Music as Medicine

In this blog, I offer you an idea for working with your emotions and movement as a form of self care.

This practice isn't limited to what many people perceive as "bad" emotions (sadness, anger, grief). It's an amazing way to meet yourself in any and all of your moods to process them or enhance them. Whatever you and your body need that day, or that moment. All are valid. All are worth feeling. They offer perspective and room for change.

Why would we do this?

Sometimes we have emotions "stuck" in us that are creating tension, but they aren't super accessible. When we bring a complimenting sensory experience into our body, while keeping an open mind, we can tap into that emotion and "free" it.

I use quotes because those are both very basic ways of explaining a deep and complex process in our bodies, that is also weirdly simple at times. It's one of those interesting human paradoxes.

How do we do this?

You find songs that elicit a wide variety of responses in your body. To do this, you would ask yourself what song makes you feel (anger)? Or What song reminds you of (grief)?

For many, this practice is actually a lot simpler and more intuitive than you think it would be. Many of us have been using music to enhance our moods for years, we just didn't know that's what we were doing.

How you use these songs once you've created your list is up to you.

Here are some ideas that I've seen, practiced, or heard of. I invite you to figure out a method that works best for you.

Move Through It

When you have space and time ~ or when you need to take the space and time ~ to decompress, you pick the song that best matches the emotion you're feeling.

Hit play and move your body however feels appropriate for the song. Sometimes this is bouncing around or dancing, while other times it a slow dance or just swaying. It depends on the song and where you're at that day.

Listen to it as many times as you need to process what you can.

Create playlists

You could create whole playlists of music that elicit a specific feeling or emotion. Some ideas are categories such as: Feel Good Music, Angry Music, Pick-Me-Up Music, Sad Music, etc.

When you find yourself in a particular mood, you play that list in the background while you go about your day.

Insight tip: Being mindful of when the music is helpful for processing and when it could be keeping you in a mood for longer than is healthful in that moment is a great way to practice self awareness.

Where did I originally hear about this?

The practice that I originally learned for moving emotions through the body was "swamping". One form of swamping is to use music to support the process, which is especially when you don't have access to a trusted person. A brief explanation of how she did this is to listen to one song that was more angry, then you switched to a sad song, and then you wrapped up with a comforting song. Sometimes you'd switch up the order. But the goal was to help move you through some of the "less desirable" emotions and into a more flow state. The goal was to honor each aspect of your humanness.

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P.S. Each week I offer a song that seems to resonate with this thing called life and/or the healing journey to my email subscribers and Facebook followers.