Harmony & Healing’s Musical Memory Healing offers a soulful journey into past memories, creating emotional connections and lifelong resonance. This innovative form of music therapy is supported by research as well as patient testimonials.
We explore the differences between this innovative music therapy approach and traditional approaches in order to uncover its measurable effects on patients, through firsthand patient accounts, medical professionals’ insights, and comparisons to typical outcomes in music therapy sessions.
Emotional Well-Being
Emotional wellbeing refers to an overall positive state of emotions. Although being emotionally healthy doesn’t guarantee you won’t experience challenging days or outbursts, being emotionally healthy does mean being able to control your emotions, cope with life’s challenges effectively, and have a sense of purpose – not least by having strong relationships and feeling as though you belong somewhere.
Physical wellness can be assessed fairly easily through testing cholesterol levels or conducting an exercise stress test; however, emotional well-being assessment is much harder due to being determined by how a person perceives and responds to life around them.
Being emotionally healthy doesn’t necessarily mean never experiencing negative emotions – everyone experiences sadness and anger from time to time – rather, being emotionally healthy means having strong emotional regulation skills, being able to recognize when feelings arise, and rebound quickly from life’s difficulties.
Emotionally healthy people possess both gratitude and an in-depth knowledge of life’s purpose. They appreciate all the good in their lives and find happiness even during difficult situations. Additionally, emotionally healthy people tend to show empathy and compassion towards others – being more tolerant to other’s struggles while more likely willing to lend assistance should assistance be necessary.
Harmony Healing’s musical memory healing helps patients achieve emotional well-being by relieving stress levels, encouraging relaxation, and prompting an emotional connection with pleasant memories. This type of music therapy has long been utilized in medical and education settings as an aid for cognitive, emotional, motor functions. For people living with dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in particular, music can greatly enhance quality of life by lifting mood, decreasing anxiety levels and instilling feelings of mental wellbeing.
Mood Stability
Music therapy can be an effective way to boost mood and ease anxiety. But not all forms of music therapy are equal: Harmony Healing employs an innovative approach that goes beyond mere distraction. Our music-infused therapies engage and empower all aspects of an individual’s being, producing strong and long-term results. Harmony Healing goes beyond distraction to engage, empower and engage all three layers of a client’s being to foster long-term emotional healing that has been scientifically demonstrated to lower stress levels significantly through research as well as patient testimonials.
Studies have established that music listening can positively impact various outcomes, including mood stability, self-esteem, social bonds and quality of life. These associations could be due to its ability to regulate physiological reactions triggered by emotion-evoking music or by its emotional content having both positive and negative influences – for instance listening to happy songs can produce feelings of satisfaction while sad music may cause feelings of sadness and depression.
This research explored the effects of resonate music therapy versus traditional music therapy on the same outcome measures as previous experiments in an identical clinical environment. Each session utilized two identical digital pianos – one for the therapist and one for their client – as well as two djembe drums. Clinical improvisations were developed and recorded during sessions using melodic and harmonic styles of piano improvisational styles as well as non-melodic rhythmic improvisatory on djembe drums. These improvisations were uploaded to a university server and automatically synced back onto clients’ personal computers using the continuous file-synchronization software Syncthing (The Syncthing Foundation, 2017), so each client had access to all available improvisations after every music therapy session.
Results demonstrated that both groups of clients improved in their MADRS scores after covariate adjustment; however, RFByes clients improved more than RFBno ones due to differences between RFByes and RFBno groups being greater after covariate adjustment. While these findings are promising, it should be remembered that correlational analyses do not always imply causal relationships; differences could also be the result of bidirectional influences such as musicians being at greater risk for internalizing problems than non-musicians.
Memory Enhancement
Music therapy has been shown to significantly enhance cognitive functioning and strengthen existing neural pathways. Harmony Healing’s personalized approach enables us to tap into patients’ personal musical memories and connect them to their favorite melodies – creating an emotionally connected journey of pleasant memories while relieving stress levels and augmenting healing effects of other therapies.
Our service integrates seamlessly with other treatments for a holistic approach to healthcare. All of our therapists are certified music therapists (MT) who have completed full music therapy programs from accredited universities, as well as extensive clinical training under experienced mentors.
As part of our sessions, we use melodies and songs from diverse genres to engage patients and take them on an emotive musical journey back into their past memories. MMH stands apart from traditional music therapy by tapping into each patient’s personal musical experiences and connections while emphasizing its healing effects as well as its capacity for improving mood and memory.
Studies on the cognitive impact of resonate music therapy for Alzheimer’s disease have demonstrated its beneficial cognitive outcomes: increasing verbal fluency and alleviating psychiatric symptoms while decreasing caregiver distress and increasing quality of life for AD patients. Furthermore, its neuroplasticity mechanism is associated with these improvements: increasing brain plasticity while stimulating new neural pathways to facilitate learning and retention and decreasing apathy levels in those treated.
Additionally, a study on the psychological and social impacts of music therapy for dementia demonstrated that it reduces agitation while increasing positive emotions and socialization; improving moods and self-esteem while simultaneously strengthening coping capabilities and daily task performance.
Comparative to other therapies, musical memory healing (MMH) is more accessible, as it can be provided either at home or hospital settings. Furthermore, MMH is much less costly than other therapeutic interventions while offering additional therapeutic benefits of reviving joyful memories. Research on its effects continues, while further technological developments hold promise of further amplifying its effect. This could involve the integration of music with virtual reality applications or AI-powered personalization algorithms enhancing its efficacy further.
Cognitive Improvement
Resonate music therapy may provide significant cognitive improvements for dementia patients. By stimulating limbic systems, subcortical circuits, and emotional related systems with music, positive cognitive changes may result. This non-pharmacological cognitive rehabilitation strategy has been shown to enhance memory recall, executive function and attention – in addition to potentially relieving symptoms like agitation and depression.
Music can elicit neural responses in the brain that promote neuroplastic changes both adults and developing brains, providing physiological as well as psychological benefits to both patients and caregivers alike. Not only can this cognitive stimulation offer physiological advantages, but its overall effects can improve quality of life for all involved parties involved.
Studies on Alzheimer’s disease patients have reported improved cognition and reduced psychiatric symptoms as a result of using resonate music therapy. The improvements may be attributable to neuroplastic mechanisms, neurogenesis, neuroendocrine or neuropsychiatric mechanisms or other effects.
Lyu et al conducted a study that assessed the effects of Mozart’s sonata KV 448 and Pachelbel’s Canon on short-term memory in AD patients. Their research indicated that participants in the music group achieved higher scores on the World Health Organization University of California – Los Angeles Auditory Verbal Learning Test than their counterparts in the control group.
Other studies have demonstrated the use of tailored musical stimuli such as familiar songs to improve speech fluency and reduce psychiatric symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, irritability/aggression, dysphoria anxiety disinhibition apathy in mild to moderate AD patients. This can result in better performance on MMSE and MoCA tests while simultaneously decreasing caregiver distress.
At NewBridge on the Charles, we have seen first-hand how effective music therapy can be on our residents. Many are early stage dementia sufferers and welcome attending music therapy sessions with Leticia, our professional music therapist who uses various instruments such as piano and vibraphone to engage our residents – creating joyous yet relaxing atmosphere for each of our residents who may recall fond childhood memories or locate their name on paper pieces!
