Using music to reduce pain
Sunday, 6th April 201 - By Albert James
The therapeutic and mind soothing qualities of music therapy and its conquest of pain has to be experienced to be truly believed and in this article I shall narrate my own personal experiences of how music therapy eased and helped me cure my recurrent and painful headaches and associated conditions, which had been tormenting me for several years.
It was during my second year in college that I began to develop migraine and frequent excruciating, painful headaches that almost crippled me and transformed me into an invalid, bound to my bed. Spending long hours at home made me feel still worse, depriving me of my studies, my cohort of friends, and my outdoor activities like tending to my garden, taking long walks down the countryside and most of all, I began missing swimming and gym. There was nothing better to do and medicines only exacerbated my painful condition. To make things worse, reading brought tears to my eyes, and as a last desperate attempt to retain my normalcy, I turned to music .They say that music has the powers to arouse the soul, to take one on a seemingly endless, exhilarating and rejuvenating journey through time and space, and most of all, numb all pain and induce soothing and stress -alleviating symptoms. I wanted to give this a try, too.
From my experiences with music therapy, I have also gained insight into the fact that music therapy also helps reduce agitation associated with agonizing pain, especially over long periods of time, helps revive and rekindle pleasant memories of the past, and also stimulate production and discharge of good brain chemicals, endorphins, which induce pleasurable sensations that helps overcome pain, and assists in its management and control.
The kind of music I began hearing was those I use to hear in my childhood days, and listening to this music instantly to me back to my pleasant and happy childhood days, cheerful, carefree and in the midst of bountiful happiness and joyous occasions I also placed in my repertoire the kind of music I used to hear before falling asleep at night- the lullaby kind of music. This indeed helped me a lot in gaining sleep, which I had begun losing over this painful symptoms, and soon I began to feel much better, mentally, physically and psychologically. I also began to hear the kind of music I really loved and soon discovered to my amazement, that the frequency of these bad headaches, had indeed reduced dramatically, and I was almost to the verge of a complete cure. I could not indeed believe my ears and wept in sheer delight.
My experiences with pain has taught me a few lessons that there are some painful symptoms which conventional drugs cannot cure, and the remedy for which has to come internally from the patient himself and not from any external sources. Since pain is body’s reaction to internal malfunctioning, perhaps lack of positive stimuli, its cure also needs to be self generated, and in my case this was through positive and constructive use of music therapy.
Since then, music has been one of my constant and trusted companions over the years, one with whom I would hate parting, even for the sake of the whole world. Music not only nourishes the mind and enriches the body, but also moves the soul and is a kind of mind and mood healing ambrosia that can cure any symptom, condition or disease, provided music lover believes and acts on its curative and therapeutic powers, with doubts or apprehensions about its abilities and competencies to cure ailments and free us of diseases, even of the worst kind.
My experience with music therapy has indeed been excellent, encouraging and heartwarming and I hope it helps solve your ailments too.
I’m Albert James and doing my profession as a freelance writer. Currently I’m working for Clazwork.com, an online portal to hire freelance writers.