“Given the deep connection that most of us have with music, it should come as no surprise that researchers around the world continue to investigate music’s therapeutic benefits. Besides being enjoyable to listen to, music can help to improve walking speed, reduce anxiety around hospital stays, and improve overall behavioural issues in people with dementia. Music is a safe, simple, and inexpensive strategy; however, it continues to be an underused tool. Whether for yourself, or a loved one, consider incorporating more music into your everyday life and enjoy the many benefits it provides.”
“A virtual pilot study to investigate how music therapy can improve the mental health of healthcare workers has been launched by Simon Fraser University and Music Heals. The study will focus on the healing effects of music on healthcare workers who are at a higher risk of developing PTSD, trauma, depression and other mental health disorders.
Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has added to their workload, increased stress and mental health concerns for healthcare professionals.”
Artists in Healthcare are delighted and grateful for the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family Foundation’s gift to fund George Bajer-Koulack’s music at Misericordia Health Centre. George is able to play inside, fully PPE trained, for residents, making a profound difference in their quality of life with his joyful, engaging presence. Our sincere thanks for this most meaningful gift.
“Music can improve mood, decrease pain and anxiety, and facilitate opportunities for emotional expression. Research suggests that music can benefit our physical and mental health in numerous ways. Music therapy is used by our hospice and palliative care board-certified music therapist to enhance conventional treatment for a variety of illnesses and disease processes – from anxiety, depression and stress, to the management of pain and enhancement of functioning after degenerative neurologic disorders.”
“Max Lerman, Hospice and Palliative Care Music Therapist from Spiritual Care and Music Therapy at NorthShore, highlights some of the benefits music has on health and well-being:
It’s heart healthy. Research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played. It can also reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, decrease cortisol (stress hormone) levels and increase serotonin and endorphin levels in the blood.”
Please find the most recent link to the Artists in Healthcare/MB Chamber Orchestra virtual music program, and share widely with your patients and staffs!
We will continue to post new recordings every week until we can resume outside, and eventually inside music to your hospitals and long-term care.
“What is the key to creativity, and how does it help our mental health? Beverley D’Silva speaks to Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron and others about ‘flow’, fear and curiosity.
Creativity, according to Maya Angelou, is a bottomless pit: “The more you use it, the more you have,” said the novelist. “Creativity is intelligence having fun,” is a phrase often attributed to Einstein. While advertising supremo David Ogilvy came at it from a business perspective: “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”. We know creativity is alive in all fields of life, from medicine to business and agriculture. But the word – which derives from the Latin creare, to make – is most often associated with the arts and culture, and is believed to have first appeared in the 14th-Century literary work, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.”
Leonardo Da Vinci Painting The Mona Lisa By Cesare Maccari
Medicine musica: the eighteenth-century rationalization of music and medicine
Daisy Fancourt London, United Kingdom
Instruments de musique, 1770 Anne Vallayer-Coster Musée du Louvre, Paris
“Legends of music’s healing powers on both the mind and the body are estimated to go as far back as Paleolithic times, when music was believed to be a magic that could drive away the angry spirits that caused illness.
It wasn’t until the beginnings of learned medicine in the Greek-Roman, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese traditions that theories of music’s medicinal qualities began to be recorded. But from here on, they became a popular topic for discussion. In the Greek tradition alone, the Mycenean god Pajawo of 2000 BC used holy song to cure disease, and Apollo combined roles as healer and musician.
And even amongst mere mortals, The Odyssey told of the bleeding of Odysseus’s wounds from a wild boar only being stopped with a musical incantation; and the poet Pratinas in the 6th century BC recorded a plague in Sparta being quelled by the music of the composer Thaletas.”
Painting by Nil Sari depicting the treatment of an insane patient by musical therapy.
Ottoman Music Therapy
“Music has been used as a mean of therapy through the centuries to counter all kinds of disorders by various peoples. Physicians and musicians in the Ottoman civilization were aware of the music therapy in continuation of previous Muslim similar practices. There are numerous manuscripts and pamphlets on the influence of sound on man and the effect of music in healing, both in works on medicine and music. Ideas of Al-Farabi, Al-Razi and Ibn Sina on music were followed by several Ottoman physicians.”
Please refer to Artists in Healthcare’s annual report to read about our Art in Hospital Donation program which has recieved $359,000 of donated art given to Manitoba hospitals over the last two years.
Please find a link to our newest project, another wonderful collaboration with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. Thanks to grants from Dave Johnston of the Johnston Group and The Winnipeg Foundation, musicians are recording live/virtually from their homes to create a concert series free to all patients and staffs.
Currently posted are three videos of holiday music with more coming today. More varied programs will be added in the coming weeks so please let people know to keep checking back for new content. We hope to be able to continue adding new music throughout lockdowns and restrictions, until our musicians can return inside to play when it is safe to do so.
If you are a Volunteer Services Manager, or hospital communications staff, please share the link with all program administrators in your hospital so that their staff can be informed and share with patients. Anyone can access this using their iphone or tablet.
If you can connect to a large flat screen in your atrium or front entrance, please do so! It is the best time of year for music to bring us together.
The link is also going to our musicians to share directly with any units/staff that they have email access to.
Artists in Healthcare acknowledges that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional gathering place of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene people and the traditional homeland of the Métis people.