“Among the many forms in which human spirit has tried to express its innermost yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal.
It symbolizes the yearning for harmony, with oneself and others, with nature and the spiritual and the sacred within us and around us.
There is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the sacred music of every community - music that expresses the universal yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.”
His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama
(From Song of the Spirit: The World of Sacred Music)
Music and sound have been used in healing practices throughout history, and the historical records of different cultures cite many examples of their healing powers (Fauble, 2017). Sound as a healing modality is probably as old as the first sound made by a man or woman. Early humans used sounds in sacred and ritualistic ways to promote fertility, accept death, grow crops, and commemorate special life events (Cantello, 2004; McKusick, 2015).
Across cultures, listening to music and making music have played a role in treating disorders of the mind, and they provide a way to heal the mind and the body. Pythagoras taught his students to change their emotions of worry, fear, sorrow, and anger by singing and playing a musical instrument daily. Other Western philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Nietzsche, considered the practical and theoretical role of music in relation to a person’s health. For example, Plato discussed the influence of music on the human mind (Thompson & Schlaug, 2015).
Music and and sound healing and its effects on health are now being studied from a neuroscience perspective. While this can be challenging because music is universal and diverse in its structure and meaning across cultures, the use of music to heal is considered the frontier of modern neuroscience today (Patel, 2015). Because of this, and because of technological advances that provide a wide accessibility of all types of music, today there are more people listening to more types of music than ever before in the history of the world. Music knows no boundaries and connects people of all races, ages, genders, and cultures—it truly has the power to heal the body, mind, and spirit.