Laurie Riley - Music Heals: Music for Healing and Transition

Laurie Riley has been and continues to be a leading light in the harp community. Perhaps her greatest contribution, beyond even her wonderful music, is her work to bring the concept for music as a healing and transitional force to the forefront of the medical and healing communities. The article below is printed with permission from the author, Laurie Riley. This article was originally published in the Spring 1995 issue of the "Folk Harp Journal".

"Pythagoras said music heals," were the words the doctor said to me as I sat at my harp playing for a patient in a Critical Care unit at Evergreen Medical Center near Seattle. The patient was not expected to live, but the nurses and doctors kept urging me to keep playing, because as long as I did, the monitors showed improvement, and whenever I stopped, they would register critical drops in the oxygen level in his blood, and irregular breathing and heartbeat.

Readers of the Folk Harp Journal may remember the article I wrote in 1991 about this experience. Since that time much has happened that I would like to share with you. I was certainly not alone in my "discovery".

The patient, who was my father, recovered. No one can say whether my harp music had anything to do with it, or if the fact that we were related was an issue. But a great deal of responsible research has shown that music does indeed have a profound positive effect on the healing process, and that its effect is not limited to just one or even just a few conditions.

For me, that first experience of playing in Critical Care was the most memorable of my life. I played for many patients in Critical Care at Evergreen during a week's stay there, with results that astonished me and was taken very seriously by the staff. I was offered a permanent position there but was unable to accept. However, my life had changed, and that was the beginning of the path that led me to be appointed National Director of the Music for Healing and Transition Program.

Oliver Sacks, the brilliant neurologist whose research on Parkinson's Disease, Turrets Syndrome, and Alzheimer's, says "Whenever I get a book on neurology or psychology, the first thing I look up in the index is music, and if it's not there, I close the book". Sacks has been affiliated with numerous neurological institutes and written dozens of papers and books. He shuns alternative medicine, surprisingly. But that fact makes him more acceptable to the mainstream western medical community.

Music has been used as medicine throughout the ages, and many of the practitioners we call "holistic" use music as therapy. Finally, in the last several years, music has been widely recognized by western medicine. Schools of Music Therapy offer four-year college degree programs and have now graduated thousands of Music Therapists. The volumes of newly documented research would fill entire libraries. Hospitals, hospices, and other health care institutions and professionals are employing music both recorded and live as a regular part of their programs and treatments.

Recent research has turned up interesting new statistics on the diverse effects of music in therapeutic situations.

• According to Dr. Sacks, Alzheimer's patients benefit from hearing familiar music. It provides a memory stimulus, restoring access to personal history. He says it helps to " reaccess not only the powers of speech and one's perceptual and thinking skills, but his entire emotional and intellectual configuration, his life history, his identity, for a while." For many Alzheimer¹s patients, "normal" life can be experienced as long as the familiar music plays. It has also been found that when applied early enough, music can actually delay the onset of symptoms of senility.

• At California State University in Fresno, studies by psychologist Janet Lap have shown that migraine patients who started to and continue to listen regularly to their favorite music have one-sixth as many headaches as before.

• Premature babies at UCLA in Los Angeles and at Georgia Baptist Medical Center in Atlanta gained weight faster and used oxygen more efficiently, and at Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center had shorter stays in the Intensive Care Unit , than babies in control groups. In these studies, music was played for them daily.

• For adult patients, "half and hour of music produced the same effect as ten milligrams of Valium", says Dr. Raymond Bar, head of the coronary care unit at Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital.

• When used by surgical patients, music has been shown to reduce the need for anesthesia and pain relievers.

• The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Aging is now interested in developing the use of music in physical rehabilitation programs.

How exactly does music do its job? The answers are still being explored, but studies show it can lower blood pressure, basal metabolism and respiration rates, and that it increases production of endorphins, which reduce pain, and salivary immunoglobulin, which speeds healing, reduces infection, and controls heart rate. Music is being used to aid digestion, reduce stress, as part of the therapies in drug and alcohol detoxification, learning disability, and with Alzheimers patients and comatose patients, to name a few of its present applications.

Looking more deeply into available research, one finds some fascinating studies. Dr. Sesame Ohio found that by assigning musical notes to chemical DNA and RNA components of living cells, he could hear patterns rather than looking for them in his computer analyses. What's more, he said the music generated was quite beautiful. He found a similarity to Baroque and Romantic styles in these patterns. (These musical styles are preferred by some patients, while others respond to Medieval and Celtic styles, and yet others to Pop and "easy listening".) Australian psychiatrist Dr. John Diamond found certain sounds and rhythms can be beneficial and others detrimental. The music used for therapy is not necessarily that used for entertainment. (That is not to say that a good dose of something rollicking won¹t be beneficial under certain circumstances. However, in this article we are mostly concerned with "pleasant" music.)

The field of psychoneuroimmunology describes the effects that neuropeptides have on our emotions. When a person is in a relaxed state, beta-endorphins are released, and the body is allowed to do its own healing work on a physiological level. When this state is brought on by listening to music, the result is called "audio analgesia".

Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles was one of the first hospitals to offer harp music tapes to their patients as an alternative to prescription drugs for pain. On the other hand the staff of the Critical Care Unit at Evergreen Medical Center near Seattle told me that recorded music was not nearly as effective as live music. Therefore, it seems appropriate that recorded music only be used when live music is unavailable, not as a substitute for it.

In Pennsylvania, harpist Sara Jane Williams is pioneering a study in which her patients use a table which electronically amplifies the notes she plays on her harp; the patient lies on the table and reports to her where in the body each vibration is felt. When a vibration is felt in the part of the body which is to be treated or reported to be especially pleasant, she improvises a musical piece in which that note is often repeated. Pain reduction is then reported by patients on a scale of 1 to 9. She finds that pain and chronic tension are reduced by approximately one-third in most of her patients.

It does seem to be the vibrational quality of music which is important here. Of course, the effect of a pleasant or familiar sound has immeasurable psychological benefit to any patient, but music goes deeper than that. The human body, like the universe, is composed of molecules, atoms, protons, electrons, and even smaller particles that are constantly in rhythmic motion, in vibration. We ARE rhythm. Rhythm composes our most basic units of life in a very real way. Music is man's expression of that rhythm and that vibration. When our essential vibrations and rhythms go awry, music can help to reestablish them.

One excellent example of this occurred with an elderly patient of Dr. Sacks, who had undergone successful surgery for a hip fracture. However, her left leg remained inert, and no explanation could be found. Electrical scans showed that the brain did not register any neurological communication between the leg and brain. The only time her leg moved in many weeks was in response to an Irish jig. Sacks then employed regular music therapy to elicit response, and after a time, she was able to keep time, then to make dancing movements, and finally to walk.

All things produce vibration due to their molecular makeup. A blossoming rose, when greatly amplified, makes the sound like a drone of an organ. Scientists at Yale University tell us that the six visible planets, including earth, emit distinct sounds generated by their magneto spheric waves. Mercury has a chirping sound, Saturn a slow melody, and the sun emits 80 different overtones comprising the equivalent of a full orchestra.

It has been surmised that musical tones may actually be the glue that holds the fundamental shapes of matter together. Dr. Hans Jenny first began research in this field by demonstrating that musical notes create complex geometrical musical shapes and patterns in powder spread on a vibrating metal plate. These shapes strongly resemble the intricate vasculature of living tissue. After a great deal of study he concluded that organic structures in nature are upheld by specific frequencies, and that this was a key to musical therapeutics.

Getting back to Pythagoras, who is credited as the founder of music therapy, we are reminded that he called the above effects "Harmony of the Spheres". The mathematical ratios between the vibratory rates of the notes on a scale reflect a universal law of harmony. A vibrating string, according to Pythagoras, represents both the fundamentals of musical harmonics and the laws of the cosmos. "Study the monochord," he said, "and you will know the secrets of the universe." He himself used music purposefully as a healing tool. The specific influences music has over the character and well-being of man were recognized and used from his time well into the 1800¹s.

With this in mind, The Music for Healing and Transaction Program came into being as a scientifically based program that does not ignore the philosophical aspects of our work. We train musicians at all levels of skill from beginners to professionals to play for the purpose of creating a healing atmosphere in hospitals, hospices, and other medical institutions. We offer a curriculum of both musical and medical subjects, leading to certification as a Music Practitioner.

Some of our instructors are professional musicians, some are medical personnel, some education specialist. All are dedicated to bringing music into the healing experience.

Among other skills, participants in the program learn to play different styles of music for different types of patients. They also learn to understand hospital equipment, procedures, and medications which are part of the patients' experience. And before graduation, each student must complete an internship.

Students may choose the circumstances and length of time of their course of study; they may come to one or more of the centers for a few days, weeks, or months at a time until they have completed the program. Credit is given for applicable previous experience and education. After graduation, ongoing renewal retreats and support groups provide inspiration for graduates' work.

The program does not lead to a degree in Music Therapy. Music Therapists are welcome in our program to become Music Practitioners, and some of our participants are also Music Therapists. The two are compatible but not identical.

The Music for Healing and Transition Program trains its graduate candidates to play music not only to aid in healing the living, but to ease the transition of the dying. Non-rthythmic music is used for the patient who is in the last hours or moments of life, to smooth the way into the unknown.

At this writing (September 1994) we are affiliate with three hospitals, a hospice group, and a visiting nurses program, and are in the process of seeking further affiliations with hospitals, hospice groups, and other medical establishments and individuals throughout the United States. We are training more teachers for new centers that are growing out of our present efforts. Our graduates work as volunteers, as freelancers, and as permanent staff members of medical facilities.

Institutions and organizations wishing to offer the services of a Music Practitioner to their patients may write to Music for Healing and Transition at either of the addresses below. People wishing to participate as students may contact either address for class information and an application.

Our question to those in the medical community is a quote from Don Holcombe, who writes a column called "Music Notes". He asks, "If you found a half-buried treasure chest and then were given a key that might unlock it and reveal its hidden secrets, what would you do? Most of us would try the key. Right?"

Music for Healing and Transition: 22 West End Road, Hillsdale, NY, 12529

Since the writing of this article, in 1994, the Music for Healing and Transition program has grown to be a strong international organization. Hundreds of harpers and harpists have become practitioners and the body of legitimate, scientific research has continued to verify and expand upon the earlier results.

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