The Hills Are Alive
Keep The Heart Blessed With The Sound Of Music
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Key Assertions That Help To Summarize This Article:
Keep the heart blessed with the sound of music. Sounds can be soothing and relaxing, cleansing and releasing, or regenerative.
Sounds can be soothing and relaxing, cleansing and releasing, or regenerative.
Music is a wonderful form of meditation because it keeps both the performer and the listener fully alert to the moment.
Vis medicatriz naturae--the healing power of nature --includes what music and toning -- two aspects of nature --can offer in the way of fostering personal happiness and planetary health.
The known positive effects music can have on your body include: repairing brain damage, kicking addictions, boosting the immune system, preventing seizures, returning lost memories, increasing spatial reasoning, and reducing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Now, after a period wherein our species grew to become, collectively, like a maladjusted adolescent, a new beginning is on the horizon.
When sounds are appreciated they are music. Whether coming from a live band, a recording, a bird in the hills, or a person, sounds that are appreciated have to be listened to and not just heard. Music is a wonderful form of meditation because it keeps both the performer and the listener fully alert to the moment. Variations in melody and rhythm stimulate the feminine brain where careful listening is processed. Listening comes in stages: 1) the level of meaning, 2) the level of feeling, 3) constant awareness, known as presence, and 4) soundless sound (these stages are described in more detail later in this series of books).
Regardless of which stage is being applied to the listening process, with the right attitude, all sounds are beautiful, good, and true. Judging sounds to be bad interferes with one’s perception and the enjoyment of life.
Elemental Listening
Sounds rouse the imagination. How the sounds foster imagination depends on if and how the listener perceives the elements of the music. These elements include Ether (which is space), air, fire, water, and earth. Each will be described subsequently.
Listening for the elements is a gut level primitive form of listening that requires “looking through the reality around a music to the elements that give rise to that reality” (Beaulieu, 1987, p. 16). We will be practicing and working with elemental listening later, a process that will include 1) hearing the sounds, 2) using your imagination with the sounds, 3) applying music to the realities of life, and 4) the silence that precedes and succeeds every sound plus offers untold guidance to the perceiver.
Like extracting medicine from a flower, elemental listening to music and toning is “vis medicatriz naturae.” The healing power of nature does not just stem from nectars and minerals. Vis medicatriz naturae--the healing power of nature --includes what music and toning -- two aspects of nature --can offer in the way of fostering personal happiness and planetary health.
Pythagoras’s discovery of the hidden musical blueprint for the formation of physical reality and modern theories of quantum physics were our species’ early warnings that the consumptive, un-thinking party of the Twentieth Century was about to end. Despite the warnings, our species still clings to its childish ways.
Now, after a period wherein our species grew to become, collectively, like a maladjusted adolescent, a new beginning is on the horizon. This dawning comes from our greater knowledge and acceptance of the kinds of solutions presented in this book. What is presented here has the potential to bring us out of our delusions of separation, beyond the notion of being mere united earthly brethren, to the responsibility of being co-creators of the future. We just have to learn to sing a different tune.
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HumaNatureConnect Activity
Being Affected By Music
For this activity, listen to the sounds of nature as if they are a musical composition. Along with this natural symphony, sing, whistle, or hum a made up tune or a familiar tune that you find pleasing. Keep the music going. When you return home, get out some music and prepare to receive any of the known positive affects music can have on your body:
Repair Brain Damage. Talk again after a stroke.
“Melodic intonation therapy, or singing until you can talk, takes advantage of the fact that language functions are located in the left brain, but music lives over on the right side of the brain. So when that . . . stroke robs you of your ability to speak, you can train your brain to move those functions to the other side by associating music with language. . . . (Music) gives your brain a massage and fills it with happy chemicals . . .” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Kick an addiction. Provide a distraction from withdrawal symptoms. “Introducing music can increase levels of some chemicals associated with . . . addictions, like dopamine and norepinephrine . . . In addition, certain music lowers things like heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, etc. . . .” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Boost your immune system. Recovery from . . .heart disease, lung ailments and even the common cold. (Music) “reduces stress by reducing cortisol levels, a chemical in your brain that causes you to feel stress in the first place” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Prevent seizures. “(Music) by Mozart played on the piano reduces seizure -causing activity in the brain within five minutes . . .” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Return lost memories. “When you listen to music you know, feelings associated with the song are returned by the hippocampus” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Increase spatial reasoning. “Mozart music, especially piano music, can raise your spatial reasoning the equivalent of nine IQ points” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website)
Reduce Parkinson’s symptoms. “Music can trick your broken unresponsive body into obedience” (Jurado, Cracked.com Website).
Practice making your own music with the sounds of nature. And enjoy recorded music. Notice any affects on your body.
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