At the nursing home, an old man had sank into dementia and despair.
“He cried constantly. All he could say was, `My mama and papa are dead,’ ” said Eula Moore, 84, an uncertified music therapist who has been visiting nursing homes in Colorado since 1980.
“I said, `Mine are dead too. Perhaps we’ll see them before too long in heaven. What will we do when we get to heaven?’ “
“We’ll sing `Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here’! ” exclaimed the man, who proceeded to do just that.
“He didn’t cry after that,” Moore said. “He’d let go of this awful feeling he had.”
Colorado is home to two of the nation’s best-known music-therapy programs: one at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins and one at the Naropa Institute in Boulder.
Operating on the premise that music is good medicine, the schools offer students a mix of music, music education and psychology so they can practice their healing art in nursing homes, hospitals, hospices, rehab units and special schools.
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The music-therapy scene is certain to gain more attention this fall with the publication of a new Book of the Month selection: “The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind and Unlock the Creative Spirit” (Avon). Author Don Campbell, founder of the Boulder-based Institute of Health, Music and Education, opens with a dramatic account of how he shrank a potentially lethal blood clot in his brain with songs, chants and drumming.
“Your own inner sound system–your ears, voice, and choice of music or self-generated sounds–is the most powerful healing medium available,” Campbell writes.
Yet Colorado is hardly a hotbed of music therapy. Of the 5,000 therapists registered by the Maryland-based National Association for Music Therapy, only 76 live in Colorado, mostly in the Denver-Boulder area.
That leaves the field open to people such as Moore. Part music lover, part drill sergeant, she prides herself on her ability to register with patients who haven’t responded to psychotherapy, drugs or other conventional treatments.
“Music and dance are healing,” she said. “Extremely so.”
Her success stories include a combat veteran whose war wounds left him unable to speak or control his arms or legs. Intensive one-on-one therapy couldn’t restore him to normal, but it did enable him to regain some control of his voice, arms and legs.
“He couldn’t talk otherwise,” Moore said, “but he learned to call square dances.”
Laura Wilson, an uncertified Woodland Park, Colo., music therapist and a former rock band keyboardist, also witnesses such uplifting changes.
Wilson, 31, who graduated with a CSU music-therapy degree in 1988, performs an hourlong program at up to nine nursing homes a day. She is reluctant, however, to call herself a healer.
“What is healing anyway other than a word that gets thrown around a lot?” she asked. “I tend to be a little more practical. My goal is to get the residents active and see that they have a good time.”
Still, administrators at Integrated Health Services/Pikes Peak (Pikes Peak Manor) have nothing but praise for Wilson’s twice-weekly performances.
“What she does elevates, enhances and helps maintain the residents,” said administrator Kelly Everly.
Wilson starts by leading residents through stretches, then coaxes them to sing along to such old favorites as “Put Another Nickel In” and “You Are My Sunshine.” She then plays a variety of CDs, including New Age, classical and rock albums–even the alternative rock band Primus.
Wilson works the crowd like a professional, making eye contact with the residents as she sings, struts and banters. Most of the residents, including the Alzheimer’s patients, appear alert, happy and bright-eyed.
Administrators agree the show is more than entertaining–it’s therapeutic.
“It stimulates them,” said activity director Cindy Baum. “Whether they’re alert or confused, they just seem to totally change.”
William Davis, director of CSU’s undergraduate music-therapy program, yearns for the day when music therapy becomes a mainstream medical practice.
“We know it works,” he said. “Skillful therapists can do incredible things.”
An increasing body of research shows music therapy is effective in treating a number of ailments. Studies have shown it improves coordination of stroke and Parkinson’s disease patients, enables women to forgo anesthesia during labor and reduces patients’ presurgical jitters as well as the post-surgical need for painkilling drugs.
Anecdotally, it has been shown to be effective for such conditions as acute pain, allergies, arthritis, headaches, heart disease, hypertension and even writer’s block.
CSU researchers recently conducted a study of 10 stroke and Parkinson’s patients who had difficulty walking. After listening to rhythmic pulses for 30 minutes a day, the patients’ cadence, stride and foot placement were markedly better than those of patients who had not received music therapy.
Michael Thaut, director of CSU’s graduate-level music-therapy program, believes the pulses helped reprogram the patients’ damaged brains.
Since ancient times, healers have known that sound is powerful stuff. Shamans of all cultures have used chanting, drumming and other sounds to help heal the sick.
Only in recent decades, however, have researchers discovered the power of music. It’s the first outside sensation that registers with a developing fetus and the last that registers with a dying patient.
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Throughout life, sound has the ability to positively and negatively affect our physical and emotional well-being. It even affects the bodily functions that we think are beyond our control, including heart rate, blood pressure, sex drive and the release of the body’s natural painkilling chemicals.
Still, Davis admits that more research is needed to convince skeptical doctors that music therapy is valid.