Music and Mediation Therapy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Music and Mediation Therapy - Essay Example Therefore, it is much better than medication and needs to be practiced more often. Also, those who regularly meditate report hat they feel happy, fresh, at peace and free. Meditation Therapy for Anxiety and Pain Meditation is said to reduce blood pressure, heart rate and heart rhythm disturbances. This allows for adrenaline levels in blood to go down and this hormone is responsible for mediating emotional arousal in our body. There are two kinds of most basic and common meditation practices: transcendental meditation and mindfulness meditation. In the first process the meditator continuously repeats a single word which is called a mantra and he has to make his feelings and thinking to go away. The second process involves the person focusing all his attention on his thoughts and sensations and this process is normally for stress-reduction. Guided meditation is a kind of meditation using phrases of evocative spoken images which allow the person’s mind to become relaxed. Blue Shi eld insurance company conducted a research and their findings suggested that the surgery patients who listened to a guided meditation prior to surgery had a better recovery, was more cost efficient and they felt an improved sense of healing (Weiss, 2008). Another report, by the University of Massachusetts Stress Reduction Clinic showed a reduction in chronic pain by average 50%. In fact, the follow up studies reported that this pain reduction lasted for more than a year. Such effects result because meditation promotes the positive sites of the mind which include compassion, sympathy, big-heartedness, love, endurance and forbearance; therefore, allowing the... Based on this research it is recommended that non-pharmacological methods should be used for any purpose till they prove to be useful. Similar is the case with patents having to cope with surgical procedures. The pre-surgery anxiety and the post-operative pain that they have to experience may be overcome by music and meditation as it reduces stress anxiety and pain. Besides, such therapies are better for the patient since they have no side effects neither do they carry any risks of using them. Meditation is a state of awareness of the present without thinking. When we are normally thinking we usually replay or regret the past or worry about the future. However, during meditation such is not the case and during this process the person is only focusing on the present moment. Therefore, the person is just thinking about the wonders he has as of that very moment and thus there is no interference. When one is meditating he is not doing or thinking anything; he is just being. Pain therapy is not an alternative to the pain medications. Rather it is to be used as an adjuvant to the existing medications where either the efficiency of such medication is increased many fold by using music or the side effect profile is improved by lowering the dosages given. Although relaxation exercises are another means through which a patient can be relaxed music works better as it has more advantages. Music motivates a person and improves his mood and allows for the promotion of relaxing feelings.