Pain and Music

There's a study published in Frontiers in Pain Research, where the researchers showed that emotional responses to relaxing and favorite music predict hypoalgesia. Hypoalgesia denotes a decreased sensitivity to painful stimuli. Hypoalgesia occurs when nociceptive (painful) stimuli are interrupted or decreased somewhere along the path between the input (nociceptors), and the places where they are processed and recognized as pain in the conscious mind. In other words music can reduce and relieve pain.

Music can heal many of life's maladies. I am finding some of my own healing in making music these days, but I could not begin to number the times that listening to music helped me heal. It's pretty well known that music can effect your emotional state, and it's becoming more known that music and sound can be used to alter your physical state as well as cognitive perception. 

A simple happy rhythm with the right lyrics can totally change one's mood, while a sad or familiar song can change it as well. That's about where I started, with knowing that. At some point in my misery I discovered a binaural beat on YouTube called Digital Painkiller and although I didn't really think it could help me, I woke the next day feeling a lot better. I am now producing my own binaural and meditation beats.

Since then I have learned a lot more about sound healing and music production for my own healing and knowledge.  There are countless videos on YouTube with healing music for whatever ails you and I have found a lot that have helped me. I am now producing my own binaural and meditation beats. If you would like to learn more about making your own meditation beats, I recommend ZENmix. I have learned a lot from the ZENmix guides as well as using their free sound generators.

When I first began studying Reiki and other natural healing modalities, it was near impossible for me to meditate. Part of the problem was my definition of meditation. I thought that since I was unable to completely clear my mind, that I was doomed in the meditation department. There was a book that helped me a lot, I can't think of the name of it at the moment but if I do I will edit this. Anyway, it was about doing nothing, something I was nearly incapable of at the time. It was full of exercises and advice about how to teach yourself to do nothing, something that many Americans are not used to doing. We are taught to fill every moment with something or multiple things, and even when we aren't physically doing multiple things we are thinking that way. One of the best things that book taught me was that almost nothing was good enough. To really focus on one thing, such as walking in nature, or listening to a musical meditation with or without words is a perfectly viable way to meditate. I started watching my fishtank more and trying to only do that, it was something I skipped a lot, or only took a cursory look at when feeding them. Sometimes especially when my anxiety or depression is bad it really helps me to listen to a vocal meditation, while at other times an instrumental or nature sounds meditation is what I need. 

One of the other steps I took in my musical journey was taking a music theory course at Yale University on Alison for free. It is a music theory course that covers all the basics, and touches on deeper musical knowledge, and it was perfect for me because I had very minimal music training, at the time. 

Vickie Gould is an expert sound healer and I have enjoyed many courses that she provides at Life Changing Energy. She also sells the instruments she teaches about in her store. Including quartz crystal singing bowls, pyramids, and healing tuning forks. If you feel called to sound healing either for yourself or for others this is an amazing place to start. If you decide to purchase a course or instrument from Life Changing Energy use my coupon code: AMYTHYST to get a 7% discount on your purchase. 

Strangely the same day that I signed up for my first sound healing course with Vickie Gould I noticed the new sign on a building close to home. Synchronicity is my suspicion. The sign said "Manifest Station", I realized the sign had been there awhile but I hadn't read it. It felt funny to me, like significant although I didn't know why. Once I reached home I searched it on Google since it had been popping back into my mind all day. Coincidentally (or not...) it is a wellness and healing center that has sound healing sessions on full moons and other significant times. I have experienced 3 occasions that I enjoyed very much and my daughter went with me to one, which we both enjoyed during which one of the owners performed Reiki on anyone that wanted it. I was pleasantly surprised with that since I have been a Reiki Master for several years, yet only received Reiki during my attunements and Self-Reiki treatments. The area that the concerts are in is beautifully decorated with items from all over the world, as well as having a gallery downstairs that features a local artist/poet who spoke before my first soundbath began. The owner's father is a long time sound healer and very proficient with gongs and his partner was playing metal singing bowls which I had recently purchased a set of myself. The gong blew my mind, I had never heard so many beautiful sounds come from a single piece of metal. The entire concert was amazing, relaxing and healing. I was hooked on sound healing.