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Health & Fitness

11/8/13—Reconsidering My Relationship to Music

Today's Draw: Have, Guitar, Owl and Ring from Tierney's Charms. What is your relationship to music? What kind of music do you find most healing? How often do you have music playing in the background of your life?

Today's draw was actually the second draw I made today. The first was warning us not to drink too much champagne this holiday season, lest we end up pregnant. Calculating a quick profile of my readership and their likelihood to a) get too drunk on champagne or b) have the ability to get pregnant anymore, I decided to choose again. However I share this for all the younger females who may enjoy the bubbly...just in case. 

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So the way I'm reading these four is to have a commitment to my night music. And to me that's the binaural beats I sometimes listen to and/or the chakra tuning CDs. 


I don't know if this makes me unusual or not, but I think it might. I almost never listen to music. Not even in my car, though that's where I'm most likely to hear it. But I haven't played music out loud in my house for years. I rarely listen to any music for enjoyment. And 9.5 out of 10 car trips are made in total silence. 

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The only exception to all of this is when I play binaural beats or my Chakra Chants CD, and I do all of that on my iPod just before dropping off to sleep. Binaural beats, if you haven't heard of them, are buzzing, sometimes discordant, sounds you listen to that are supposed to tune your brain to certain vibrations, like sleep, energy, meditation, etc. I listen, not because I have trouble sleeping, because I don't. But because I sleep deeper and better when I listen. I think spirit is telling me I waste too much time napping and should just get a better night's sleep. 


Another use of music in my life is a monthly healing session I go to that uses music to guide my subconscious thoughts. Music is a very powerful guide in those sessions. I did one two days ago and the images it evoked in my mind were extremely profound and insightful. I'm still processing what the images mean and it's like this every month. 


Personally, though, I really like the sound of silence. I had a friend many years ago that never had a moment of silence in her life. She liked to be distracted lest she actually heard herself think. She was, at the time, running from something inside her. We all have ways of doing that. But observing it in her kind of turned me off to background sound. I like to plumb my depths. And, like I said, we all have ways of avoiding ourselves when we want to. I just don't think it's healthy to avoid ourselves all the time. 


But I've been thinking about the healing aspect of music lately. There's this kid on the X Factor whose life became hobbled by Turrets Syndrome and the vocal and physical ticks that come along with it. He said that with all the medications he's been on in his life, you could combine the effect of all of them and it wouldn't be as great as the healing he's gotten from pursuing his singing and listening to music. You see this from time to time on these singing shows...people who rise up out of the limitations of their bodies and shine when they're singing. Stutters don't stutter and tickers don't tick when they're singing. 


It occurred to me that it might be time to reconsider the way I weigh music in my life. On those occasions I do play songs in my car, it brings out joy because I get to sing along and singing was one of my great loves when I was younger. I could also try playing New Age music when I'm working sometimes to see if it helps with stress or even creativity. And I do sleep better when I listen to my binaural beats. I can see how, over the years, I've formed a negative relationship with music because of how distracting it can be. But it really all depends on the music. What's your relationship to music?

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