Music For Maternity

These days, top money managers are meditating. So is US Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). He wrote a book on the subject, “A Mindful Meditation,” and says that to his knowledge, no colleagues have accused him of going New Age. Eager to lower stress-related business costs — $300 billion annually in the United States, according to the World Health Organization — corporate America is getting in on the action. Read more here…

From autism to cerebral palsy – whether high functioning or more involved – the American Music Therapy Association states, “Research supports connections between speech and singing, rhythm and motor behavior, memory for song and memory for academic material, and overall ability of preferred music to enhance mood, attention, and behavior to optimize the student’s ability to learn and interact.”  Amy further explains, “Music that has a predictable structure can help children to process and remember ideas, movements, and language.”  Read more here…

Meditation is a state wherein the mind is calm, pure, positive, caring, lo­v­ing, com­pas­sio­na­te and frie­ndly. Th­is state acts as a bri­dge between one’s in­ner self and the external world whi­ch is, in fact, a ref­lection of the in­ner self. The pu­rer the inner self is, the better the external world be­comes. Meditation purifies the inner self. Everyone must strive to achieve this state of me­di­ta­tion as early in life as possible. Read more here…

According to Sanford Nidich, Ed.D, co-author and professor of education at Maharishi University of Management, “These results are the first to show that the Transcendental Meditation program can have a positive impact on student graduation rates. The largest effect was found in the most academically challenged students. Recently published research on increased academic achievement and reduced psychological stress in urban school students may provide possible mechanisms for the higher graduation rates found in this study.” Read more here…

If the sheer amount of work generated by school has you anxious, tense and worried, consider trying meditation before, during or after school. Even a few minutes meditation can give students and teachers a sense of calm and peace of mind that benefits their emotional and physical health. Read more here…

There’s this thing I do, every now and then. I will step away from the comforts of my life: my spouse and child, my home and dog. I pack a small bag with two pairs of old linen trousers, three T-shirts, a thin cotton wrap and flip-flops. Then I make the trek to a Vipassana meditation centre and begin a monastic life for 10 days. Read more here…

Mindfulness asks you to stay in the present moment. You can do it lying in bed when you first wake up. With your eyes closed, focus on your breath. Notice it go in and out; in through your nose, out your mouth, making your chest go up and down. Read more here…

Researchers discovered that meditation-related anxiety relief is associated with activation of the areas of the brain involved with executive-level function (the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Read more here…

Silence in music therapy, as in life, can take on many qualities. It can be oppressive or mutual, uncomfortable or soothing. I often find in music therapy with verbal adults that when a long musical improvisation ends it is very difficult to come straight back ‘into words’. Here an instinctive shared silence – sometimes of as long as a minute, can act as a de-compression chamber allowing us time to return from the intimacy of spontaneous shared music-making back into the realm of words and interpretation. Read more here…

Balancing a multicoloured plastic model in his hands, Dr. Richard Davidson looks out over an assembled group of 5-year-olds and says: “The brain is the most complicated thing in the universe.” Read more here…