Music For Maternity

Posts Tagged ‘healing’

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…

During meditation, there was more activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls worrying.When activity increased in the anterior cingulate cortex – the area that governs thinking and emotion – anxiety decreased. The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Read more here…

The researchers studied 373 patients in several Minneapolis-St Paul-area hospital ICUs. A third received music therapy, with a therapist compiling a playlist of each patient’s favourite recordings to continuously loop on a bedside CD player. A third of the patients were offered noise-cancelling headphones to put on whenever they wished. The final third, the control group, received standard care. Read more here…

Studies on the many benefits of meditation have been pouring in lately. The PicktheBrain blog notes that research indicates that just three hours of meditation can increase self-control and focus, while after eleven hours changes in the brain are visible. Read more here…

A meditation invites you to focus on your breathing, your body, or your feelings; it does not usually involve visualising. It is designed to increase awareness of your body. Typically, meditation techniques are drawn from Taoism or Buddhism. Read more here…

This is therapy in a newborn intensive care unit, and research suggests that music may help those born way too soon adapt to life outside the womb. Many insurers won’t pay for music therapy because of doubts that it results in any lasting medical improvement. Some doctors say the music works best at relieving babies’ stress and helping parents bond with infants too sick to go home. Read more here…

Music therapy has been used for years in schools, hospitals and other settings. A music therapist works either in groups or one-on-one with individuals to achieve goals, whether that means helping them rehab from an accident or assisting in developing motor skills in a person with a developmental disability. Read more here…