The only sensual pleasure without vice

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below,” said Addison, in his ‘Song for Ceceilia’s day’.
Whether you admit it or not, music imbeds our daily life, weaving its beauty and emotion through our thoughts, activities and memories. If you’ve paid much attention to how you respond to a variety of music, you may have noticed that some music seems to energize you, some music can move you to tears or spark a special memory of a time, place, food, or perhaps a certain person. Some music seems to make you relax, feel less stressed, and feel happier. And some music fills you with deep spiritual attunement.
If you look on the Internet or go into your nearby audio store you are likely to find music labeled “Healing Music.” The section may include music for relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, pain relief or tapping into one’s soul. There may be a variety of instruments or sounds from a forest or the ocean.
So what makes this music “healing music?”
Music has a way of stirring our innermost feelings and all of our senses, of tapping into parts of ourselves unlike anything else. Music is a universal language that has the ability to speak to us deeply and uniquely because of its healing qualities. That is what John Logan meant when he said, “Music is the medicine of the mind.” It is a sweet and healing balm of troubles.
I remember watching “Titanic” and its gorgeous love theme that permeates throughout the movie and throughout ourselves with its bittersweetness, generating the beauty of love and the tragedy of the massive ship’s sinking and loss of so many lives. It is because emotion is the sphere of music more than thought.
One aspect of “healing” music is to stir our feelings, to help us deal with grief, sadness, anger or other feelings. By allowing ourselves to ‘feel’ those feelings, the intensity will eventually lessen and even dissipate, resulting in being healing for us. When we avoid our feelings, consciously or subconsciously, they nonetheless tend to build up inside. They don’t just go away. Music can be a tool to help us deal with feelings within us, whether we’re aware of them or not. This is one of the wonderful ways music can be incredibly healing.
In ‘The Mozart Effect,’ Don Campbell talks about using music in a variety of ways throughout the day, in the morning to help energize us, throughout the day to help us focus or concentrate better, music to help our intelligence, and in the evening to help us relax.
What exactly is “relaxing” music? Whether we are aware of it or not, music that’s relaxing tends to slow down our heart rates to about one beat per second. If we’re feeling stressful, angry, anxious, or irritable, our heart rates tend to increase. Music can actually help our heart rates slow down to a more relaxing pace, changing our physiology. This phenomenon is what can help people fall asleep more easily. That is what is found with many meditation tapes or other music specifically designed for stress reduction or relaxation.
Chanting has existed for centuries. For example, there are wonderful recordings of Gregorian chants, Indian chants, chants sung by Catholic or Buddhist monks and other religious or secular groups. They tend to be repetitive with the goal of deepening our spiritual lives, whatever they may be, or at the very least, to help bring peaceful feelings into our beings.
There is a large variety of music that taps into our souls. Listening to music has been a truly inspirational journey, one that has been incredibly healing. It reaches the soul directly to give a healing touch. All that we need to do is to pay attention to our responses to a variety of music - physically, mentally, spiritually.
Music does things that even human beings cannot do at times because of the space that it creates for you to be yourself. When someone enters your life you are happy. But, slowly he/she takes away your time, energy, space and your possessions. Instead music fills you with enough riches: memories, feelings, rejuvenation and make you energised so that you take on anything with ease.
A new song can reflect a new way of being without creating side effects, and a new way of imagining life in the world. This is what music means to all of us. We can say with Samuel Johnson that music is the “only sensual pleasure without vice.”