E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Nuki, Michiko et al: Effects Of Healing Music On Endocrinological Changes
"Dream / Illusion" and "Ivory Tower" was also felt to be psychologically
"healing" or "relaxing".
In regards to gender, even though it is difficult to generalize,
according to the results of the impressionistic evaluation of this research,
women tended to give a higher absolute value than men did, and seemed to
be more emotional in their responses. In other words, they considered
"vivid" pieces of music more "vivid" and "tranquil" pieces as more "tranquil"
than the men did. On contrary
to this, the men tended to give a score close to "neither" for either of the
criterion. However, there was no difference in scoring between genders for
the third factor "evaluation". Because of this, it can be said that the women
tend to respond more sensitively to evaluations dealing with the emotions.
Future research concerning the difference of emotions between genders
would be of great interest.
5-3 Results
Healing music can be thought of on two ways. The first is that it has a
particular sound for each individual person, and the second is that many
people can feel in common "healing" through the music. The latter case was
dealt with in this research. Music that is slow and has beautiful, clear tones
was evaluated as "healing", but this does not necessarily mean "sedative"
music. It must be kept in mind that the characteristics of the type of music
and compositional structure change according to the listener's psychological
condition at that particular time. For example, when one is relieved from a
highly stressful situation, music with a repeated rhythmic structure is best
suited for continuous listening.
The uses of healing music vary, but as "spirituality" is included in the
original meaning of healing, it can be expected that palliative care (hospice)
can gain the most from the effects of healing music. It is gradually being
used more in connection with other medical care such as in the reduction of
anxiety before surgery, countermeasures against insomnia, artificial
dialysis, pain reduction during medical treatment, and the physical and
mental control in the inpatients' ward.
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