Is Music Good For Mental Health?
Music therapy, also known as sound therapy, employs music as a therapeutic modality. The goal is the use of musical interventions to accomplish goals within a therapeutic relationship.
Music therapy sessions typically include making and listening to music, followed by discussion. After an assessment, music therapy treatment can include creating, singing, moving to, and/or listening to music. Moreover, music therapy is based on psychological disciplines like psychodynamic, behavioral, and humanistic therapeutic approaches.
Furthermore, music therapy opens up avenues for communication that transcend the limitations of verbal expression. Consequently, this form of therapy can be particularly impactful for teens. Additionally, it has been used to foster emotional balance, while also providing insight into feelings below the surface that need to be expressed.
There are some types of music that most of us find to be relaxing or soothing, either as background music or the main event. While this differs for everyone, the sales by artists such as Moby, Sade and Enya demonstrate that there are large numbers of people who feel it’s benefits.
Of course, some of us prefer to lose ourselves in louder music, perhaps in a crowd, at a festival 🙂 For those that want to do so at home, there are many ways to upgrade your sounds. BurmesterOutlet.com is a great place to shop for the best – and most expensive – sound systems in the world at a discount. You can create a temple to music in your own home!
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Is Mindfulness Good For Mental Health?
A consensus is emerging among the researchers that mindfulness is associated with better physical health and psychological well-being. The present study attempts to explore the possible role of positive and negative affectivity in explaining the relationship between mindfulness and health. One hundred undergraduate and post-graduate tudents (52 male and 48 female) were assessed on selfreport measures of mindfulness, positive/negative affectivity and mental illness/distress.
Analysis revealed that most of the dimensions of mindfulness as well as the total score of mindfulness were correlated positively with positive affect and negatively with different dimensions of mental illness/ distress and negative affect. Further, positive affect correlated significantly and negatively with the dimensions mental illness/distress whereas negative affect correlated positively with the same.
Mindfulness has become an imporÂtant supportive psychotherapeutic intervention for a variety of psychiÂatric conditions, 1-3 regardless of what other modalities the psychiatrist employs (eg, pharÂmacotherapy, other psychotherapeutic interÂventions). In general, mindfulness involves engaging in meditation exercises, analogous to working out in the gym, to strengthen “mindfulness muscles.”
One pursuit that is gaining ground as a way to learn to relax is freediving. While the sport itself can be very dangerous when practiced at a person’s limits, for those of us that are less competitive, it can be a relaxing way to swim and explore boundaries.
Europe’s number one location for freediving is actually the small island of Gozo, located just off Malta in the Mediterannean Sea. We spoke to Luke Cassar, the number one Maltese freediving expert, who also teaches freediving in Gozo every summer. He told us, “It is hard for most people to slow down, to breathe and to feel themselves. In the water, there is nothing else, just you and the sea. The sea is so big and so powerful that not concentrating can be very dangerous and this forces everyone to live in the moment.” His thoughts are echoed by Egypt’s leading divers here.
Is Hypnotherapy Good For Mental Health?
The idea that hypnotists can take over the minds of their subjects and control their actions is, of course, an entirely media-driven myth. In the trance state, you control all of your actions, you can hear everything around you, and you cannot be forced to do something against your will.
Someone regarded as the best hypnotherapist in London hypnotherapist Deborah Marshall-Warren writes, “In a hypnotherapy session, clients are conscious; they are awake, participating, and remembering.”
Hypnosis, she points out, is known for harnessing “the power of suggestion.” But it’s hardly the only time our minds are susceptible to suggestion. “Advertising, music, movies, and books routinely plant suggestions into our subconscious. Language and communication are saturated with suggestion,” says Marshall-Warren.