Wellness Through Music

We never fully appreciate what playing music can do for our overall health. As musicians, we likely don’t think about it at all. I mean, on some level we likely realize that music can relax us and our students as well as relieve stress, otherwise we likely wouldn’t be musicians—it makes us feel good. It does something for us that we just can’t explain. A colleague and I recently led a workshop called Wellness Through Music at the Prince Edward Island Teachers’ Federation Annual Convention. It was open to all teachers in the province and there were teachers from all subject areas in attendance. The idea was to present the material in such a way as to give those teachers in attendance musical tools that contribute to their overall personal well-being. We focussed on how jamming can not only lead to a healthy brain, but throw all your cares away. There is a large bit of research regarding wellness through music and it has been conceptualized for years. We presented

Wellness Through Music

The Research

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first named flow theory in 1975. It is constantly colloquialized to “in the zone.” We’ve all been there, it’s when we are in such a state of concentration or ‘flow’ that we are not worrying about our day, and are truly happy just doing the thing without a worry in the world. Music isn’t the only place where we feel a state of ‘flow’—It happens in sports, video games, art, and writing but every musician has felt this at some point, whether it is during a jam session or during a performance of an orchestral work.

Self-determination Theory

The self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci) is truly the key to happiness. The theory states that if you achieve the 3 golden tenets, you will be happy. The three tenets are: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. So basically, if you feel like you’re good at something, are part of a community, and free to express yourself and be creative then you will be happy. In music, this could easily be applied to performing in a group. However, in a traditional school ensemble, the autonomy piece is often missing simply due to the fact that band, orchestra, and choir are, in essence, dictatorships. Where this theory shows its tri-force of power is during a jam session or other truly creative activity.

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman first popularized the idea of emotional intelligence in 1995. Studies have shown that emotional intelligence has a positive effect on job performance, leadership ability, and overall mental health [1] [2]. People with high emotional intelligence have the ability to recognize and regulate their own emotions as well as recognize the emotions of others. Music, has been known to enhance emotional intelligence. In a study, “It was discovered that those with musical experience demonstrated enhanced perception of emotions. The strongest results, in fact, were with those people who initiated musical training before the age of 7” [3].

Music and Dementia Patients

It is known that dementia patients react positively to music therapy. Remarkably, the music part of the brain isn’t damaged by the disease. Perhaps the best thing anyone can do for a dementia patient is simply, play some music from their childhood. This is related to my next point.

Music and The Brain

Robert Zatorre of McGill University is the leading expert on music’s effect on the brain. He states that, “to solve diseases such as Alzheimer’s, we need to achieve a good understanding of the entire system…we are using music because it involves almost every brain system that is known to exist” [4]. When involved in making music, more parts of the brain light up than when doing any other activity—equivalent to a full-brain workout. This significantly contributes to overall brain health. It’s not to say—to use the old mantra—that “music makes you smarter” because all learning makes you ‘smarter,’ but it is to say that it keeps your brain healthy.

Singing

There have been recent studies that suggest that singing daily can substantially reduce stress. It has also been found to improve our immune system and prolong our lives. One of the major reasons for this is that singing is a form of controlled breathing having the same effect as yoga breathing. It also releases oxytocin and endorphins into the brain which help release stress and anxiety [5].

Jamming

After we went through all the research, we wanted teachers in attendance to experience what we were talking about. We had decided on a jam session because they are typically very informal and unrehearsed. Our hope was that they would, at the very least, experience flow during that jam session. As there were close to 70 music and non-music teachers in the same room, we were not sure what would happen. I mean, I’ve taught a group of non-music teachers to play in a rock band in 2 rehearsals, but I was not prepared for this.

We had more than enough guitars, ukes, pitched and non-pitched percussion to go ‘round, so we asked everyone to grab an instrument and “if you don’t know how to play, ask a friend who does.” I showed them a recording of the opening chord progression and vocals of “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers so they would have an auditory reference, then we just jumped in. We established a groove by playing C-C-C-C-F-F-F-F-C-C-