A couple of years ago when I was in Frankfurt, my friend Bernd had given me a CD of indigenous healing music titled “Shaman, Jhankri & Nele: Music Healers of Indigeneous Cultures”. Back in India, when I sat down to listen to it, I liked the feel of the recordings which seemed to have kept to the original quality as far as possible without any extraneous elements such as modern orchestration. Then recently, Patricia, with whom I’ve been lately corresponding at Zaadz sent me a link to an interview with the person who produced this CD on music healers.
Pat Moffitt Cook is the director of the “Open Ear Institute” which offers international training and non academic certification programmes centred around the use of cross cultural healing music.
For over 25 years Pat has travelled extensively throughout the world recording and participating in musical rituals and the daily life of other cultures. She studied six and half years with a Chinese/Indonesian grand master of martial and healing arts in Indonesia and the United States. She has continued to work with a North Indian Hindu village healer in India since 1994.
Although she is familiar with therapies in the west which rely on traditional western music, Pat Cook believes in using music which is slightly different, and unfamiliar to the person listening, because it helps to expand the thought process. “We have new ideas come in,” she says, “because we are not conditioned to this yet. We're not as much in control as when we have music that we know about. Also, we don't get bored. I think that music can become boring if it's something that we know so well. So this allows people to step out of their cultural boundaries and expand a little bit.”
Generally speaking, music therapy seems to be based on the principle that certain beats and rhythms can slow down brain processes and in doing so, minimise pain or anxiety. Music is sometimes played in hospitals before surgery so as to prepare the patient for anaesthesia. The type of music normally played before the operation is calming and slow, so as to relax the person whereas on recovery, a different kind of music with a more lively tempo is played to help the person return to his normal state as soon as possible.
Professor Milford Graves, a jazz musician, has also worked extensively with music as a healing tool, besides acupuncture and herbal remedies. His research into the use of music offers evidence that music can actually help people with heart problems. Cardiac arrhythmia for which there is no medication, can benefit from certain kinds of jazz. Playing music apparently helps to steady an irregular beat. According to Graves, in one instance, when an audio tape of such music was played to a person with an irregular heart beat, the heartbeat began to synchronise with the rhythm of the music.
Read more about music and healing:
Pat Moffitt Cook is the director of the “Open Ear Institute” which offers international training and non academic certification programmes centred around the use of cross cultural healing music.
For over 25 years Pat has travelled extensively throughout the world recording and participating in musical rituals and the daily life of other cultures. She studied six and half years with a Chinese/Indonesian grand master of martial and healing arts in Indonesia and the United States. She has continued to work with a North Indian Hindu village healer in India since 1994.
Although she is familiar with therapies in the west which rely on traditional western music, Pat Cook believes in using music which is slightly different, and unfamiliar to the person listening, because it helps to expand the thought process. “We have new ideas come in,” she says, “because we are not conditioned to this yet. We're not as much in control as when we have music that we know about. Also, we don't get bored. I think that music can become boring if it's something that we know so well. So this allows people to step out of their cultural boundaries and expand a little bit.”
Generally speaking, music therapy seems to be based on the principle that certain beats and rhythms can slow down brain processes and in doing so, minimise pain or anxiety. Music is sometimes played in hospitals before surgery so as to prepare the patient for anaesthesia. The type of music normally played before the operation is calming and slow, so as to relax the person whereas on recovery, a different kind of music with a more lively tempo is played to help the person return to his normal state as soon as possible.
Professor Milford Graves, a jazz musician, has also worked extensively with music as a healing tool, besides acupuncture and herbal remedies. His research into the use of music offers evidence that music can actually help people with heart problems. Cardiac arrhythmia for which there is no medication, can benefit from certain kinds of jazz. Playing music apparently helps to steady an irregular beat. According to Graves, in one instance, when an audio tape of such music was played to a person with an irregular heart beat, the heartbeat began to synchronise with the rhythm of the music.
Read more about music and healing:
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