In Brief: What is Prescriptive Music™?

These three images come from the cymatics laboratory of Hans Jenny, and demonstrate visually that different frequencies create sublime order from what had been random chaos.

With the work of Ernst Chladni (1756-1827) and later Hans Jenny (1904-1972), modern physics has proven conclusively that sound is an organizing and reorganizing force.  The study of wave phenomena demonstrates that sound reorganizes matter.  Music reorganizes the human being.  Highly-skilled musician-clinicians can learn to bring sound and music into the medical setting to stimulate and/or suppress (and thus transform) physiological conditions as well as inner emotional or mental states.  Prescriptive music can be understood as a compound sonic medicine, and is delivered live, at the bedside, on polyphonic instruments, by practitioners certified in music-thanatology by the Chalice of Repose Project.  Using voice and harp, musician-clinicians often but not always work in teams of two, positioning themselves on either side of the dying patient.   The person who is receiving the music may be experiencing either physiological pain or interior suffering or both, and may additionally be morphine-intolerant, or in general, greatly needing non-invasive and non-mechanical, profoundly human responses to increasing vulnerability.  In all cases, the musician-clinician is working with vital signs, measurables, and is able to document in an evidence-based medicine the physiology of pain relief.

Most “vigils” begin with silence, move toward synchronization, and end in or near entrainment.  Without the uses of additional medications, many patients experience marked pain relief as evidenced by:  decreased pulse rate and heart beat; stabilized breathing patterns;  change in body temperature;  deep restorative sleep;  emotional, mental or spiritual release;  profound relaxation and decreased requests for even opioid derivative pharmaceuticals.   There is a parallel to the expanded consciousness that can be experienced in natural childbirth.   The music thus delivered helps people shift consciousness, begin the process of unbinding, and eventually, “let go” of that which binds them to time and body.  Struggle can dissolve through real inner work, and transitus can occur supported by a medicine of peace.

This vigil information continues on What is Music-Thanatology?

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© Therese Schroeder-Sheker 1996.  All rights reserved.