10-6-02 Sunday Journal
MUSIC AS MEDICINE
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
Look upon music as medicine for
your spirit and upon your spirit as medicine for your body.
In my journal on this day in 1990, I placed a clipping titled "Music To
Chew By." It reports a study by John Hopkins University on how music
affects people's eating patterns. People were observed over a five-year period.
Listen to this: when there was no music, the average person took 40 minutes to
eat
lunch. The average number of bites per minute was 3.93. When slow background
music was played, like Montovani, the average number of bites was 3.02. Rock
music made the average person eat more and twice as fast.
If music can unconsciously affect us this way, think of how you can consciously
influence your health by choosing your music like it's a medicine. That is what
it is.
I love rock and roll. But I don't choose it for dinner music. Neither do I like
to eat in places with loud jukeboxes or bands.
Just last night I dined with a master music medicine man, Jimmy Harris. He's
been playing piano bar in this town for many years and gets more mellow and
tasteful with the years. While people are dining he administers the medicine of
sweet music. Then when they're through, he rouses them with a little rock and
roll.
Maybe I should start calling him "Doctor" Jimmy Harris.
MUSIC YOU HEAR WITH YOUR HEART
Near the article on music as medicine I placed a picture of a garden entrance
with these words: there is always music amongst the trees in the garden but our
hearts must be very quiet to hear it
I once read in a magazine of science that the universe has a pulse, a beat, and
a rhythm. And it is similar to the beat of a resting human heart.
Could it be that this beat is what we tune into when we walk in the woods or sit
in solitude by the ocean or a babbling mountain stream? We are actually tuning
our hearts to the rhythm of the universe, becoming one with Mother Earth?
Part of my daily music is sitting and watching my birds. My son and
daughter-in-law gave me a small microphone to place in the feeding area so I can
hear their singing. I often take my meals in solitude at my four-by-four foot
window where I watch and listen to the birds.
It's music you can hear with your heart.
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