Music Therapy for Seniors' Wellbeing

I've been reading quite a bit about music and memory, about music programs for seniors living in retirement residences and care homes, and music programs designed especially for seniors dealing with dementia and hearing loss. 

I'm hoping to join a couple friends providing a music therapy program in local retirement residences and care homes. It's such a great program! Participants wear wireless headphones and listen together to music from their youth, transmitted with a range of frequencies that compensates for hearing loss. It's a gentle and effective way to ignite feelings, reminisce, create bonds through shared experience, and boost self-esteem. 

I am certain that music has therapeutic powers. Music's power is wonderful, awe-inspiring, and mysterious. I have felt music effect my well-being and I've seen its effects on others. It's been my experience, and it's backed up by science. I'm learning that music's therapeutic powers are being proven by research.

It's remarkable how our brains process music. The medical and scientific communities are still learning about how it works and how it works differently for different people, but it works wonderfully and mysteriously. Google "music and the brain" and you'll see so many interesting articles from universities and scientific journals. Our brains and our whole bodies are fascinating; we humans are marvelous, miraculous beings. 

Music moves us. Music can evoke emotions, right, like the soundtracks in movies making us cry, or feel euphoric, or frightened. Music can make us want to dance or move in certain ways, clap or sway, for example. We can be transported back to a different time and place when we hear songs from our youth, remembering people and places, and even the feel of clothing, and smell of cologne, or campfire smoke. Music has been shown to activate some of the broadest and most diverse networks of the brain. Even if you didn't study music, myriad brain pathways and networks are activated when you listen to music. If you did study music and played an instrument or sang in a choir, you've got lots of lights going on, sparks flying all over your brain, just from listening to music. Moving to music and making music add even more as more motor neurons are stimulated.

You might have come across a story of a person with dementia who could play piano pieces perfectly but could not remember much else. Or, an elderly person who had been unresponsive would suddenly sing along to a beloved old song. Dr. Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist, professor, and author, famously stated:

"The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music (that shaped their past), and people can regain a sense of identity." 

The research is simply supporting what I feel very strongly, that singing and dancing are important activities that all of us should be encouraged to do. They are the easiest way, the universal, basic, human way to make music. None of us should be discouraged from singing or dancing because our voices or bodies don't measure up to a particular standard. Everyone should have opportunities to sing and dance, especially seniors. 

Through my work with the York Region Community Choir and at my church, I've figured out that I feel the happiest and most capable and purposeful when I'm getting people to sing, and singing and dancing with people, young and old. This might be the purpose for me. I hope to provide more opportunites for singing and moving to music to seniors living in retirement residences and care homes in my neighbourhood in this next stage of my life.

Music Therapy Program