Music for Healing

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We've heard and read that music heals. For instance, David played the harp to calm Saul when he was depressed and/or enraged. For years I've been fascinated by this story and the power of music to bring healing. Of course, just like the spoken 'word', we can use music for any purpose: war, love, peace, healing, solidarity, goodness, hatred, etc. I hope that we always choose it for good purposes.

By the way, I found a program for training musicians who want to minister to people who are sick or dying: MHTP.

http://www.mhtp.org/FAQ.aspx. I also found out that there are many musicians who are hired by hospitals in the USA to play for people who are sick or dying. It's been found that music does indeed help. Read this:

• At the California State University in Fresno, studies by psychologist Janet Lapp have shown that migraine patients who have started and continue to listen regularly to their favorite music have one-sixth as many headaches as before.
• Premature babies at UCLA in Los Angeles and at Georgia Baptist Medical Center in Atlanta gained weight faster and used oxygen more efficiently; and babies at Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center had shorter stays in the Intensive Care Unit when music was played for them daily, compared with babies in control groups without music.
• For adult patients, "half of an hour of music produces the same effect as ten milligrams of Valium", says Dr. Raymond Bahr, head of the Coronary Care Unit at Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital
• When used by surgical patients, music has been shown to help reduce the amount of anesthesia needed during surgery and as well as post-operative pain medication, according to Fred Schwartz, MD, anesthesiologist at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who has done studies on Parkinson's Disease, Tourette's Syndrome, and Alzheimer's says, "Whenever I get a book on neurology or psychology, the first thing I look up in the index is music, and if it's not there, I close the book."

Such is the power of music!