New Healing Music: sing

Music has a profound effect on your body, mind, and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Theraphy, which uses music to heal.

Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring.

Showing posts with label sing. Show all posts

Showing posts with label sing. Show all posts

December 16, 2010

Dance, Monkey, Dance! Tips For Overcoming Stage Fright.

Last night at Banjo Jim's I had the fight or flight response when I got on stage to sing. My heart started throbbing in my chest, my throat got tight, and I felt like I had to pee, even though I had just peed several times. I was looking forward to being back home in NYC, playing and singing in front of people I know and love.

I was bummed that the next fifty minutes might turn out poorly due to unexpected stage fright. Performing is my favorite thing to do when I'm doing it well, and the opposite when I'm dying a slow death out there. If you have ever had a fear of public speaking, any kind of performance anxiety or stage fear, you have felt what I was feeling last night.

In the front of three rows were Abeline and Lucas who had both taken my "Sing Better in A Day" singing class earlier in the day. We had just talked about stage fright. I discussed a number of tools for overcoming stage fright, and there I was with a loud hum going off in my brain and shaky hands. I have been a vocal coach and singing teacher for almost twenty years.

I have given thousands of singing lessons, and worked on performance with hundreds of voice students, I have spent hours and hours helping students with a fear of public speaking, but there I was, sweaty and tongue-tied. All I could do was say what I remembered Joie Blaney telling me - you're not nervous, you're excited to play - and say, "Apparently, I'm very excited to see you guys. I'm really glad you're here."

A singing teacher can get stage fright, too.

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The Benefit of Music

Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal.

Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring.

This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. There are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:

Music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state.

Also, that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.

With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring.

This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.

Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity andottimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.

Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

With all these benefits that music can carry, it's no surprise that music therapy is growing in popularity.