With so many alternatives popping up every day, some guidance is needed when deciding whether healing music is quackery and medicine.
"Every thought and feeling that passes through your mind has an effect on your body and its chemistry ... and when you are free of stress and tension, your body's inherent tendencies toward balance are given the opportunity to assert themselves." - Dr. William Collinge, PhD, MPH*
Once known as alternative medicine, integrative or complementary medicine is becoming more mainstream. Doctors are looking for answers beyond drugs, either suggesting non-traditional therapies or allowing practitioners to try them alongside prescribed mainstream treatments. They are finding these answers in music therapy, guided imagery, hypnosis, biofeedback, homeopathy, yoga, massage, acupuncture, and many other modalities.
This is in response to a huge interest in any products or therapies that claim to heal. There are multi-billion-dollar industries existing to sell to millions of willing buyers. What is called the quack factor comes into play. When a huge number of products as well as therapies ranging from jewelry, furniture, and pills to hypnosis and relaxing music all claim to fix your problems, how do you tell what's real and what's snake oil?
We turn to researchers, scientists, and doctors. It helps when you learn that leading hospitals across America such as the Mayo Clinic, Duke University Medical Center and UC San Francisco are offering homeopathic and non-traditional therapies in combination with traditional ones. For example, a recovering cardiac patient experienced decreased depression and anxiety, as well as decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure, with no reported change in his medications, when exposed to music therapy and guided imagery.
It is extremely important to realize that self medication with alternative treatments is never recommended as a replacement for your doctor's prescriptions. Your body has a natural tendency to heal itself, to remain in balance (this is called homeostasis). Music and other complementary therapies provide an optimum environment for relaxation and opening to healing.
*http://www.collinge.org/
FastBack:
Send Us Your Feedback
