Wellbeing as One System: Mind, Body and Place

The Healing Power of Music

Everyone from Rock Stars to Spa Directors is noting Music's healing powers.

From spas to psychologists’ offices to operating rooms and cancer centers, music is demonstrating its power to soothe both the mind and the body. "I’ve never found anything more powerful than music to begin to heal and transform every aspect of people’s lives," says Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., Director of the Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine in New York and author of Sounds of Healing (Shambhala Publications). "There is no system in the human body that has not been positively affected by music."

It seems as if science is just catching on to what cultures around the world have known since ancient times. Throughout history, sound in the form of chanting, singing, and drumming has been used to ease pain. In ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, temple priests sang as they healed the afflicted. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras is considered the spiritual godfather of sound medicine. According to the fourth-century philosopher Iamblichus, Pythagoras and his disciples composed music to cure "passions of the psyche" such as "despondency, mental anguish, anger, and aggression." Native Americans and many other peoples use drumming rituals to achieve altered states of consciousness in hopes of finding insight, enlightenment, and health. The Sufis call sound ghizaI-ruh or "food for the soul." They believe the universe vibrates with tones so intricate they cannot be perceived by ordinary human beings but that through chanting and singing we can experience a euphoric merging with the divine.

Spas, long in the forefront of the mind-body movement, have made music a part of spa life from the lobby to the treatment rooms, and they continue to find new ways of implementing its benefits. The Ojai Valley Inn & Spa in California and Willow Stream, The Spa at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in British Columbia, Canada, are among several spas that have recently installed underwater music systems in their swimming pools. These sonic baths are a great idea, according to experts, because water is an excellent conduit for sound. "Our bodies are 70 percent water," says Dr. Gaynor, "so we’re not just hearing with our ears. We’re literally feeling sound vibration with every cell in our bodies."

One of the ways in which music works on the body is by producing relaxing alpha and theta brain waves. The primal sounds of drumming are very effective at producing the latter, which are associated with a trancelike state similar to the stage just prior to sleep. And many types of music produce alpha waves, which are also linked with deep relaxation. Some spas, such as New Age Health Resort in upstate New York; Miraval, Life in Balance, in Arizona; and Green Valley Resort and Spa in Utah, offer drumming classes. "There’s been a resurgence of interest in drumming, which hasn’t been part of our culture for a long time," says Martin Klabunde, who leads a weekly drumming workshop at Miraval.

At Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa in Florida, music is quite literally used to heal frazzled guests. The individual lies in a hammocklike contraption suspended inside a geodesic dome and is "massaged" by vibrations from BETAR- a Bio-Energetic Transduction Aided Resonance machine. Proponents say it "reads" the electromagnetic field that the body produces in response to music and adjusts the sound level to soothe away imbalances and stress.

When Gaynor began his career as an oncologist, he focused solely on the physical. But when he observed a number of patients who seemed to make miraculous recoveries, he was intrigued. One who had breast cancer told him she had worked with an energy healer. Another said she had been treated by a qi-gong master. Over time, Gaynor became more familiar with meditation, guided imagery, and deep-relaxation exercises. But it wasn’t until he treated Odsal, a Tibetan monk, for a rare heart condition that Gaynor began to incorporate music into his practice. Odsal presented Gaynor with a Tibetan healing bowl. The monk took out a small wooden baton and ran it around the rim of the bowl, producing a deep, rich sound, like that of a church bell.

"All the sounds of the city receded into the background, and I could feel the vibration physically resonating through my body," Gaynor recalls. "It touched my core in such a way that I felt in harmony with the universe. Today, along with radiation and chemotherapy, Gaynor routinely prescribes visualization and chanting for his patients. "I believe that sound is the most underutilized and least appreciated mind-body tool, and it should become part of every healer’s medical bag," says Gaynor.

Dr. Oliver Saks, author of many books on neurological disorders, including Awakenings, , says that music is "crucial" and as powerful as any medicine for patients with these disorders. Dr. Saks, has observed patients with Parkinson´s disease "who can´t talk but can sing, can´t walk but can dance. People with Alzheimer´s can sometimes start to remember themselves and be themselves with familiar tunes."

Gaynor is hopeful that the medical community will continue to open its ears to the sounds of healing. "I envision the day in the not-too-distant future when music therapists regularly visit and work with patients in all our healing institutions," he says. Gaynor wants to hear "singing, toning, chanting, and other forms of music echoing through the corridors of every hospital unit."

Wellbeing as One System: Mind, Body and Place

By Andres Roberts

When you think about your wellbeing, where does it begin? Is it in your head, with thoughts or feelings? Is it in the body, like a way of being? Or does it start somewhere outside of yourself, like on a favourite armchair, or in a garden, or the great outdoors? In our fast-paced world, it is all too easy to think about health as an afterthought. Powering through life, pushing limits, we wait for our health to be affected before turning to reactive solutions. But what if we thought about wellbeing less as a mechanical component, and more as a living system across mind, body and even the world around us?

My own work is about helping people to reconnect with nature, drawing lessons from natural systems to support healthier human systems (this could be anything from a business to community or ourselves). The more I do this work, the more I see that a healthy mind is not just a 'black box' inside our heads, but something related to how we move our bodies and how we spend time in our environments.

Reconnecting Mind, Body and Nature

A key aspect of my work is about guiding journeys we call 'Nature Quests'. Through a Nature Quest, we help people leave the busyness of modern life behind to be entirely alone in nature for anywhere from a day to four whole days and nights. I am constantly amazed by how this helps people find a special kind of stillness, balance and direction. To help people prepare for Nature Quests, we do a lot to help people get back into their bodies. We go on walks, we swim, we eat and sleep outside, and we guide movement practices such as T'ai Chi and Qi Gong. Throughout the process, and especially with these latter exercises, we place added emphasis on letting go, making space and finding flow.

Once, a very brilliant woman joined one of our retreats. She was feeling great pressure in her life and work, the tension building so much that she had become physically unable to raise one of her arms. Over the days, we went through our usual Nature Quest process: the walks, the movement practices, a beautiful 'solo' out alone in the wild, woven together with heathy meals and stories around the fire. By the end of the programme, the same woman was glowing, full of fresh and clear insights, and, amazingly, free to move her arm again.

The Science of Natural Wellbeing

It's through these experiences that I have come to see how our minds and bodies are connected in intricate ways. It's also how I've come to believe that wellbeing is supported by healthy conditions in all of the systems around us. If you were to ask me, I couldn't explain the mechanics of what stopped this woman's arm movement, but I know that taking time relax and return to the body and nature helped her system to re-balance.

We are seeing more and more evidence about the benefits of returning to nature. The Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, or Forest Bathing, involving walks and reflection in nature, has been shown to reduce cortisol levels (our main stress hormone), lower blood pressure and improve parasympathetic nerve activity (associated with relaxation.) In other research, there is evidence that the practice of Earthing, connecting our bodies to open ground, has positive impacts on sleep, blood circulation, stress, inflammation and a general positive sense of wellbeing.

Wellbeing as a Wider System

It might sound overly simple, but our minds and bodies want to feel natural. If we give them space and time to do so, they will try to find a healthy balance with the world around us. Even the gentle practice of gardening is good for us, shown to relieve symptoms of anxiety, stress and bereavement. At a microscopic level, contact with soil has a positive impact on our own microbiome (billions of living organisms that we rely on for the health). body to the vast expanse of the world around us. From this perspective, taking care is very much about tending to all of these wider systems to help us be well as a whole.

Making Care a Way Of Life

A big challenge with all of this is of course, how to make it part of everyday life. Here are a few things I think are helpful to creating a wider system, even a culture, of wellbeing.

•Take the time to walk mindfully. Give yourself just a few moments each day to notice what you are feeling and where you are holding those emotions. See if you can hold them with care, as if you could give them an energetic hug. Some would say this is the essence of mindfulness. •Make relaxation a real life practice. Practice letting go and flowing. Don't try to go anywhere. Instead see how light and lose you can be in the moment. •Explore embodiment practices: T'ai Chi, Gi Gong, dancing, many forms of yoga. Anything that helps you connect your body. •Make time in nature a regular routine. Find a favourite spot to go back to. Get into the rhythm of visiting for a moment of stillness. Let yourself free. •Put wellbeing at the centre of your life - the thing that all things contribute to, rather than the thing you try to do after a busy day, week or year.

Our bodies and nature are wise wells of wellbeing. Let's treasure them, and let's take care of them, because they take care of us.

About Andres Roberts is a guide dedicated to a new kind of progress, fit for a positive future for all. His work combines renewed ideas about learning and change, re-connection to nature, and the wisdom of ancient cultures to help more positive, and more systemic, change and growth. Andres is co-founder of Way of Nature UK and founding partner of The Bio-Leadership Project.