The Healing Power of Music

Still out there searching for that one perfect pill to help promote, maintain, and restore mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health? What if I told you that it has already been created, it has been around for sometime, and that it’s virtually free!

What if I told you it was music…

Don’t believe me? Feeling a bit down?….Here enjoy this quick and simple remedy that I developed for my self to help combat the blues. I call it my vitamin B complex for mood, and for the purposes of science I have also listed the ingredients for your review below.

Jeremiah’s Quick and Simple Vitamin B Complex for  Mood
Blues Traveller – for enhanced levels of elation and auditory induced joy
Blind Melon – an agonist to enhance the affects of Blues Traveller
Bob Marley – a synergizing agent which works to put everything back into perspective
Directions: Take a deep breath then listen to each song in sequential order
repeat if necessary or substitute ingredients to taste  

Although Music Therapy is not currently recognized as being a registered practice of psychotherapy in Canada, accredited music therapists complete a four year post secondary degree, perform patient assessments, develop client centred goals, and implement evidence based treatment plans.

Music therapists also work in a variety of clinical settings such as hospitals, long term care centres, correctional facilities, and substance abuse and addiction centres. But for a more homegrown example of the difference that music can make in changing the lives of people be sure to check out  Sing it Forward this January at the Orpheum Theatre

Sing it Forward is a charity that works closely with the Saint James Music Academy to ensure that children living in Canada’s lowest income urban neighbourhood (the downtown east side) are provided the opportunity to learn to play music.

Alone, both the Saint James Music Academy and the Charity of Sing it Forward are titan’s of goodwill spreading love and compassion to inspire the underprivileged youth of our generation. But when brought together as one, they are nothing short of an unstoppable laser beam of awesome working to cut through the perceived barriers of low socioeconomic status to ensure that no child is ever denied their opportunity to “discover the deep riches of their own potential and find new levels of self esteem” through the art of expressing themselves through music.

Think I’m exaggerating, well you might want to think again…

One of the ways that Sing it forward works to help the children of the Saint James Music Academy to find new levels of self esteem is to partner them up with leading Canadian professional musicians such as Hey Ocean, Mother Mother, The Sheep Dogs, and Dan Mangan to work together on creating original musical collaborations. And if that wasn’t completely out of this world incredibly inspirational enough, they then continue working together to record their own personal music videos with the Canadian Rock stars, and even go as far as to perform the music that they have worked to create live on stage the evening of the concert.

Here is a list of some of my favourite collaborations between the children of the Saint James Music Academy and the Musicians representing Sing it Forward.

Hey Ocean – Maps
Michael Bernard Fitzgerald – Pieces
Vince Vaccaro – Brother

Keeping all this in context the healing power of music becomes abundantly clear, so the next time you are feeling a little down, consider the benefits of reaching over to turn up the volume on the stereo and drowning all those blues away with the sweet sweet melody of an effective form of treatment that is currently being blasted across the airwaves in the majority of the cities of the world…for free.