musical instrument is invisible - played by hand movements or nods of the head.

Sounds showering the air may be like the sweet purr of a harp or a full orchestra's blast.

The players are residents of Belmont-based Holy Angels, a center for children and adults with severe disabilities that is run by the Sisters of Mercy.

They're taking part in a new program that allows them to create musical sounds by interrupting an invisible beam that sends out ultra-sonic pulses. The sounds - anything from a guitar to a piano - are programmed into a computer/synthesizer connected to microphones that emit the ultrasonic waves. When the waves are broken, sounds come out in long or short bursts against background music created by the synthesizer.


Introduced in Germany in the late 1980s, the sound beams open up a world of possibilities for people who are extremely limited in what they can do.


"They can really enjoy music in a way in which they can actually participate," said Gaye Dimmick, director of creative arts at Holy Angels. "They're independent in a way they've never been before. It's a big step for them."


The sound beam is an addition to the recently announced Don & Lynn Leonard Music Program, named after two longtime volunteers at Holy Angels.


Don Leonard, who died of cancer in 2008, ran a Charlotte heating and air-conditioning business, but he made music on the side at Holy Angels.

Before he died in 2008 at 61, he asked that donations in his memory be made to Holy Angels, where he was considered the "resident musician." Nearly $12,000 came in.


"Don wanted to do something that would last," said Lynn Leonard of Gastonia. "I think he would be thrilled over this program. He knew the power of music."

Faces light up

Lexington native Don Leonard got his first guitar in junior high. His passion for music took off, even though he couldn't read a note and played by ear.

In the mid-1960s, as a student at Salisbury's Catawba College, he traveled with a band called The Jokers Six & the Marlboros, playing beach, rock and soul.

Don and Lynn Leonard married in 1971 and moved from Salisbury to Gastonia in 1981.


Lynn Leonard connected with Holy Angels 10 years later when she helped build an endowment fund there and became a volunteer.

"I saw the care the kids were getting," Leonard said. "The situations were sad, but their lives were so enriched."


Her three children also became volunteers. So did her husband, who put his musical talent to use.

He and a friend, vocalist Johnny Brincefield of Salisbury, performed at Holy Angels' special events - everything from groundbreakings to holiday parties.

"This was another way Don had of sharing his music," Lynn Leonard said. "He said it just warmed his heart to see these children love music as much as he did."

Don Leonard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000. Following surgery, he had 35 radiation treatments and experimental treatment in the Dominican Republic.

In the long fight for his life, music helped.

He liked all kinds: Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana; Chet Atkins and Jim Croce; Spyro Gyra and the Rippingtons.

"Music was his obsession," Lynn Leonard said. "Don would go down to his little music room and spent time there. He said it put him in another place."

Leonard stayed involved with Holy Angels, music and his job - right until the end.

Donations in his memory are also paying for another part of the music program: the Rhythmic Arts Project. Hand-held drums are used as a simple method of teaching residents such things as numbers, concentration and focus.

Lynn Leonard has watched the children's reaction.

"Their faces light up," she said. "They're very moved by music. It calms them, inspires them and excites them."


Beat goes on

Sister Nancy Nance, Holy Angels' vice president of community relations, has also seen the power of music at work.


For a few minutes, the children's limitations are loosened. The slightest body movement unlocks a flood of wonder.


"They're delighted," Nance said.

In the future, more sounds can be added to the program that's a continuing legacy for the man who couldn't read music, but loved sharing it.


"Don's up in heaven smiling," Lynn Leonard said. "The beat goes on."




By Joe DePriest
jdepriest@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010