Music Heals.

The Dana Foundation newsletter recently released this article on How Music Helps to Heal the Injured Brain. Happy reading!

High Probability of Survival with Children who have Cancer

Since I've been thesis-thesis-thesising lately, I apologize for not updating my blog as much as usual.

Today, I'd like to offer a post I read on the Art Therapy blog regarding a study in Germany on children with cancer and their high probability of survivial. Here's the original article, too.

This research is exciting for the fields of creative and expressive arts therapies, since it highlights aspects of the role of music therapy, positive effects of parent accompaniment, and the importance of quality of life in the hospital.

Articles Relevant to the Creative Arts Therapies

New research on music, movement, and the brain.

Yale researchers hopeful for new treatment options for the mentally ill by studying the evolution of the human brain.

Finally, a great essay by Malcolm Gladwell on dogs and body language.

Memory, Emotion, and Therapy in Music

Currently, there is A LOT of information out about music and the brain. I've been reading Oliver Sack's book, Musicophilia, which covers many different aspects of how the brain remembers music, including those catchy advertising jingles, or how a song will pop into one's head out of nowhere, or how someone can be transported back in time to a specific time and place when hearing a song.

Dance/Movement Therapists see the transformative effects of music on people every day. When the sounds of James Brown or Al Green bellow from the boombox in the hospital, many patients become alive when they were not before. It is the music many times that physically gets people out of their seats and moving, singing along, and even smiling. The staff will join in at times, bouncing to their own beats, joining in on the group when they weren't before, for a moment or two of connection to self and to the dance/movement therapy group.

Music and dance go together. Thus, research on the brain's effects of listening to music, especially those when hearing a particular song that one has not heard in a long time, is pertinent to our research as dance/movement therapists.

Here's a related article by Discover magazine.

Appropriate Music

I've spent a large part of my morning looking at my itunes library for music used for dance therapy. Where I am interning, each day is completely different, with patients who may want fast, up beat music one day and slow, quiet music the next. Music is a major component to the therapeutic aspect of working with groups.

This afternoon, I just happened to read this FANTASTIC article from Canada's Walrus magazine on music's ability to elicit emotions: read it and weep.