We all know that music can be relaxing, uplifting, memory-stirring, and energizing. But music as a health tonic? Science now tells us much about the power of music to heal our bodies, lessen anxieties, and relieve stress. This last month I read about a new hospital recently built in Lafayette, Colorado, that has music designed into every part of the medical complex…from birdsongs or wind sounds when you leave the parking lot to soothing piano music in the reception area to an Irish harp piece in the emergency room. Every piece of music—and there are 9000 of them in all, so that you never hear the same piece during the day—has been specifically chosen for the part of the hospital where it is heard and for the time of day it is heard. This hospital is in the forefront of a revolution in health. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2004 released a report covering 600 studies that showed that design in hospitals—including sound and light—can have a dramatic effect on how fast and how well patients recover from illness.

I say that what is good for patients and visitors in hospitals is good for us at home…why not design our own environments with sounds that help relieve our anxieties or speed recovery from a cold? What about Mozart’s Violin Concertos when we feel blue? What about Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings if our blood pressure elevates? What about the CD “Mozart on the Go” when we want more pep and stimulation? This music can be adjuncts to the other things we do to take care of ourselves…and what a pleasurable antidote!

Mozart’s music, in particular, offers something for just about every ailment or need we might have, according to research. For anxiety, the recommendation is Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum.” For waiting time, Mozart’s String Quartets. For getting started in the morning, Mozart’s “Andante, Symphony #17.” Three Mozart CDs which we have had in our home for years and play over and over are Music for The Mozart Effect CDs: Vol. 1, Strengthen the Mind; Vol. 2, Heal the Body; Vol. 3, Unlock the Creative Spirit.

When I was writing Tough Transitions, my new book that will be out in June, I wondered why music seemed to be so helpful when we are going through hard times. Here is what I wrote in Tough Transitions:

How does music help? I’m sure we could read all sorts of sophisticated explanations, but I settle for something quite simple. This is something I learned from one of my early music teachers: that when you press down a key on the piano, you think you are hearing one note, but you are really hearing the key you have pressed plus all its overtones. These overtones—higher and higher sounds on the piano—that you hear at the same time you press the key down produce the note you hear just as all the colors in the spectrum produce the color white you are seeing when you look at a cloud. And what was so amazing that I remember it to this day was my teacher’s assertion that the overtones of a note in music are mathematical, that they occur in specific ratios, that they always occur in the same progression, and that they never change because they are a part of the physical universe. What the ancients called the music of the spheres is related to these set-in-nature harmonics.

So, in my amateur understanding of why I feel better after I listen to Barber’s Adagio for Strings is that I’ve heard order. I’ve heard the natural harmonics of notes and overtones. I’ve heard sound which conforms to a progression of ratios set in the universe. And somehow, in listening to this music, I am returned to balance, to internal order, to a sense of more harmony in my own life.

Music also helps me when I’m spent during times of tough transitions by taking me out of my verbal rational world into a creative, symbolic experience. Beethoven once said that music is the mediator between the life of the spirit and the life of the senses. So here I am trying to figure out how to get my aged parents to pick up meals at the community senior center, and I sit down to listen to Beethoven’s 9th. I am transported to another realm of experience. The music lifts my spirits. I am in this moment cavorting with my imagination, my intuition, my wordless self.

Then there’s the power of the emotion in songs I listen to when I’m disconcerted and trying to find solid earth to stand on. When Emmy Lou Harris sings, “I would walk…from Boulder to Birmingham…just to see your face,” and I’m grieving for a relationship that can be no more, there’s a correspondence, a fit. When I’m despairing over the challenges of a career change and listen to Elvis sing “I Believe,” I am quickened by hope; and when Barbra Streisand sings “We Are Standing on Holy Ground” I am touched by grace. I find a place for my emotions in these singers’ emotions. I experience recognition, relationship, and a deep sense of release.

National Geographic magazine recently wrote about a new documentary called “The Story of the Weeping Camel.” In this film nomadic Mongolians who have a camel that has rejected her newborn bring in a musician. This musician plays a song that brings tears to the mother camel’s eyes and results in her taking care of her new calf. One of the filmmakers says, “The nomads have ways of communicating with their animals by singing and playing instruments. Music can convey emotions and show affection, things an animal can sense.” Animals, human beings…we are all touched and changed by music. (From Tough Transitions: Navigating Your Way Through Difficult Times. You can preorder at Amazon.com now.)

So, on these early April days, may I suggest that we all brew a lovely cup of fragrant tea, sit, and listen to music that will uplift, heal, and invigorate us. Goodbye, winter. Hello, spring.

Love,

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.