Music And Mental Health

As I prepared my set list to perform at a benefit concert for Tunefoolery this past Saturday, I found myself reflecting on the connection between music and mental health. My own two deepest life passions have been healing and music. And my experience is that both are sourced from the same creative well inside. Music and healing both are sourced from the heart, and both nourish and express our deeper, often non-verbal or voiceless parts in life affirming ways.

Being involved in organizations that integrate music and healing, whether it be performing at a benefit, singing with the Boston Minstrels at prisons, homeless shelters or VA hospitals, or singing as a singer-songwriter in mental health settings, assisted living facilities has always left me feeling emotionally and spiritually richer.

I found myself journaling about why music fosters mental health:

Music helps us find each of us find our voice. Voice is the expression of the soul. Voice is a sense of who we are and what we bring to the world. Voice helps us define our sense of self and show up in the world.

Music helps us express what is deeper than words. Much of our core humanity is experienced deeper than words. It is experienced in what we feel emotionally and somatically. It is experienced in felt sense, impulse, a momentary touch or glance. Music is a way to translate the non-verbal, with words and with melody, chords and sound.

Music touches the heart. Our world is not very emotionally safe. We need to defend and protect our hearts to keep safe. Behind our walls of protection, we may be safe at one level, but numb or alone. Music safely finds a way to reach through protective walls or defenses to reach the heart.

Music opens the heart. As the heart is touched by music, it often opens. Tears flow. Joy radiates. Anger may be safely felt. Vulnerability can also be safely felt. In these ways, music gives us the gift of emotional aliveness.

Music helps us feel connected and no alone. The stories expressed in songs are often our stories. Stories of love. Stories of loss. Lessons learned. Relationships with mothers and fathers and daughters and sons and friends and lovers. We recognize our own relationships, experiences and journeys and feel our interconnection.

Music bridges all divides. Music is not just words and notes. It is a vibration. It is energy. Is it emotion. And the notes, words, vibration, and energy reach through walls, across divides, and even beyond differences of culture and language.

Music is love energy in sound. The vibration and energy of music is love. Like Stevie Wonder writing music "in the key of life." Music from the heart reaches the heart. The heart recognizes the energy of love.

Music helps us feel and release what is locked up inside. What is locked up inside us is often at the root of what gets labelled as "mental illness." Anxiety. Depression. Trauma. Fear, pain, sadness, anger, aloneness all get locked inside us. It our spirit is weighted down. We numb. We freeze. We dissociate. If our feelings are locked up, we don't know how to find the key to release them...until music gives us that key.

Music touches the core of our humanity. I can not tell you how deeply I have been touched as I hear the talent and the heart of people who share their voice in song in prisons, in homeless shelters, in hospitals. People who feel lost and invisible command center stage. I have found my tears flowing freely, and shared tears with others also deeply touched.