Blogpost 6: Sooth the Damage Soul

There are a lot of ways to have our so called exercise. Have it be doing it in the gym, pool, home, or even at the street. We have a lot trends nowadays for this healthy activity. We usually depends our lifestyle and stamina on choosing the category of exercise for us. Since exercising requires doing more, music is also part of it. We all know that exercise is a healthy way of living and so as music. Music has and still the coach that motivates us to do better. Mostly upbeat tones are used to jive with the positive energy of the body. Music does well physically and mentally.



I read an article about “Music and Fitness / Effects of Music on Exercise” by a generous medical team Medindia from http://www.medindia.net/. They were able to share their insight about the advantages of music as a tool our healthy activity.
According to the Medindia, “Music has been shown to have a positive effect on physical exercise and is known to have an impact the psychological level. Similarly, it has been observed that physically fit and active musicians provide better musical performances. Hence, music and fitness complement each other. The most important aspect of music is the rhythm response that influences the energy potential of the individual”

Yes, zumba won’t be a zumba if there’s no music. Medindia studied and proved that there are advantages and factors in music. People that are extroverts uses music to enhance their exercise rate; our age also is a factor for choosing the right music that we think somewhat appropriate to the trend; music also makes us commit to physical activity which means, music keeps the body moving and it can also improve our exercise routine; most of the women use music as a basis for motivational purposes.We all know that music has a lot of effect during physical activities like exercise. It depicts the effect of tempo of music on physical activity. Usually upbeat music does the trick.



Music therapy doesn’t revolve around listening to music itself; it also includes involving ourselves to music –creation. I strongly believe that music has all it power of soothing our souls and helping us feel good.
An article about “Music and Stress Relief” made by an author and creator of Sound-mind.org named Susan from http://www.sound-mind.org shared her story and studies more in stress management. Good news because music is part of it.


According to Susan, “The benefits of music cannot be denied, in fact studies have shown music to be a wonderful tool that can promote wellness and help us overcome many obstacles we face in life. Music has shown to help us reduce blood pressure and to also build serotonin in the brain.”

There are quite a few of stress release tools we use like eating, ranting, writing, and etc. All of aforesaid activities are good but music does the trick. It engages us to different things and an eye opener as well that we can always overcome all obstacles we encounter. Playing an instrument is part of a musical therapy whereas an individual is engaged to play or create music, singing is also part of it whereas either an individual composes his/her own piece or just revive an artist’s song. Dancing would be the majorities’ favorite since dancing can also be considered as a form of exercise. My personal favorite would be listening to music as a stress reliever since I’m not a good singer so as a dancer! Relaxation also depends on music. It takes us a meditative state of mind combined with our choice of a relaxing activity such as taking a hot bath, yoga, going to a massage spa, and many more depending on your choice of activity.

I have learned that music itself can soothe a damaged soul. It also enhances our mood with a positive feeling; it also increases the endurance of an individual to do well with physical and mental activities. Music has all the power and advantages for an individual whom is playing music or just even listening to it. The combination of music and exercise is a perfect match because it prolongs well-being.

Blogpost 5: Use of Music Therapy

So much about wellness of the essential of music, I believe that I we haven’t tackled yet the origin of it. Since music can also be categorized in a cultural manner, we will base it in a general manner for its origin and how it was used before all these music trends.

Many of us would think that this is just some hoax that music is now used as a tool to cure people. Music therapy is part of our daily is happen that we don’t know the use of this and we have no idea that were using it in our daily life. Like we listen to the radio to cure our boredom, we listen to music to relive our stress. What else can we do to the music? is just for entertainment or there is something behind this music that make our body and mind feel relax and calm? There is so many studies out there that prove music therapy can help our body to feel comfortable and can focus in our task for example reading while listening to the mellow.

An article called " from The History of Music Therapy” from www.macalester.edu by Mai Yang a researcher and therapist, she shared about the history of Music Therapy and how it does started during middle age and also she mentioned that during the end of 18th century the scientist was conducted a research on how music affects the human behaviour and emotion and by the end of 19th century the number of  researchers has begun increasing  to study the effect of music in human behaviour and physical. Researchers began searching the relationships between music and physiological in the human being.

According to Yang “The origin of music it self is unknown, but the use of music in healing ceremonies is an ancient practice. It is believe that among primitive people, illness was viewed as originating from magico-religious forces, or form the breaking of taboos (for review, see Sigerist, 1944). Thus, music in combination with dances or words, along with songs, and the music producing instruments were considered to be efficacious in exorcising disease or healing wounds.”


According to the author, she said that music is being use in healing or ritual during ancient times and also there is incantations to be more effective while playing the music. The role of music became more popular or being advanced to the new generation to help other people that are stress and having a hard time to overcome and move on.
Music became the  reflection of our self because its reflect our emotion and behavior its help us to connect with music.Music Therapy is the new generation program that can be use to the patient who was having a hard time to recondition their mind and body.


Music is categorized in different ways. Our choice of music is somehow a part of us that defines our roots and feelings as well. Music selection is always determined by an individual for music preferences, physical capabilities and non-musical goals. Personally, I usually listen to techno type of beats every time I feel exhausted. It makes me feel a bit more alive and pushes me go to well. If listening to our favorite music doesn’t work to make us stress free, there are people whom are highly trained to do a music therapy. There are also misconceptions about it and today, we will tackle things that we thought about music therapy.

A blog or should I say a study called “Music Therapy: Myths and Misconceptions” made by a music psychotherapist named Megan Hinman. He was able to study and prove about the myths in music therapy.

According to Megan Hinman, “for most people, the idea of music being therapeutic seems pretty logical. But did you know that music therapists are highly educated professionals with special standardized training. ”

According to Hinman, she was able to verify our silly thoughts about them. One of them is that a music therapist is a person who shows up with an iPod and tells you what songs you should listen to; she stated that this isn’t true at all since music therapist are also musicians whereas they are required to  be proficient on playing instruments and be an expert to music theory, sight singing and conducting as well. You don’t have be a musician to benefit a music therapy. Remember about the last time we tackled about the usage of music therapy? It is also used in hospitals to somewhat cure patients which makes them feel good.
Since they are highly trained – educated music therapists, it cannot just be facilitated by anyone. Although it is true that everyone is capable of using music in therapeutic way, having music in a career field requires different procedures and has a standardized training, music is now treated like a medicine, it has certain  dosage and uses depending on an individual’s needs.

It is also a hoax that music is only used during fun times – cannot use during serious issues. This is absolutely incorrect. Remember the times when you feel so down, like literally broken hearted? Isn’t that a serious issue for an individual? Statistics shows that an individual who suffers to much from a broken hearted can be a cause of a heart attack, so we usually rely to music as a self-healing way to get over it. So music therapy is useful vice versa.

I learned that during middle age music was being use to the prayers and incantations, they don't realize that music help our body and mind to relieve our stress, music therapy can be used to alter the pain in patients, mood by the way of listening to music this can lead us to distract our self and help you to focus and promoting relaxation that help relax your mind and body muscle.

Blogpost 4: Music Therapy is not just a Tool

Base on the people that I somewhat knew since then, jump starts their day by putting up their favorite music. Of course, since we know that music is good for all ages, it will depend on a person’s preference for music genre. For me, techno music fuels my energy on a lazy-bed day – Monday! Who would ever love to wake up early during Monday? Since we’ve tackled at my second blog post that music therapy and how it works on healing purposes, we can also maximize its usage on a daily basis!

An article was scrutinized by a generous company that stretches their knowledge to people called “Maximizing with the Music Therapy” by International Cyber Business Services (ICBS) from http://www.holistic-online.com/. They were able to share about music and singing all together. They stated that playing an instrument works all the time during tough times


According to ICBS, “Listening to music does wonder to alleviate stress. Please note that everyone has different tastes in music. Listen to the music that you feel comfortable. Sitting down and forcing yourself to listen to relaxation music that you don't like may create stress, not alleviate it. Music has always been a great healer. In the Bible, we learn about how David played the harp to help ease his severe depression of King Saul. Music is a significant mood-changer and reliever of stress, working on many levels at once.”


As I’ve mentioned with my previous post, each of us as a distinct taste for music. Every piece of a musician makes, it has a different impact on every individual. We may hear the same lyrics, tune, and rhythm; it creates a different impact with our senses. For me, techno relieves my bad day! I may not scientifically explain how it soothes my bad day, but I know that it works every time! Some may find listening to it as a bit confusing and just all noise as they hear it, for me it diverts my mind to be somewhat trying to be upbeat especially when I’m driving.



 Playing my favorite music depending on my mood is important every day. Since playing music in the background while working on something, it’s seemingly unaware that the rhythm makes us push more to do more! Well, since music can be used it most therapies, it also used during dental procedures. We all know that since when we were kids, dentists are like boogeyman to us! Haha! Dentists use a lot tricks to make us feel comfortable well! Music is one of it! They would ask our favorite artist and favorite song, they would play it while performing a dental procedure and you know how it works when we hear our favorite song! It diverts our mind to sing with our mouths open! So much about how music tricks our mind during dental times, we can also maximize it the power of it. Scientifically, music washes over our stress away. Funny when we cannot remember a single title of our favorite music, but familiarity of old time music since childhood promotes calmness for us coz it serves a time warp during the good old times.


So much about music as an upbeat coach that pushes us to go and do further, let’s now tackle about how it lifts our mind to go above the surface of the water and breathe again. Now we’ll explain how music serves as a life jacket. A lot of studies and evidence can improve mental development.




A non-profit group called International Centre for Research in Arts Therapies (ICRA) from http://bjp.rcpsych.org shared their studies on promoting and proving that music therapy works in every aspect of a human especially during depression. A research called “Music Therapy for depression: it seems to work, but how?” was made to widen our knowledge about music therapy.





According to the writers, “music cannot be treated simply as a stimulus intended to provoke a predetermined behavioral response. Rather, music-making offers terms affordances – physical, relational and aesthetic. Above all, music-making is social (and hence interpersonal), pleasurable and meaningful: this may also be randomized trials of music therapy have shown high levels of engagement with patient groups who are traditionally difficult to engage.”

According to the article music therapy can help people to engage to other people who are having difficult to communicate to express their feeling. Music is a social lifestyle that help you lower the level of anxiety that promote relaxation and calmness of your mind     especially when we have problem that bothering us or thinking something that were afraid of, music therapy is not just a tool instead is a program that we use in our daily life that help us connect with our deeper emotion to help us release our anxiety which hinder our task.

Music can divert our mind that relieve our stress that improve the quality of our daily task that we encounter most of it are stressful to us. Music therapy helps people to improve their mental state of mind in a way their mind recovers from being distress to calm state of mind. Depressed people listening to music help them decrease the level of anxiety. 

Blogpost 3: Music and Therapy

Blogpost 2: New cure on a different level: Music

Since we've tackled about the essence of music in our lives, we will now discuss the things that you might not know. Music is not just an essence in the formality of being part of lives like in religion, politics, happenings, etc. It can take us to a different world. Most of us took advantage of things that we think doesn't have significance in our lives. Well, music has significance to us since it can totally or somewhat change a person’s thought through studies and researches, let me present to you the articles I got that will help us understand why music even exist.

I read an article was about “musical therapy”. Never heard of that but reading through the study and article about How and Why Is Music A Good Tool For Health? by Elizabeth Scott, M.S Stress Management Expert from www.stress.about.com stated that 

“Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. ” 

The good thing about the study she made was, she was able to explain the effectiveness of the music therapy:

Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm,meditative state.

Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes a change in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things.

State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.

Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

Guess we’ve unknowingly underestimated the power of music. Since we only appreciate it in two ways: happy and sad moods. Admit it! We only pick up our music gadgets during those moments! But I’ve never thought that it has so much benefit. Well, if ever you’ve been to a massage spa, try to observe their choice of music. Base on my observation, I’ve been to at least 5 different massage spas, almost all of them plays a “nature type” of music. Whereas you’ll hear the sound of the waves, birds chirping, wind whirling the trees, the music itself can divert our brain to be in a relax mode despite that the massage session hasn’t started. Music is always a plus to most of massage spas so it would make a customer feel relaxed and feel to unwind. So, I would suggest if you’re looking for an economical way to unwind, make an appointment for to massage spas or if it still won’t work for you, I believe in the saying “the best things are free”, just plug your favorite music and use it to unwind and go to a peaceful place!

What’s interesting is that almost every aspect of our mood is like a reflection of music. Even one of the world’s geniuses named Plato can’t obviously live without it. For me, music is a thing that elevates our soul which takes us to different state of mind. So let’s remove the instruments and lyrics, let’s now go to our surroundings. The sound of the birds chirping, falling rain, and whirl of the wind is what I would consider the first music that we recognize. 

As quoted by 311 (a famous 90’s band is US) “music’s what I need to keep my sanity”. Yes, you might think that your music gadget does all the magic for you when your brain’s about to burst out of your skull, think of our nature as well. We would usually go out of the city and find a place like provinces to heal our scarred soul. We would temporarily settle in a place where all the noise pollution is gone. If you haven’t been to a remote area like in some provinces or breath-taking hidden beach, the sound of the waves also serves as music to our ears. It breaks the silence of our surrounding. It rejuvenates our mind which makes us think even more productive. 

Since we’ve tackled role of music in our lives and how it became a powerful tool to humans, it’ll be best that we categorized types of music so that we’ll be exposed to different genres. I believe that every genre has a purpose. We all know that music is also categorized to its own kind. According to Ajanta Bhattacharyya, wrote about Different Types of Music www.buzzle.com (it was posted on 11/27/2012, a blogger)

“today we have such a large list of musical genres and styles, it would be impossible for anyone to listen to every piece of music created in a hundred lifetimes, let alone one!”

Makes sense right? Yes it’s true; it is an indefinite list of genres of music. What the blogger stated was just the usual genre that we know today but I’ pretty sure that there are more genre created by artists that we haven’t heard yet. The main reason why music was categorized is to have technicality of tastes since an every individual has different tastes. Even if both persons are listening to just one of the genres, it has different meaning to for them.

Base on the studies made by the people took most of their lives; I’ve learned that music has significance in our lives. Not just that it gives us the feeling we expect by listening to it, it is also used as a cure to people as well! I don’t mean by people who’s on broken heart but people who are in the hospital. Music is always a plus to everywhere! I know for sure that music is now also part of medications and therapies. It is used as a powerful tool that can divert one’s mind.