The “M” Factor
“Music unravels a memory, mends a thought, masks a pain, recaptures a moment and leaves a trail of healing in its gentle wake”
It was a crisp cold morning, as I drove back home after a delightful session with a group of elderly folk in a retirement and long term care home in Mississauga, a city in Ontario Canada. I had spent well over an hour with them, doing breathing and vocal exercises, followed by a list of songs, that included some old favorites, some relatively new, love songs, patriotic, musicals, and hymns. It was a program I had started about four years earlier with the premise that music, especially in a choir setting was beneficial in this particular environment.
Music is a powerful language that expresses the very soul of life as it embodies time that evokes joy through memories.
It influences subjective feelings, physiological states through the ANS(synchronizing of heart rates after singing together), Endocrine systems( lowering the cortisol level that causes stress), motor responses( moving to the beat, dancing),hormonal responses( release of endorphins, the feel good factor, and most importantly Oxytocin, also called the “buddy or cuddle hormone”( which fine fine tunes the brains social instincts, enhances empathy and strengthens ones connection with another)
Recent studies show that music has dramatic effects on all the brain regions that are related to emotion—The limbic system, especially the amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens. It also involves critical regions of the cortex including insula, cingulate and orbitofrontal areas. This process which though complicated as it sounds, but made simple by the neuroplasticity of the human brain shows that music stimulates emotions through specific brain circuits. Every part has a role through evoking , experiencing and regulating emotions related to social interaction. A choir offers the perfect setting for this interaction.
Listening to music or a sing along is the silent tonic that allows for non judgmental freedom of expression,
A choir on the other hand is a structured body of singers that takes music to another level, drawing on the unified strength through voices fusing in purposeful harmony to enhance the listeners pleasure. It promotes camaraderie, encourages willingness to listen, while establishing a strong bond through the purpose of intent.
Since every person is an interactive interdependent being, one enjoys music more when able to share it with someone else. In a choir there is a constant sharing through the medium of music, strengthened through the sense of community and motivated through the anticipation of performance.
Music has order, pattern and predictability which gets people together in a choir for a disciplined ,emotional and ordered function, thus providing the sensory, motor, emotional and social platform that further unifies the group and encourages community.
As I drove on I could still hear their voices and feel the warmth of their gratitude that more than compensated for the cold outside!
I held onto that moment even as I pulled into my driveway, let myself in and settled comfortably in my favorite chair as was my routine. I slipped into a state of reminiscing that took me back in time. A six decade journey that began in a city called Madras, growing up as a posthumous child with the unforgettable love of a Mother, the Madras Medical College that equipped me to follow my profession for over forty years, the Madras Musical Association which offered my first opportunity to express my talent, the Methodist church that undergirded my faith and priorities, my move to the Middle East which widened my cross cultural appreciation of fellow human beings and now in Mississauga. Ah! Was I surprised that all these significant stations in my life had something in common? Certainly, but more profound was that I was able to remember and had Memories. This was something those folk with whom I had just had my session struggled with, because of dementia, mostly Alzheimer’s, some post stroke and post head injury cases. Every person has a story, is a story.
In dementia some pages seem to go missing , sequence lost, no final chapters , no story. The son or daughter who is part of the story may be lost along with the missing pages and feel alone and left out. The encouraging part is that there is a preface, an index in place that includes music and emotion, both woven into the basic intrinsic nature of existence.
"We hear before we see." As early as 18 weeks the fetus hears, makes a memory of things heard, and reacts in response even within a year after birth.
No small wonder that in dementia the only two things that hold out to the end are music and emotion. Music plays a unique role in retrieval of the lost pages, while it is also the glue that binds them (albeit for a brief time) back in place. It’s evident when you experience a person who might not even know who or where she is, remembering the words and singing as if she is retrieving memory cues by connecting the dots. It’s amazing to see them come alive for the moment and even more when their loved ones once again seem to find those they thought they had lost.
Now after over forty years of medical practice and a career in music that runs a close parallel, I am responding to a calling to lend my time to such a cause.
Making Music Meaningful.