Music and Heart Healing
A few years ago, Karl Paulnack from The Boston Conservatory gave the following speech to parents of incoming students. Please feel free to read the entire speech as it's well worth the read. I'll post here some excerpts and then some brief commentary.
One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.
Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.
The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: "I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do."
Music has been rather absent from my own life as of late and I want, and need, to change that. But it's been an integral part of who I am and it's been an important part of my healing. One of the changes in my therapy and healing work over the past year or more is that I've not relied solely on talk and thinking. Sometimes there are no words and it's not about intellectual understanding and staying in my head.
Sometimes what I really need is to listen to Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue", Mozart's "Mass in C Minor", a Bach Cello Suite, Green Day or Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Sarah McLachlan or Journey.
Music not only grounds me on some fundamental level, it allows me to feel. And, in particular, it allows me to feel what I need to feel. This is true of both listening and playing music on my piano. It allows me to heal my heart, or at least attend to my heart.
I'll write much more about music in future posts. I just wanted to dip my toes in the music waters for now. And I will write about the process of doing art (e.g., drawing and painting) and how it is also heart healing.
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Welcome
"Healing from Trauma and Dissociation"
I'm Paul, a father, husband, scientist, educator, photographer and musician. I'm also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
Mind Parts consists of my own insights on the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse, namely trauma stress and the full spectrum of dissociative coping mechanisms, including dissociative identities. Through a blog, I explore the healing process in a variety of ways—using creative contributions of original art, photography, poetry, and music as well as, hopefully, though-provoking essays. Mind Parts is also home to two support services. The quarterly Ezine Trauma Recovery Highlights is a look at some of the best online resources. Also, the monthly Expressive Arts Carnival makes available activities which are published as a group "Carnival."
Comments are welcomed, but if you prefer, you may contact me offline. My belief is that sites like this one can contribute by offering unique perspectives and knowledge, thereby enhancing opportunities not only for survivors but for readers and society as a whole. Namaste!
Hi, Paul -
Music is such a core part of who I am. However, music has been very absent from my life for the last 20 years. I believe it is because my sexual abuser used music to connect with and groom me. I haven't identified a direct connection, but the causal relationship feels accurate in my gut.
Since I started recovering and dealing with memories of the abuse, music has started showing up in my life again. Not by my design, but maybe through serendipity??
I feel very alive when I connect with music, but I am still resistant. I know that listening to music will improve my mood and my energy level, but yet I resist. Maybe I'm still afraid of the emotions I will experience if I allow the music to touch my soul.
Anyway, thank you for writing about this!
- Marie (Coming Out of the Trees)
http://mmaaggnnaa.wordpress.com/
Music has been a constant part of my life since I was born. My mother was a concert pianist so I have also been exposed to the classical side of it. It can help me feel things when I need to connect to them and help me move away from those same feelings when they start to take over. One song I cannot listen to is "My Name is Luca". I don't know if you all are familiar with it and I won't go into it. But then there are songs that I can't stop listening to no matter how old they get. One that really picks me up is Motor Town by the Kane Gang. Very old but just one of those songs that will help you feel light and lively. It seems over the years, without knowing, I listened to alot of music that was about painful stuff. I can now look back and see why. But...music has always been one place I could lose myself in and go far away from the reality of the abuse. Never give up on music. Awesome post...that speech really hits home!
This is an incredible speech. When Paulnack is talking about those who created art in the concentration camps, it helps to explain so much about my current struggles and place:
"The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, 'I am alive, and my life has meaning.'"
I'm not comparing my situation to those in the camps, but rather it helps me to explain my current feelings of being lost and living a life without meaning. That sounds much more melodramatic than what it really is... *sigh*
Thank you for this Paul.
Take care,
CG
Here's my take on music: It is the song of the strings of our soul, and here's why: I believe the human spirit is made up of many emotions (like the millions of bamboo reeds). They wait to be touched, except when they are not, we falter, we become out of step. The reason we like so many different genres is because our emotion needs to be matched, so we might keep in step with our own selves, so for example, I might feel serious and pensive, so I would like Yanni's "If I Could Tell You". If I were feeling fun and daring, I would like Led Zeppelin or Iron Butterfly. It's difficult to be fun, carefree, and daring while listening to Yanni. I need something to match my step or I falter and become clumsy in my presentation to others.
The speech is wonderful, romantic, and challenging - I loved it.
Umm, I don't mean the tragedies the speaker talks about are romantic, but the way he interlaces such wonderful emotion and hope attached to it all, is romantic (and I don't mean sexual). Gosh, I don't want to come across as a sadist or nymphomaniac!
Also, Adagio is one of my favorite pieces of music - no matter who plays it.
Thank you all for your responses and for sharing so openly.
Music is very powerful. I use it when writing if I need to evoke emotion. I used it when I was processing memories to help me access them. I love music for how it makes me FEEL.
I also use music while writing. In addition, I find that sometimes music has the ability to give me "rushes". I feel actual physical energy flowing down my arms and in my fingertips when the music is especially moving.
Great post
Some music has become so much part of our life. It's healed better than any therapy.
And we have submitted via email to you a few posts for the carnival.
Paul said: Music has been rather absent from my own life as of late and I want, and need, to change that.
Me too! Music was always a huge part of my life, and then somewhere, somehow, it got lost. I'm not sure what happened and there has been so much silence--deafening! But, like you, I am bringing the music back!
This was a great post btw :-) Oh, and even though I don't post so much lately, I just want you to know that I am following along here and relate to so much of what you say. I really appreciate your blog and the community of folks here. This journey can be so lonely sometimes, it's good to know there are others on the same path!
I believe this post is related to my breakthrough yesterday. I had a lot of memories come back and I know there are more coming in, and it is all because I was thinking about music in my life. I will probably write about this in my blog, one of these days, when I finish what I'm writing about there now. I just wanted to let you know.
Thank you everyone. I'm sorry I didn't respond so carefully to all your posts. I had a small medical procedure end of last week that left me a bit out of it. So, thanks.
In the last few years I have brought music back more and more into my life. Astronomy has emerged more prominently as well. Two topics that made it onto the beauty that I love list. From my own personal perspective I would have to agree with the Greeks.
Kate