Bolo Music Therapy. What is the healing effect of music?

On April 4, a happiness-sharing concert was held at the piano lounge of Konkuk University Hospital with patients, guardians, and hospital visitors. As the piano performance, guitar, flute, and song filled the lounge, the audience’s expressions were full of happiness and tranquility.

In addition, numerous hospitals across the country, including Seoul National University Hospital, Chonnam National University Hospital, and Eulji University Hospital, regularly hold concerts for patients. It has been a long time since music was used as a treatment for patients with cognitive or speech disorders. What is the effect of Bolo Music Therapy, which touches a person’s body and minds?

What is Bolo Music Therapy?

In the United States, which founded the world’s first music therapy society in 1950, Bolo Music Therapy is currently widely used. The National Association for Music Therapy defines Bolo music therapy as “a process of using music for therapeutic purposes to restore, maintain, and improve mental and physical health.”

Bolo music therapy includes listening to or making music and expressing one’s feelings and physical condition through music. Representative effects include relieving anxiety and stress, improving heart health, and improving autism, and in combination with exercise treatment, it is known to double the effectiveness of physical rehabilitation treatment for patients.

What is the effect of Bolo Music Therapy?

Music is known to be involved in emotional induction, behavioral expression, and desire controlled by the brain’s cerebral limbic system. According to a Harvard study, listening to music affects the mind and body by stimulating the same area as the brain area that responds when taking drugs or feeling certain needs. Alpha waves generated in the brain when listening to music provide stability to the mind and body and help relieve stress. It is also effective in maintaining the balance of emotions by controlling the secretion of the happiness hormone endorphin and the stress hormone cortisol.

Bolo Music Therapy is mainly used in the fields of education, psychological treatment, medical care, and rehabilitation. In education, it is used as a treatment or educational tool and is particularly helpful in treating speech expression disorders. Medically, there are quite a few research results on the therapeutic effect of music. Various studies have already proven that music is effective in controlling blood pressure, relieving stress and brain fatigue, improving cancer treatment effects, improving concentration, performance, and memory, and reducing various pain.

Typical examples used to treat diseases include adaptation to autism and neurodegenerative diseases. Children with autism have difficulty in empathy and emotional expression, but music can enhance interaction effects, and in Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, it can help prevent regression and pathological depression, and expand new neural connections.

How do you treat it?

It is desirable to conduct professional Bolo music therapy with a music therapist. Music therapists can select and play appropriate music according to the patient’s disease or condition. After appreciating it, you can express your feelings in language or music, or the patient can create, compose, and play the treatment more actively. Of course, you can get some of the healing effects of music just by listening to your favorite music in your daily life.

Will there be any side effects?

Like the front and back of a coin, all treatments have side effects. Bolo music therapy can also have side effects if you don’t follow the middle course. First of all, favorite music helps improve health, but listening to music that is not preferred increases blood pressure, heart rate, and mental stress, so refer to it in selecting music.

It is common sense that listening to music loudly with earphones can damage your hearing. According to a university study in the UK, “If you keep listening to loud music with earphones, the protective tissue of nerve transmission cells connected to the brain from the ear is damaged and fatal to the brain,” so you should pay attention to volume control not only for hearing but also for brain nerve protection.

Just as people don’t take medicine 24 hours a day, Bolo music therapy also needs time control. Jung Gun, director of the consulting clinic of Heidak Psychiatry, advises, “If you don’t feel emotional changes or emotions while listening to music, it may be better to take a break from an appreciation for a while.” Also, if there is no emotional change when listening to music, it can be depression or compulsion, so it is better to get an expert diagnosis and help.