“We are writing you a new prescription: music”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt seems ridiculous, right? A prescription for \u2018music\u2019 \u2013 surely that\u2019s not going to make us feel better! What if I told you, it could? Now I am not trying to imply that putting on your favourite tunes is going to fix a broken leg, but music does have many \u2018medicinal\u2019 possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music for Pain Management \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music therapy is a form of conditioning now that can be used to treat a variety of issues as mentioned above. In the medical world, music is becoming more prevalent as a treatment for pain – this can be both physical and mental pain. This is possible due to our body’s natural rhythm to produce sound and movement – each person’s rhythm is different and connects to our brainwaves or electrical activity of the brain that follows said rhythm. When listening to a piece of music with a tempo that is similar to our natural tempo, we are more drawn to it and pulled away or distracted from brain activity associated with pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putting this into practice in the medical world, personalised music therapy may now be used as treatment for pain management post operatively, in rehabilitation etc. This would see personalised playlists that match a patient\u2019s natural rhythm or tempo. This could also see devices that can monitor the natural rhythm in real time and adjust the \u2018medicine\u2019 accordingly to cater for fluctuating levels of pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daniel Levitin has two books on the topic if you want to know more: Music as Medicine <\/em>and This is Your Brain on Music.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nMusic for Mental Health – <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The benefits of music on our mental health come in abundance. Whether this be from lowering stress levels, enabling us to feel, learn more about ourselves, act as an instant mood booster \u2013 music is there to help. When we are stressed, our autonomic nervous system is affected. This is a function of the body that controls things like our heart rate and blood pressure \u2013 both naturally elevate when we are stressed. By listening to music that is not related to the stressful situation, it can have a calming effect that in turn lowers our heart rate and blood pressure, lessening the physical and emotional symptoms of stress. Non-lyrical music has also been connected with the ability to help us understand what we are feeling and why as we can transfer what we are feeling into a piece of music that is arguably open to interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music is something that we can all relate to, even those hard of hearing are able to connect with music through vibration. It is its own language, and we are all fluent we just need to find what we truly connect with. Need some inspiration? Check out the Student Green Office playlist over on our Instagram: @cccusustainability<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is your favourite song and why? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks for reading, Maddie \ud83d\ude0a
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Madeline Polston, SGO Projects Officer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the discovery of musical instruments 40,000 years ago, we mortal humans have been captivated by sound. How can a few notes change an ordinary moment in time into an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331329,"featured_media":20138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,66],"tags":[334,366,1454,1506,1822,1942,1954,2014],"class_list":["post-20122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mental-health","category-sustainability-engagement","tag-canterbury-christ-church-university","tag-cccusustainability","tag-mental-health","tag-music","tag-sgo","tag-student-blogger","tag-student-green-office","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Bethany Climpson","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/669\/2025\/05\/1.png","postExcerpt":"Since the discovery of musical instruments 40,000 years ago, we mortal humans have been captivated by sound. How can a few notes change an ordinary moment in time into an […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331329"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20122"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20122\/revisions\/20298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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