Whether it is considered an instinct or a discovery, music seems to belong to anyone and we can’t know when it started as it has always been part of our life since humankind existed. Maybe it is part of our DNA? Maybe tapping the foot when we hear a song is a part of our code? It seems very likely, but at least we can say that music has a power that can be exploited in education way more than we think.
As the speed of our changes in society goes faster and faster, we do meet new facets of mental health struggles and many times diagnoses are made without a precise method for the treatment or conversely many of us may attend some therapy sessions, or healing circles without knowing the source of our issue.
The effectiveness of music therapy has been proven with evidence and we have got to a point where music is not only considered an art but also a science.
[1]https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED504512Music therapy is used in some medical hospitals, cancer centers, schools, alcohol, and drug recovery programs, psychiatric hospitals, and correctional facilities. It also helps children with communication, attention, motivation, and behavioral problems.
WHAT DO MUSICKING AND LISTENING TO MUSIC DO TO US?
[2]https://www1.cgmh.org.tw/intr/intr2/c3390/en/music-therapy.htm[3]https://www.musicianbrain.com/#publicationsResearchers from Harvard Medical School have shown that music training and skill learning is a strong stimulator for our nervous system as learning music demands that perception and actions are locking between each other a lot more than everyday actions.
[4]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/musickingMusicking – Any activity involving or related to music performance, such as performing, listening, rehearsing, or composing.
What is special about musiking and listening music is that it improves this in-between the regions of our brain, being a communicator within the auditory, visual and motoric field.
Also music has been proven to be an alternative to engage some neural processes or neural connections in a damaged brain that wouldn’t happen otherwise, putting music in the position to include a rewarding experience with therapy and eventually great improvements in our mental health issues whether they are considered very serious or mild.
As music has a big recreational aspect it is not seen as important as learning history or mathematics, but probably we didn’t go deep enough to make it a solid part of our education and ,as mentioned, we still don’t know a precise method to follow even if Music therapy is a health profession and the number of music therapists is increasing.
HOW DO WE BEGIN MUSIC THERAPY?
As there are still entire worlds to discover about our brain, music therapy still needs to be defined in many areas. One of the most puzzling and challenging issues to be solved is the method. Like any other, therapy must have steps and specific paths to follow to focus on different kinds of mental health conditions. Until now studies and researches show that we have a great response from our brain to music and we can define that music has a great and positive influence on our psyche. But we are still far from the full potential of music in therapy. Only if we consider the infinite types of music or how vast is the world of sound in terms of science, the number of questions is countless.
How sound, music, our perception, and the effects of those are converging is still a massive question mark but for how fast science grows we may have answers sooner than we think.
