Music as Therapy

Most of us know a lot about music. We’re shower singers, ITunes listeners, spirited defenders of our favorite bands. We feel good when we sing, listen to, or even debate our music. We feel happy.

Now there’s growing evidence that music is therapy, not just entertainment. From helping children with special needs to lifting elders from incipient dementia, music heals. This discovery adds to the already huge evidence that alternatives to traditional medicine are effective and in demand. Even prestigious universities like Duke and UNC Chapel Hill are hiring music therapists and their individualized, patient oriented plans for music as treatment. At UNC, music therapist Elizabeth Fawcett became a full time employee when it was evident that “psychiatric patients were noticeably improving their behavior and quality of life” after her sessions. (Jay Price in The News & Observer, Jan. 18, 2012) A pastor in Jacksonville, NC would attest to that. (See video)

When we were children my mother often sang us to sleep. I remember having an earache one night and her sweet voice was like a balm. Actually, it was a balm. The pain faded quickly and I slept like a baby again. She sang, “O, gentle presence, peace and joy and power; O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour…Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.” (“Mother’s Evening Prayer” by Mary Baker Eddy)

Christian Scientists know the healing power expressed in all of God’s harmonious gifts to us. Music is one of them.