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MY SUNDAY JOURNAL
By Dalton Roberts
An IPS Feature
10-6-02
MUSIC AS MEDICINE
Look upon music as medicine for your spirit and upon your spirit as
medicine for your body.
In my journal on this day in 1990, I placed a clipping titled
"Music To Chew By." It reports a study by John Hopkins
University on how music affects people's eating patterns. People were
observed over a five-year period.
Listen to this: when there was no music, the average person took 40
minutes to eat
lunch. The average number of bites per minute was 3.93. When slow
background music was played, like Montovani, the average number of bites
was 3.02. Rock music made the average person eat more and twice as fast.
If music can unconsciously affect us this way, think of how you can
consciously influence your health by choosing your music like it's a
medicine. That is what it is.
I love rock and roll. But I don't choose it for dinner music. Neither do
I like to eat in places with loud jukeboxes or bands.
Just last night I dined with a master music medicine man, Jimmy Harris.
He's been playing piano bar in this town for many years and gets more
mellow and tasteful with the years. While people are dining he
administers the medicine of sweet music. Then when they're through, he
rouses them with a little rock and roll.
Maybe I should start calling him "Doctor" Jimmy Harris.
MUSIC YOU HEAR WITH YOUR HEART
Near the article on music as medicine I placed a picture of a garden
entrance with these words: there is always music amongst the trees in
the garden but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it
I once read in a magazine of science that the universe has a pulse, a
beat, and a rhythm. And it is similar to the beat of a resting human
heart.
Could it be that this beat is what we tune into when we walk in the
woods or sit in solitude by the ocean or a babbling mountain stream? We
are actually tuning our hearts to the rhythm of the universe, becoming
one with Mother Earth?
Part of my daily music is sitting and watching my birds. My son and
daughter-in-law gave me a small microphone to place in the feeding area
so I can hear their singing. I often take my meals in solitude at my
four-by-four foot window where I watch and listen to the birds.
It's music you can hear with your heart.
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