Music: The Essential Ingredient

By Frank Fitzpatrick. Posted: 09/22/2012 9:47 am

"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind
but which mankind cannot comprehend." -- Beethoven, 1810
I find myself spending a lot of time these days preaching about the intrinsic power of music. While many
people still write music off as a soft subject -- an extracurricular or non-essential part of our human
experience -- I strongly disagree. I believe music is an essential ingredient for the cultivation of a more
evolved global community and for the development of more intelligent, adaptable, creative and
compassionate generations to come.
When I look at what has helped me survive and bring me into balance through the most challenging times
of my life, music has often been at the heart of it -- both as a place to turn to and as a creative source that
has been cultivated inside me, helping me to express myself as well as re-imagine and re-invent my world,
inside and out.
So what is at the core of music that makes music so essential to our being? Let's start at the most
fundamental level, with vibration.
Everything is vibration. Our entire system is vibrating at a cellular level. The quality of those vibrations
and the highly-complex systems they control -- our emotions, our thoughts and moods, our perceptions,
and even our physical well-being -- can be significantly affected and shaped by music.
Whether it be the quiet hum that we hear when systems are vibrating at a consonant frequency and in
harmony with one another, or the celebratory roar of a Beethoven symphony, music resonates at our core
and draws directly from the source of our creation. The right music can help organize our thought waves,
stimulate our bodies and reset our emotional state to help us pass through the stresses of our day in a
more relaxed, productive and inspired way.
Beyond its affect on us as individuals, music can impact whole communities and help shape the
perceptions of entire cultures. Now, I'm not trying to claim that music is the answer in and of itself for
solving the many grand challenges we face today but, when it comes to reshaping the future of humanity,
music is an essential ingredient to help us live our most fulfilling lives and to achieve holistic and
sustainable solutions to the challenges of humanity.

When we raise the subject of healing, we immediately evoke countless definitions of the word. We live in a
society where we are often defined by "what" we do with a pretty traditional list of boxes that the answers
are expected to fit into. For many people, the concept of healing is limited to the business of health care,
like it was for me before Fred showed me otherwise. In addition, music itself heals on so many levels:
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, often all at the same time.
Across multiple disciplines, countless professionals are integrating music as part of the healing process.
Psychotherapists use music in the treatment of people with addictions or depression. For many, the
physical and psychological impact of music is beyond therapeutic; it is life-altering -- restoring not only
functionality, but also a sense of hope, confidence and will to live.
And we can significantly affect our own health by incorporating regular doses of music in our daily lives.
Right down to the cellular level, the positive vibrations of good music can help heal, shift and enhance the
state and quality of our emotions, our thoughts, our moods and our physical well-being.
Whether we using music as a source of joy and inspiration, a medicine for healing deep wounds, a therapy
for physical rehabilitation, or a lifeline for surviving trauma and loss, and whether we are healed at the
hand of a musician or an M.D., music is undeniably one of mankind's greatest healing modalities.
Creativity is one of the most essential tools for a child to develop if they want to be successful later in life.
Creative development as kids can be directly correlated to their future success in all kinds of careers
including scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs. Playing music -- especially improvisation, and creating
music -- musical composition, are highly engaging processes that activate multiple areas of the brain and
help us to develop greater creative capacity.
It looks like entering a optimal creative state, however, may be as dependent upon us tempering certain
parts of the brain -- those responsible for logic, critical thinking, judgment and even self-protection, as it
is on activating others. Researchers, like authors Mnica Lpez-Gonzlez and Charles J. Limb, are using
brain imaging to study the neural underpinnings of spontaneous artistic creativity through musical
performance, from jazz improvisation to freestyle rap. They've found that brain areas deactivated during
improvisation are the same as those at rest during dreaming and meditation (other rich states for
imagination and creativity), while activated areas include those controlling language and sensorimotor
skills.
Simply listening to music can help relax us, and relaxation is key to creativity. Jonah Lehrer, a
neuroscientist and author of the bestselling book Imagine, says that moments of insight, or creative
moments, usually correspond to a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the brain's right
hemisphere. And that is stimulated by relaxation. Music can also help stimulate our imagination, one of
the key components of the creative process. Listening to a song we love or fully immersing ourselves in a
piece of beautiful music can shift our mood, create images in our mind, impact our limbic brain and open
us up to new ideas.

Whether your creative spark gets ignited by a beautiful sunset, mantras to Saraswati or your 5-year-old
daughter's smile, there is little doubt in my mind that one of our most inspiring creative muses is music.

References
[1] Calaprice, Alice. The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univesrity Press. 2000.
[2] Campbell, Don and Alex Doman. Healing at the Speed of Sound: How What We Hear Transforms our Brains
and Our Lives. New York: Plume, 2012.
[3] Cardillo, Joseph, Don DuRousseau and Galina Mindlin. Your Playlist Can Change Your Life: 10 Proven Ways
You Favorite Music Can Revolutionize Your Health, Memory, Organization, Alertness and More. Naperville, Ill.:
Sourcebooks, Inc., 2012.
[4] Levitin, Daniel J. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York: Plume/Penguin,
2007. Link.
[5] Lehrer, Jonah. Imagine: How Creativity Works. 2012.
[6] Lopez-Gonzalez, Monica, Ph.D. and Charles J. Limb, M.D. Musical Creativity and the Brain. The Creativity Post.
2012. Link.
[7] O'Brian, Miles and Marsha Walton. Music and Creativity. National Science Foundation. 2011. Link.
[8] Pica, Rae. Unlocking Children's Creativity through Movement and Music. Earlychildhood News. Link.
[9] Root-Bernstein, Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein. Imagine That! Psychology Today. 2010. Link.
[10] Sayen, Jamie. Einstein in America. New York: Crown. 1985.
[11] Wertheimer, Max. Productive Thinking. Enlarged edition. New York: Harper Brothers. 1959.

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