Posted on July 10, 2015
The idea that music has healing abilities is not a recent one. We have long known how music can soothe an agitated person or a send a baby off to sleep. Mental health professionals have discovered that music has enormous benefits to people’s mental and physical health. They have also noted that our need for music is very organic, much like how we need the vitamins that naturally occurring substances provide. Music is quite literally a medicine to us, physically and mentally. Some of the specific benefits we derive from music are as follows:
- Calm. Music has a calming effect on us because it is purely sensory and requires no mental organization to listen to. The mind takes pleasure from music because it does not have to do any work to experience it. The mind rests while it receives music.
- Clarity. Music is capable of opening up the mind and allowing a free flow of thoughts. It can affect the mind in a way that makes it highly productive and able to resolve challenges and piece many elements of life together in a logical way.
- Stimulation. Music is able to give people an appetite for creativity, fresh ideas, new experiences and other stimulating ventures. It gets a great many mental and even physical processes moving and flowing.
- Inspiration. The way that music inspires people is very unique. It has been found that playing music uses more of the human brain than any other endeavor that people go about. There is something about music that serves as our most perfect form of creative expression, and the inspiration we get from listening to it and creating it is overwhelming.
- Lowered blood pressure. One of the physical benefits of music is lowered blood pressure. This goes hand in hand with the calming effect it has on people. Music help keeps your blood pressure regular and at a healthy rate.
- Steady heart rate. Studies have shown that our heart rates actually fall in sync with the beat of the music we are listening to. Calming music is able to slow our heart rates down to a healthy, steady pace.