The BURG

In the Times edition on May 13, 2010, I wrote about my experience playing the piano for patients at Booker Annex, many of whom are dementia patients.

A March 9, 2012, edition of the Union-Bulletin featured a story on its health and fitness page that read:

"Dr. Brent Bauer, professor of medicine and director of the Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., says research is beginning to catch up with the value of music in promoting healing."

He credits the Natural Institute of Health with the changing of attitudes in the professional community when it launched its Complementary Alternative Medicine program in 1998. The program evaluated massage, acupuncture, meditation, art and yoga in treating a variety of conditions.

"Dr. Olden Sacks, the neurologist and author, has offered a passionate case of the healing power of music in the book 'Musicopia: Tales of Music and the Brain.'"

I purchased this book recently and read about cases of success in relief of pain with use of music therapy.

He states, "the perception of music and the emotions it can stir is not solely dependent on memory and music does not have to be familiar to exert it emotional power. One does not need to have any formal knowledge of music - nor indeed - to be particularly 'musical' to enjoy music and respond to it at the deepest levels. Music is part of being human and there is no human culture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed. It's very ubiquity may cause it to be trivialized in daily life. We switch on a radio, switch it off, hum a tune, tap our feet, find the words of an old song going through our minds and think nothing of it. But those who are lost in dementia, their situation is different. Music is no luxury to them, but a necessity, and can have a power beyond anything else to restore them to themselves, and to others at least for a while."

I am always rewarded when I can give the patients that music "at least for a while." They seem so happy and I am too!

I went to Claudia Abel for massage treatment for back pain last week. I was amazed at the affects of massage in easing the pain with music. I learned she played a CD of "Native Expressions" with the sounds of (mostly) Navajo instruments, flutes and water drums. The flutes were oval shaped Iroquois love flutes made out of cedar. This music was very relaxing in concert with the massage.