HEALING MUSIC

Montage of great classical music composers - from left to right: 

first row - Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven; 

second row - Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi; 

third row - Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák; 

forth row - Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might be thinking as to how music can be used effectively for stress management. There are few basic principles that you should understand so as to tailor your favorite music for the purpose of stress management.

1. You should use your favorite category of music and in case you don’t like Mozart or classical music then don’t use it. Good and quality music can be found in most genre of music
2. You should choose music that has pleasant associations for you or music that brings you cheerful memories.
3. If you want to try new music, then go for instrumental music tends that are more stress relieving than the music having lyrics because this doesn’t requires you t o think.
4. You should choose music that is slow and has regular pulse or beat. This is because researchers discovered that music with the tempo of healthy resting heartbeat will synchronize your own breathing and heart beat to it thereby slowing down your racing body rhythms.
5. Racing thoughts can often lead to anxious and stressed out feelings and for this you should use rhythms of slow music so as to slow down your body and thoughts. 

Music is even used for surgery whereby surgeons listen to their favorite music while operating the people. This is because they know the power of music and the profound effect it has on their ability to focus and concentrate on their work. Surgeons listen to Mozart, Wagner, and Handel or sometimes, rock, jazz or pop and claim that they have more energy while music is being played.

Patient is not provided with music because it is the patient who is sleeping and is not able to hear music. But the fact is that music has tremendous benefits for the patient such as he needs fewer anesthesias, less anxiety before, less pain after, faster recovery, less time in the hospital and many more. Patient can hear music with the help of lightweight headphones.

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