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Journalism - Music Article Example Copyright 1999 Susanne M. Alexander The Shifting Times MUSIC AND LIFE, MUSIC AND HEALING by Susanne M. Alexander "I have come to view my life as the score of a song that is composed of movements…At times, each line seems carefully constructed, a movement of purpose and rhythm….At other times, the lines seem cacophonous, thin, lacking structure, form, or focus. In the perceived chaos, I am given to panic. "Yet I have learned that while each movement is separate and distinct, with its own texture, tone, and rhythm, together they flow in a continuity of design and purpose. Like music, life has its own momentum, a pull from beyond ourselves: through our mistakes attached to our ongoing, aching or bursting in transition, expecting a climax. Like music, life is composed of the movement of change, often laced with recurrent themes and repetitious pain, but seeking nonetheless a determined sort of beauty, soul, grace, and newness. "Like music, life depends on the quality of the composition." --Dr. Deforia Lane, author of Music as Medicine The healing power of music is well known across North America. More than 5500 therapists and 65 college programs have made "music therapy" an established profession, with a 50-year track record of healing patients with the gift of melody. Dr. Deforia Lane, a board certified music therapist, is one of the pioneers of this incredible science. Today she practices her musical magic on patients and families at University Hospital in Cleveland where she is director of music therapy centered at the Ireland Cancer Center. Music and trauma. Music and cancer. Music and despair. Over and over Lane pairs them together, mixes in her blend of happy laughter and bountiful energy, and brings miraculous smiles and love to hopeless faces and struggling hearts. Art and science intertwine as musical notes with a purpose, bringing the beauty of movement together with experiments in joy. Lane approaches each patient looking for the window to the soul, hoping to break through with her gift of music. Her portable keyboard and powerful healing voice coach music from children fighting leukemia and help women with mastectomies raise their arms to heal. Not only has Lane used music therapy to help heal others after a mastectomy, she has used it on herself. Music flowed through her, healing the waves of pain that came with a diagnosis of cancer, her conviction that she was more than her body parts, her surrender to God's will. With that final surrender, after multiple surgeries, came the peace of remission. It has lasted since 1982. "I took the weight of the world off me and let One who could carry it do so," said Lane. Personal experiences with healing and faith are part of the gift that Lane brings to her patients. It has also led her into being a long-time national spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. Although much of Lane's current practice is with cancer patients, the American Music Therapy Association says music therapy is finding transformation and healing possible in a wide variety of places. Music can support mental health therapy sessions, improve skills in those with developmental disabilities and improve memory in Alzheimer's patients. It is showing up in labor and delivery rooms to ease labor pains and welcome new babies. Schools are using it as a tool to improve study skills, test scores and IQ's. Nursing homes, drug and alcohol programs, correctional facilities and hospice programs are all discovering the benefits of music therapy. About her work with mentally retarded children early in her career, Lane wrote in her book Music as Medicine, "The break may be tiny, open only for a flash, and then gone, sometimes forever. But the opportunity, nonetheless was there, for connection, for touch for God's grace in an otherwise graceless life-a transforming and transformed moment." Medical staff and physicians initially looked on music therapy with a great deal of suspicion. It has been a gradual process of demonstration and experimentation to achieve acceptance. "The staff-physicians, nurses, social workers--are amazed at the change in the person, how they see a totally different side of the patient," said Lane. "They're always shocked that the patients are not as complaining or vocal or antagonistic. They've seen changes in a person who can't talk at all or having a very difficult time retrieving words or saying more than one or two word phrases, and they will sing or they will take deep breaths." Sometimes music will do what respiratory therapy can't, because the music therapist is seen as non-threatening. "They are amazed at the change of heart in the person, and that in turn leads to a change in their physical wellbeing too. Certainly their mental attitude and psychological mood are sometimes dramatically affected," said Lane. Music therapy is a unique blend of art and science used to benefit people spiritually, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Research data has shown that music can reduce blood pressure, heart and respiration rates; decrease pain perception, levels of fear, stress, and anxiety; increase feelings of self-worth and reduce depression; promote weight gain in premature infants; and reduce the severity of migraine headaches. Lane and her staff will visit with patients and listen carefully to who they are and what their needs and pain are. "I love seeing the connection in the eyes of someone else, touching another person in a way that has depth and purpose," said Lane. They use a wide variety of instruments, such as maracas, cymbals, bells, vibraslap, afucci cabasa, guitar or tambourine or set of tone chimes. Lane's favorite, however, is the omnichord, a touch-sensitive synthesizer with a harp-like sound. Sometimes they play the patient's favorite songs, sometimes they create new ones and incorporate the patient's lives into the words. Cleveland Institute of Music students also often visit patients with their instruments. The needs are many and the possibilities for making a difference are huge. Lane said she sometimes struggles with priorities between her home, work, church and community service. Sometimes it's difficult to know when to take the lead and when to let her interns, family or friends take it. She shared this perspective that has value to all of us: "I have determined that priorities change over the lifespan, that what's important at one time becomes secondary in another. Rather than think I'm going to live by a constant throughout my life, I have to be flexible as my life changes. I compare some of my life, or life in general, to that of being in a symphony, an orchestra. There are times when I will play the leading role, I will have the solo, I will stand alone and perform. And there are times when I will take a lesser part and be the accompaniment in my role, a follower of the Conductor. "There are times when my skill is beneath that which is required, and I have to lean on other people then. They will help carry me because I don't have the high notes or the harmony just right. I have to be willing to go in and out of those roles graciously. What bothers me sometimes, is that once I've sung the lead role or been the soloist for so long, it is difficult to acquiesce then to a lesser role. "What I'm trying to learn is that it's not which role I'm playing, it's rather keeping focused on the Conductor and the outcome, the whole, whether everything is working together, not so much to focus on my particular part, but to look at things more globally, more in a balanced fashion. Never lose sight of the Conductor's hand. That will always bring me back into focus again. This is a struggle, no matter what. I'm getting better at it, but boy do I slip and slide on those slopes." For more information on music therapy, contact the American Music Therapy Association, 8455 Colesville Road, Suite 1000, Silver Spring, MD 20910, phone: 301-589-3300; FAX: 301-589-5175; E-mail: info@musictherapy.org; Website: www.musictherapy.org [an error occurred while processing this directive] |