How to use music as beautiful therapy
Music therapy is a recognised, potent, evidence-based practice. As a therapy (whether listening to it, participating in it, or creating it) it can offer an extraordinarily powerful drug-free way to positively affect mind, body, brain and behaviour across all ages.
Music can provide distraction, increase or slow the body’s rhythms, encourage movement, laughter, and connections. Both active (making) and passive (listening) engagement with music can improve a person’s mood.
Therapeutic use of music in the care of elders involves using music to stimulate, to bring pleasure, connection, happiness and laughter – for them and their caregivers. Best of all, it’s something we can all do to improve quality of life, no qualifications required.
Music has been shown to have the following benefits:
Helps with anxiety and reduces the physical effects of stress
Music can help relieve and reduce the body’s responses to emotional and physical stress, especially when combined with movement, like dancing.
Helps with healing
A growing body of research suggests that music not only helps with pain and discomfort but also with the rate of healing. It seems to slow heart rate, lower blood pressure, and reduce levels of stress hormones. It can also provide some relief to heart attack and stroke victims and patients undergoing surgery.
One interesting idea reported in a Harvard publication is that it works its magic through rhythms. Humans are rhythmic beings: our heartbeat, breathing, and brain waves are all rhythmic. The human brain and nervous system are hard-wired to distinguish music from noise and to respond to its rhythm and repetition, tones and tunes.
Helps with dementia
It can help people living with even very advanced dementia in profound ways: to experience and express their feelings, to communicate with others and create a sense of connection, to find joy in the moment, and to reconnect with vivid memories.
Helps with depression and sadness
Music can deeply affect a person’s emotional experience – offering pleasure, nostalgia, social connection and even improved psychological and mental functioning.
Improves self-expression and communication
For people with physical disabilities, music can help stimulate the body, resulting in movement and alertness in physical responses to the sound, as well as improved ability to respond to others verbally and non-verbally.
How to use music for fun:
Create a music time. Maybe use the hour before dinner, or on weekend mornings to play favourite artists, songs or types of music. Let the person you care for get involved in the choices. (Yes, they may want the same thing on endless repeat but you can add in others around it so there is a mix you can cope with).
Make some sound. Playing any type of recorded music is great, but so is making some. If you or someone you know can play an instrument, give it a go. Improvising to music, even with a tambourine or maracas, can be fun.
Sing. Get active with music – singing along with songs is a wonderful way to create a full body experience and to feel part of the experience with others.
Dance. Being active by dancing can be good fun. Even someone in a wheelchair can still move/be moved to music.
Make playlists. Have a ‘musical revue’ where you and they can make a compilation of music that is meaningful to them.
Watch an old musical and sing along together, or just tap your feet, smile and enjoy.
Is there any reason not to use music?
Music can be incredibly helpful and bring great pleasure. However, there are times when it can have unintended negative effects, so use your judgement and respond to the situation as it happens. What to look out for:
Overstimulation. Volume, the type of instrument, or the pace of the song can affect a person physiologically. Overstimulation can lead to a person feeling anxious and ill at ease – the opposite of what you intended. Choose music they can relate to and that relaxes them. A bit too much bass or an overly fast beat might feel too much. Stay mellow.
Memory triggering. Music can bring up memories, both good and bad. If you feel like the music is making them sad or upset it’s okay to switch it off and leave it for another time.
Anxiety. While in some cases music can help to ease anxiety, in others it can cause or increase it. Check in and see how they’re feeling and don’t be surprised if sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If it’s not making them happy, relaxed, or creating benefits then stop.
For most people, music is an easy and very welcome addition to elder care that can make a really positive difference. It has such strong connections to important events, fond memories and positive emotional states that its effect can be electric. Even when a great deal of memory is no longer available, music can reconnect to good feelings.
So, start creating some playlists and get your groove on while tuning into something you can all enjoy.
Alive Inside is an amazing documentary that reveals the powerful role of music in eldercare. Watch the trailer here
