Can music heal your body, mind and spirit ? Is a common question everybody asks. The answer is of course Yes. It may not cure your problems immediately but can definitely make improvement in your recovery either physically or mentally if you are suffering from some kind of physical or mental ailment.
It is not a property of the music. It is a property of your body. Your body has unlimited healing powers and potential. Normally our negative mindset or too many negative thoughts or negative beliefs and feelings seriously limit the healing powers of the body. We don’t believe in the amazing powers of our body. But when we listen to relaxing music regularly our thoughts will come down and the mind becomes more positive and this will help the body to concentrate more on healing.
Our nervous system has two parts – sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system will be overactive when we face an emergency situation. Then the body will be in a fight or flight mode. Body will prepare for an emergency – increase blood pumping, more blood to the brain to make quick decisions and more blood to legs to run away, increase blood glucose level for more energy and stop unrelated functions like healing, saliva creation, digestion etc. Suppose when we are in front of a barking dog or a wild animal these are the preparations that happen in the body. Normally this emergency situation will be over in a few minutes and the body will be back to normal.
But in the modern world we are living in constant stress mode all the time. Body cannot differentiate between stress and an external threat. It also treats stress like an external threat and prepares the body in the same way to come out from it at the earliest. But in our modern world stress never ends. So this leads to continued high blood plumbing, high glucose level etc and deteriorated healing and slow digestion etc. Especially when you are unwell you will be worried about that too. That adds more to the existing stress. So overall your body doesn’t get enough time for healing.
So to calm down the body and increase time for healing we need to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. It does the opposite things. Slows down blood pumping, reduces blood glucose level, increases healing, digestion, saliva creation etc. So how to achieve that ? We need to take the body to a relaxed state for this. Body and mind should calm down. One way to achieve this is through breathing exercises. Another way is to listen to relaxing music.
When you listen to very relaxing music, after 10-15 minutes your body and mind will become very relaxed. When the mind becomes calm you will forget about your worries, anxieties, tensions etc so you will be stress free during that time. Then the body will slowly switch to the parasympathetic mode. This will accelerate the healing and other such functions as mentioned above. So listen to some relaxing music at least half an hour daily even if you don’t have any illness. This will greatly enhance your physical, mental and spiritual health.