2024-03-10 05:00:00
Music is an underestimated tool for communication and emotional exploration with deep roots and therapeutic virtues.
Music is probably a distant cousin of language: a form of communication that serves to evoke and transmit emotional states rather than specific information.
For millennia, sounds have stimulated the imagination and emotional associations. Some sounds warn us of dangers, others reassure us (e.g. the voices of our loved ones) or soothe us (e.g. flowing water).
Some researchers believe that our ancestors’ earliest melodic vocalizations may also have resembled the coos or coos of infants that attract the attention of adults.
Cries have long served us to share our joys and our distresses.
Music brings people together because it facilitates emotional contagion. Even when speaking, our intonations are a melody that informs others regarding our condition and can increase their empathy.
A brain massage
Music is a bit like a brain massage. It distracts us from our concerns, reduces our stress, reconnects us to ourselves and reveals our sensitive points.
Music has privileged access to our emotions. It easily activates our emotional and bodily brain circuits. It can change our heart rate and breathing. It can change our sensitivity to pain and our empathy.
Music can move us or remind us of special moments. Music that evokes love or nostalgia activates our brain circuits of attachment like reunions or old family photos. For example, the music of our adolescence still retains great emotional force. See you there.
Our musical sensitivity varies according to our emotional states. Many notice their sadness when a song makes it more intense. Some people almost never feel musical emotions (musical anhedonia). Others develop hypersensitive musical brain circuits in early childhood. In some musicians, this hypersensitivity gives them perfect pitch or special experiences (synesthesia) while listening or musical imagery, colors, shapes or states that nourish their creativity.
Russian mountains
Like language which allows us to think through associations or mental conversations, music allows emotional associations. A bit like novels, melodies immerse us in atmospheres or sound stories that allow us to explore our emotional states.
Music plays with our feelings a bit like a roller coaster. It surprises us with sudden starts, changes in volume or tempo. It seduces us and takes us from tension to calm through modulations of the melody. It amplifies our affects through harmonic progressions or arrangements. For example, in films, the music changes while emphasizing the emotional states of the actors, but also by structuring the atmosphere and the sequences.
Several rhythms also stimulate the desire to move or dance in resonance with them. Dancing, singing and producing music can make us achieve states of well-being or sometimes even trances that resemble the effects of certain drugs.
Like a mild drug, certain rhythms or melodies have a captivating or hypnotic effect that can plunge us into special states of consciousness.
When they hear certain music, many people get shivers, others feel changes in time, space or their body, and some even have mystical experiences.
A precious key
Because it opens emotional doors, music has therapeutic virtues.
It can help those who have less ease recognizing their emotions or those of others (alexithymia) to develop their sensitivity or empathy.
With an individualized and professional approach, it can also improve the emotional regulation of depressed, anxious or traumatized people by reducing their distress and facilitating positive associations conducive to well-being.
Finally, music can help people with cognitive disorders reconnect with their emotions and their past.
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