Musical Psychotherapy .How to improve your listening skills for healing?

We live in a world of sound and light-that of music and cosmic energy.This universe is a harmony of several lives,of several sounds and lights which interact and vibrate together filling the great silence of Brahman.Every one should ask “Is my life creating harmony or discord in this universe?? “
We are making either music or noise in this silence.Music is positive pole and noise is negative pole.The divine resonance of positive pole fill us with resonances ,open up transparencies in us ,enlarge our horizons of thought and help us feel the beautiful and inspiring .It nourish and strengthen us .It has powerful waves of life energy and leads us to the unfathomable source ,which we call God or a Supreme power.
Noise makes us insane,in chaos,disconnected with everything,disharmonious,and only music can bring peace,beauty ,synthesis,integration and transformation into this chaotic world of noise and balance it .Depending upon our deepest sensititvity we choose the sounds best for us.If someone fails to choose the sound and music best for themselves,a Music therapist helps him/her.
I had been a doctor,a Pathologist and a Medical teacher throughout my life and I had several occasions to observe the effects of music on developing normal and abnormal children,on adults healthy and unhealthy.Music has helped me to learn more with concentration and to age gracefully ,and to withstand all trials and tribulations,to perform my domestic as well as official and social duties with satisfaction.Specific music selections and portions have been observed to contribute in changing attunement,behaviour and productivity of individuals .A single piece of music ,carefully played can alter entire atmosphere .Wisely used ,music can clear and purify body and increase our immunity and protect us against illnesses and stress which is causing exacerbation of many a disease state ,in addition to causing disease states .Though all of us are born equal,we are born into each lifetime with different upbringings,tastes and temperaments and personalities and inclinations to harmonize.Each has a unique personality and a unique type of music that suits ,though music is universal for all.

Music brings healing streams of electric charges.But if we are not attuned to it,if we are not prepared and concentrated it need not reach us.If we are well attuned the music will play through us and enter us ,not remain as a external thing.So learning how to relax and link great melodies is a key for healing with music.The Naadalayayoga begins with such a preparation.

.Take a comfortable position –either on your couch,floor or a chair .If outside ,you can lie down on grass .In Yoga practice whatwe call Sukhaasana is thus chosen .

The 10 keys for listening:-
1.Sit quiet and perfectly silent for at least a minute.Control body(so that it is relaxed)mind(so that it is calm)and listen to our own inner voice which we call Athman or soul.That perfect silence will be felt in a meditative silence.
2.Before you listen to the music of your choice ,think of it as the grace of divine presence within your silent soul-space .
3.Thus we are able to surrender totally to the music we hear .Be openminded to what you hear and do not try to analyse it with intellect .Be emotionally,intuitionally one with it
4.While listening to music,immerse totally in it with thoughts,mind and body .
5.Feel the music is embracing and filling you completely.The sound of music enters you and you enter into it in that moment.
6.Enjoy the music wherever it takes you without inhibitions.Whatever visualizations come to you will heal you .
7.With that joy of music and its visualizations praise the power which gave you such creative listening .And ofcourse such creative music.The music and listener are one and not different .Feel that oneness.
8.After playing the music ,take time to absorb it .Sit quiet for some more minutes and note your feelings ,given by the musical experience.
9.Keeping a diary and writing down what came to your mind after these minutes of silence ,you can decide which music gave you more happiness,relaxation and healing and which did not give that.(whether the image is a place,person,colour,nature,presence,shape,archetype ,idea or a creative work truthfully record it).What feeling does the music awaken in me?What feelings it evoked in me ?
10.If needed ,you can also play the music when you do housechores,or dancing or learning or working etc ,that is you can see hat it feels with and without music during other periods of activity.

Where you hear the music?
1.Let it be a beautiful place to enhance the beauty of music.
2.Let it be a quiet place free from distractions
3.Be sensitive to sounds of nature
4.If using an equipment ,let the stereo and sound system have clear tone with minimal distortion.The brand name or advertising may not help you.Trust your own ear for choosing
5.Take care of your musical system .Clean records when dusty.Play one record at a time.Clean tape heads regularly .Remove dust from equipment.

For increased therapeutic value,you should not be overcritical about the music you listen to.Once you choose your music pieces Love them unconditionally for what they have to offer .Emphasise the treasures of music ,not the defects in them.Different pieces of music stimulates different areas in our brain and body .Melodic music ,with minimum or solo instrumental accompaniments ,and devotional music are quietening and soothing than the full orchestral and choral pieces according to my experience and I find Hal A Lingerman recommending the same for healing .But being accustomed to western music only he gives only the instrumental music and its effects on us .According to him bass,percussion and electronic notes are stimulating only physical body parts ,(Marches,Overtures,lively songs,epic soundtracks,dances and songs from Broadway shows)string and wouldwinds affect emotional aspects (quiet music to ease and calm anger,ballads,devotional gospels folk music for emotional catharsis melody with slow rhythms and pacing for relieving tensionquiet music for depression,fear and for insomnia ,galwanising powerful music for strength and courage ,wistful nostalgic piece for relaxation,reverie and removing stress)and string instruments affect mental aspects(melodies for eternal love and devotion which appeal directly to our heart ,clear melodic ,rhythmis music for intellectual power and thinking ) and harp ,organ,wind chimes and high strings are for soulwhich is meditation music..(The healing energies of Music .Hal.A.Lingerman page 24-37)).This is a restricted view from the point of view of the vast musical repertoire of the world,the varieties of musical forms and also the uniqueness of each individual .Yet can be used as a base for our building upon our regional musical repertoire with client needs.
Mediatational music and Yoga have everything to do with Indian Classical and Hindusthani music .It also has the Intellectual and emotional aspects .The stimulation of the physical is minimum ,but in Indian popular music there are enough of it .So Indian music has all the required elements from time immemorial and what we have to do is to implement use of it in educational,developmental and hospital situations with proper data collections.
In meditation,the listeningtime is Holy and is a musical meditation.We listen with attitude of reverence and prayer.We are open to spiritual energy of music .

Hal Lingermans idea of Finding out our music is based on Astronomical teaching and the elements .
Fire:- Aries,Leo ,Sagittarius
Earth:-Taurus,Virgo,Capricorn
Air:-Cancer,Scorpio ,Pisces
Water:-Cancer,Scorpio,Pisces
Music is used to cultivate and activate the expression of energy as they emerge through these temperaments.
Fiery natures like power,competition,surging sounds,strong rhythms,romantic yet dynamic melodies ,music of strength and responds to music of victory.
The earthy signs love warm melodies,homey traditional and evocative of friendships and earthly comforts.Music of nature appeals to it with nostalgic and suggestive of repose.It loves music with definite lyrics and meaningful poetry.Loves literal statements to mere suggestiveness.Simple themes often repeated ,beautiful and restful tunes appeal to it.Warmth and poignance ,domestic happiness ,delights of earth and heaven ,warm melodies suits them.
Air sign is independent and resents restrictions.It needs rhythmicity ,variety and clear melodies.It loves music that moves ahead in a certain direction ,yet encompassing a wide spectrum of style and colour.It respond to experimental music ,extroverted music,current songs and promotional hit songs contemporary tunes and textures fascinates it for a period and then it get bored and discard it.I don’t know why Lingerman included Indian Ragas in this category.Possibly he thought that since there is a wide variety of Ragas in India it is of this category alone or ,his knowledge of Indian raga music is very very limited and also of Indian astronomy and yoga and chakra music.
Water sign seeks pieces with deep feeling and contrasting polarities of emotion which bring a total response from heart.It feels before it thinks.If you tend towards dramatic ,melancholic music and tragedy will appeal to you.Melodies of power,victory which drive away fears ,tears and suffering is suited.Great love themes,deep passions,and human striving arouse the watery signs and their many moods.

Visualization of music as colours,designs,patterns etc is important.Great music stimulate imagination and creativity .The imaginary picturisation of the music or its visualization is more meaningful for each person .Therefore the narration of each person on his/her musical experiences is part of narrative medicine.
Music is an art that express the inexpressible.It is beyond all words and all colours.Yet for communication of our experiences we have to use these .We are taken to other levels of consciousness by great music and deep memoirs of an unknown life may come to you and faithful ecording of tehse experiences for posterity is creative as well as experimental dat collection .Thus it is both science and art .From my experience I can say that beautiful music had always taken me to the grandeour of the universe and cosmos and to music of spheres and then beyond,to that great silence what I call the realm of God .Indian classical and devotional music has this quality .
Another important aspect is that great music help us discover and if needed change some habits and behavioural patterns we kept from childhood.The memories of past hurts and past sorrows are erased.The memories of past loves and past enjoyments are stored forever in our musical experiences and their memories.By music therapy ,the therapist can try to enhance the positive side and decrease the negative side by allowing the person to experience and decide which is best for him/her.Music is a real revelation of one’s soul.Performance of a Musical Raga or a Kutchery in India is a rite in festival ,not just for enjoyment but for initiation into mysteries of human soul.

Dr John Diamond ,in his book “Your body doesn’t lie “ say that rock music has made the muscles of his clients go weak.(Response of muscle to rock music) and that each muscle is related to an organ in our body.The abnormal rhytm of rock music and its loudness are causing this harmful effect according to him.It is only noise ,a sound which at some intensity decrease body energy.Good music and nature sounds increase or strengthen ,while detrimental music decrease it .Even a good music ,if played loudly for a long time can decrease body energy.Therefore judicious use of volume of music is needed.
What is distinction between music and noise?Melody and words are being replaced by shrieks with frenetic rhythms and a collective hysteria is produced .This temporary savage trance is not therapy or healing .Destructive music deteriorates our physical,mental ,intellectual powers and leave us weak in all respects .

The Music therapists are practicing one of the most ancient forms of healing and are reviving a lost art and science .The willful person has the power to focus,to concentrate,perceive selectively and most importantly to transform material existence.The therapist fills role of a listener/observer who helps people to see,listen and observe ,feel themselves ,assist in decoding the complexities of life and dreams andth ecryptic indirect messages people send to themselves and to others.The music therapist as a psychotherapist ,learn to create an identity (musical )and a snes eto what they really are within the multiplicity of roles that they play in the work and personal life.They find support,self-validation,group inclusion and guidance and to healing through an ancient traditional art.Though art therapy was introduced separate from Psychotherapy,at present the realms are merging and fusing and transforming the field of psychotherapy practice for its betterment.Professional associations and publications by them still separate them but instead of emerging as a hybrid of the two,and instead of remaining as a separate discipline ,the universality of music has allowed the integration of all human beings and their physical,mental,intellectual and spiritual healing and the distinctions have faded .Individaul art works are not mere commodities ,and audiences are not mere consumers and musician is not just a professional earning his livelihood with an art .The creation of good music by a musician amounts to social service because the wide range of music created by him/her is having more ability to heal people and society than the various social reforms of a Government.The judicious recognition of such music and its role and its use for society and its healing is an art and science and a psychotherapeutic transformation of entire society with its illness of separatisms.
Psychology has not yet incorporated the space-time relations of modern astrophysics but Indian music had done it and therefore integration of science and art through music had been a process as old as Indian culture.
Community and Music therapy:-
The verbal communication and narrative MLP of each person will reach the primordial levels of group unity and rhythm and this is achieved with relative ease .Music,arts and drama lends themselves naturally to formation of a collective natural Unity and identity of a people .Therefore the Indian music and dance and other art traditions have to be viewed as a unifying force of entire subcontinent .This is also true of all Indian scientific and philosophical traditions.The integration of all these is possible and then using this geographical cultural and artistic and scientific knowledge ,applying the modern levels of scientific research to them gives a unified integrative corroborative process .It is a total transformation by wholistic movement of integration and corroboration.How this is implemented is what is important .
According to Shaun Mc Niff (The arts and psychotherapy pp 4-5)) the drama and music(theatre) started form shamans for visualization and group identity and transcendent oneness of a group.He says the Shamanic healing is a right hemisphere phenomenon and the teacher(voice within oneself) is the illness and individual by a dialogue with this teacher (communication of organism with itself)reestablish balance and order.This selfhealing and balancing is initiated by a shaman ,the psychotherapist of the group/community .The value of placebo effect was fully appreciated by tehse early healers and in 1978 I.M.Lewis described Psychiatry is a latent shamanism and shamanism is often more than Psychiatry.(Ecstatic religion:An anthropological study of spirit possession and Shamanism New york Penguin 1978).Both aim at balancing the individual and environmental relationships,but psychiatry lacks ability to relate to transcendental source of life and dynamic pulse of creative action.The integration of music and arts to modern psychotherapy allows us to have benefits of both,but without having to go back to savage practices of shamanism.The shamanic way of dream power is made use of by modern psychology .A circular enclosure of sacred place is always chosen by ancient cults to do healing .In artistic musical and dance performances the performer and the audience together make the circle ,thus uniting the powers of entire community for group healing.Circular imagery is the mandala in Jung and this was used by India at least from Indus Valley/Harappan times as we see from the archeological evidences and also before that from the cave pictures dating back to 10000 BC .The musical circles of Melakartha raaga in Classical music is in the same pattern.Accordin to Gestalt psychology the experienced order in spacetime is always structurally identical with a functional order in the distribution of underlying brain processes.(Kohler wolfgang.Gestalt psychology New york.Liveright 1970 pp 61.)
Both in psychotherapy and shamanism the training of the healer have direct effect on healing process.He/she has to keep the client’s mind to positive thoughts by art and science of his/her discipline.Sigmund Freud contributed greatly to renewal of a shaman’s role in society by a psychotherapist .His dream interpretations had several things accepted from Shamanism .Jung vitalized the spiritual and archetypal ancestral memories in each human being as a collective memory of the whole race .Freud’s discoveries were those of an archeologist of mind and emotion.Jung’s discoveries were more wholistic and ntegrative of entire human race and its spiritual and intellectual,emotional heritage.Slavery to the Freudean ideas have made psychotherapy very limited in its use.Because the therapists are always thinking about a hidden feeling(a hidden agenda) and give inadequate attention to explanations offered by the artist (by the client ).Creativity and creation itself is a motive and everyone loves to create a unique style and express it or communicate it as a mark or symbol of identity.So is every society.To try to find out any other hidden agenda for art is like distrusting everything and that is a neghative aspect of Freudean psychotherapy.The series of motives or one motive above the other is always individualistic and unique for each oen of us and mere generalization is not correct.The motivation theories are
1 Equalibrium/order/Balance
2 Competency/mastery /skill/expertise
3.Exploration/resolution of uncertainty/knowledge /discovery
4.Aesthetic pleasure /intensification of life
5 communication/relationships
6.Ahievements/social recognition
7.Emotional recognition/sublimation
8.Fear /fearlessness
9.Mortality/Immortality
All tehse and any one or more of it in combination exists in each individual and his/her symbolic expressions in word,art,deeds and in thoughts .

The therapist should know that each individual has an artistic healing power within .And should believe in that healing power.If you don’t believe in that power within yourself,you are not fit to be a music therapist .Unless you believe in it yourself,how can you help others with it?So self-experience is the first thing to achieve.So before you start teaching others or healing others,teach yourself,heal yourself is the first advice.The attitudes and values of the therapist has a definite effect on people/clients (Frank Jerome;Persuasion and healing.A comparative study of psychotherapy .Baltimore.The John Hopkins Pr 1961)
Obstacles felt:- The most consistent factor is time and emotional drain of the other jobs .Demands and responsibilities to others,to profession,to families etc. For students the demands of professional study also has the same problems .The distractions of such demands makes the total involvement and dedication difficult ,says many a professional and a student alike.To overcome this ancient India had some systems of free education for students at Guru’s residence and the Guru was given facilities for providing free accommodation,food for the student ,through state allowances of temple lands and the like.The system is continued now in universities with state grants ,but not entirely free as in ancient times.What we can now do is to manage our time efficiently without making the obstacles rule over us,but ourselves being in perfect control of all obstacles.This I say from my own experience of a bust professional and domestic life of responsibilities of manifold nature.Our effectiveness as expressive art therapists come directly from our involvement in and personal explorations of that particular art.Our ability to support the value ,respond to intensities,of a client’s needs and art will be directly proportionate to the extent we feel these forces within ourselves.
Emotionally troubled people tend to complain of loneliness ,emptiness,depression ,confusin,and a very negative sense of self (Page 64. The Arts and Psychotherapy.Mc Niff).If a creative artist(novelist/poet etc)always express such thoughts a psychotherapist should realize his/her needs for balance of emotion.The visualization techniques of the western music therapy to give suggestions to think of a part of body(with disease)as a still lake ,floating cloud or any such fantasy imagery is good for such people .These guided imagery or fantasy techniques used by west is no needed in India since each Raga in itself contains such imageries .And just leaving the client to immerse in a raga ,natural feelings of the raaga can be used without any suggestions from therapist ,according to the clients choice and only in extreme cases (where no creativity is possible due to severity of disease) a suggestion from therapist be used.The children and adolescents may be helped to control and direct their expressions of emotions by their own natural ability in this method.Scribbling the experiences,thoughts with or without an accompanying drawing may be attempted as exercises with each music session.The spontaneous creativity is stimulated by this.
Use of rhythmic music as stimulus for creative action existed in shamanic cultures as drumbeats(percussion instruments) which summon the spirits.In people with lack of consciousness and in slow reactors etc this can be of use to invoke creativity and for a warming up of energy .Repetetive rhythms are for warming up and in concerts the Varna rendering is such a warming up operation.Predictable sounds and movements in beginning help people to relax ego controls and flow with the music.Consistent rhythms help support the emergence of synchronous movements and a sense of group unison.Chanting also have a similar effect because of repetition of sound pattern which sustain attention while relaxing participants and enabling them achieve a trancelike state of concentrated mind.
Warming up exercise limit perception by focusing attention on a particular object.This type of exercise sharpen the figure-ground perception and demonstrates how contact can be made with different objects in environment by the same technique .Similar exercises can be initiated with selective focusing on sound patterns and movement qualities.Figure-ground perceptions can lend themselves to creative writing warm ups by having clients write the visual descriptions of the music they experienced.Metaphorically by freely associating the listened music with the various images that enter the consciousness the person is freed from all obstacles of self-expressions and enjoy the creativity and wants to explore more into such experiences and this has to become a part of life .That is the therapy rather than a temporary activity,becomes a way of life to the community as such .
With this the client finds more easy to contact and communicate with therapist as well as others .The music that evoke emotional memories engage the person in dialogue with external world and they become more self expressive and open .Smetimes a great musician who had wanted to freely communicate but found it difficult to do so ,becomes very communicative after a few sessions with a music therapist and the transformation in him brings good to the society he/she lives in.A creative music therapist can achieve this,even without the musician ever suspecting that he/she is made an experimental model by the therapist ,in the interest of the entire community .(If he/she knows it he may resist change/transformation due to ego or some other conscious reason which undermines the whole use of music therapy on a musician which aims at healing of the society as a whole).The totality of the therapy can be seen as the warming up for life .
Spontaneous writings ,prose and poetry ,that come out of musical experience in itself has a healing power .Whether you call the creative expressions as poem or not they are creations of a human soul .The clients poetry need not be frist class poetry.Their music need not be first class music .But by expressing their arts ,their music they are healing themselves and you as therapist is motivating them to do so.That is a community work and not something which you are doing for getting an award or a Nobel prize or for a monthly professional wage/fame as musician.Reading poetry,reciting Aksharasloka,filling up samasya,playing group and solo music and dance and folk arts and drama ,reciting stories and narratives our ancestors had this healing touch to entire community .We think that ,every thing they did were religious according to our modern concept of semitic religion and pseudosecularism .But the modern experimental evidence coming from all over the world in fields of human consciousness,ideas,arts and healing show that they were not so .They were efforts through which ancient human consciousness devised educational system so that entire society benefit and no single person is left out of the scheme.Every single person and his/her needs are integrated in the educational art psychotherapy of the ancients and a deep study into this educational system may sometimes shock us because w ehave an ego tha we alone are superior and ancients were inferior to us .This ego may get a shock if we compare modern and ancient knowledge systems and the practices.Within th eclient’s personal language system and understanding the therapist has to devise his/her schemes.Thus when I used the Melakartha raga schemes I used Malayalam lyrics (which unfortunately was not available till that time and so my own poetry had to be used) .Unless we have geographical and language contexts of the population on whom we are using therapy with music ,our efforts may not succeed .Though universal,music has some regional pecularities which makes it popular in some groups .India having all sorts of music suited for all its population the selection is not a problem .When we use vocal music with sahitya in it we are combining creative approach of language psychotherapy as well as that of music and this is the most useful for a person who has already developed language skills(adults)and also for children whom we want to develop language skills .In people with no language skills (mentally or intellectually or physically deficient) one can resort to rhythms ,to instrumental music etc as the case may be according to te hclients needs and liking.For others the language and music combined therapy is more wholistic and integrated when compared to that without language.Th enature of language and music centers in our brain is such tha both function mutually for cognition and understanding and processing of memories.

Sound is a sense modality directly connected to expression of emotion.Making and listening to music is cathartic,gently stimulating and calming.Music can summon life from the dead,calm the most aggressive of the beasts,motivate even a malevolent force to act benignly towards society(others).The integration of artistic and spiritual realities into psychology happen as study of behaviour evolve from its earlier and very exclusive focus on parental conflicts and other forms of psychopathology .Music is the universal language of the soul in all traditions and cultures all over the world.Because of the invisible nature of sound energy as vibrations this divine nature is ascribed to it.The human mind transforms this invisible unmanifested divine vibrations into expressions of joy of nature by musical expressions of a great singer .The sound of nature is also music.But it differs from either rlive or recorded music from a singer.
The music therapy sessions are not just listening to music ,but speaking about what we felt and recording or creatively expressing and sharing those thoughts with others too.It is exploration and improvisational expression of feelings of the musical moments .Music being a rich source of personal associations,stimulates recall of personal emotional memories.Recordings of your favourite singer can be used to facilitate guided fantasy or imagery experiences .The selections made by you and the therapist in a scientific integrated way has to relax and tehn make creativity bloom within you for a positive effect of healing.Music followed by sharing of emotions,discussions and interactions unify people for positive results .Music listening may vary from on eminute to 15 or 20 mts or more depending on attention span of person/groups and after that I usually ask them to give what they felt in writing.Such written feedback data has been used in my research extensively .Since my audience have a varied population (from astronomers/astrologers/other professional groups of different modalities of medical practices,philosophers/historians/teachers/students and music lovers)the feedback has shown me the unity and universality of all tehse diversities and also the uniqueness of creativity and healing power in each person .I have found that the egocentric scholarly people are having more resistance to selfhealing than any other group because they fail to get involved in music).My orientation towards the working of sensory awareness and listening skills,interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences and interactions/dialogues/discussions/sharing of musical life panorama and musical feelings and resolution of conflicts through a musical medium has been discussed in detail in my previous works on music therapy.
Sound dialogues between client and therapist,between individual group members or subgroups within a large group happen with musical healing.
Withdrawn ,unresponsive people: just echo the therapist’s opinions like mirror movements in a dance .Just show that they have heard and understood and likes the concept .This is part of dance therapy and music and dance being inseparable has to be taken as the integrating principle between these two .(Kinetic intelligence of body in Gardner Multiple theory of intelligences).
Observe a singer.The bodily expressions of the singer while singing and while not singing or while making improvisational voice sounds.We will find that his whole body tends to move in synchrony with the sound pattern ,giving them a visual form of expression.The voice comes from within the person’s entire being (body,mind,intellect and soul)and not just body alone .But the body organs and the visible and audible and felt parts being accessible to our sense organs of cognition we start from that .We start from the seen and heard and travel to unseen,unheard and unmanifested true being of the singer.This improvisation with a singer needs a lot of listenings with his performances and also out of performances in his natural settings in a friendly atmosphere and deep understanding ,which is mutual between the listener and the singer .I have been doing this experiment for the past several years with my favourite singer and I can say how important it is for both listener as well as singer to bring out his/her total personality development for community as a whole.The only test for it is what happens to both these individuals after such a sharing between them and how it becomes useful for community/society they live in.
There are four primary factors of movement relating to use of space by an individual.The space means the quantitative measurement of one’s body’s angles and patterns when moving .The same applies to movement of swara,words etc in music also.The space,weight(measurement of strength and force of action/words /letters etc) the time(temporal span of a movement )and flow (continuity ,pauses,interruptions,of a specific movement)are the four primary factors we listen to .But there is in addition the gestalt of the entire person,the actions consistently performed ,transitions from such actions influenced by some other force /or individual,and evaluation of all these together makes up a response of a person to a music therapist .The effort and shape of entire sensory expression gives us a clue to how significant is therapeutic application of art ,especially music in healing.The regular observation of a single singer’s performance and actions closely needs patience and an intense involvement and love for what research you are doing on that singer.In the last 10 years I closely followed Padmabhooshan Yesudas as my favourite singer and attended (between 2000-2010 )150 of his classical concerts to do this research on musical repertoire.The time,energy,effort and involvement ,nothing to speak about the expenses of such an activity has shown me how important it is to love what you are doing as a research to do justice to it .Many students coming and asking for guidance in Music therapy ,I find are not prepared for concentrated involved research at least for an year .They are not willing to do a project with real patients or children or any chosen group of their liking,following the standards of accepted research and wants to be spponfed by what we have aquired .That is not the correct attitude to genuine research in any field.
Hal Lingerman has suggested that each artist gives out a particular quality of energy to a particular listener ad he has also studied the elemental signs of a few western artists to analyse their music. He gives a short account of sound and colour relationship called synesthesia and that sound is visualized by people as colours.All these I have already discussed in my own experience in all my writings and these western ideas of music have all their roots in ageold Indian concepts .The potential power of music to integrate personality and temperament,to awaken our soul,to link us to enlightenment and greater intellectual,mental levels with perfect body health has been recognized by 20th century researchers just like those ancient stalwarts of Indian music thousands of years ago.What,we in India needs is the integration of music into all wakes of life ,into professional life and domestic life and into developmental strategies of human resources and for solution of problems of the ailing society and human beings .Ultimately the music as universal language is for peace of entire living world ,by integration,corroboration and compassionate understanding .Music is Love and Compassion.And that is God itself.