Music therapy is the use of
inventions to accomplish individual goals within a therapeutic relationship by
a professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.
Music therapy may come in
two different forms; the active and the receptive. (Most of the time the
therapist chooses the method unless specifically requested by the patient).
If the therapist and the
patient actively participate in creating music with instruments, their voice or
other objects, then it is an active music therapy. With this, the
patient/client is able to be creative and expressive through the art of music.
If the therapist plays or
makes music to the patient who is free to draw, listen or meditate, then it is
a receptive music therapy.
A music therapist uses music
and all of its facets (physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and
spiritual) in order to help the clients improve their health, physically and mentally.
Neurological Music Therapy
(a therapy model based on neuroscience) studies how the brain is with and
without music, how it is with music, measures the differences, and uses these
differences to cause changes in the brain through music that will eventually
affect the client non-musically. It train motor responses of the human body to
better help the clients develop motor skills that will help “entertain the
timing of muscle activation patterns”. According to a researcher, Dr. Thaut,
the brain that engages in music is changed by engaging in music.
Music had always been used
as a healing implement. Aesculapius was said to cure diseases of the mind by
using song and music, and music therapy was used in Egyptian temples. Plato, a
philosopher and mathematician in Classical Greece, said that music affected the
emotions and could influence the character of an individual. Aristotle, a greek
philosopher, taught that music affects the soul and described music as a force
that purified the emotions. Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Roman encyplopaedist,
advocated the sound of cymbals and running water for the treatment of mental
disorders.
“Music is a therapy. It is
far more powerful than words, far more immediate, far more efficient.” – Yehudi
Menuhin
Music is the language of my
soul.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_therapy#Heart_disease
