Music & 'Mindfulness' Therapy

I'm sincerely responding. To you....

isnt not mindfulness about listening within ones self...

music is an external stimulant... Not a focus to within...

at least this is my basic understanding, I could certainly be wrong... Have read any mindfulness books? Would enjoy hearing your thoughts back.

I think their (and my) take on it is more simplistic. One is in effect focussing on the 'here and now' when immersed listening in a concentrated way. Worries are banished and that learning to positively engage with that mindset (without music sometimes too) is good for ones mental wellbeing.

I choose to believe that anyway.

G

Mindfullness is a modern and rather trendy buzzword but strictly speaking is about attention to inner thoughts, sensations and feelings often through a process of meditation or at least physical (and mental) self-awareness. Nowadays it is often extended to include awareness of actions and responses to exterior stimuli too.

Music undeniably is 'therapeutic' for many in my view; not least because we use it to manipulate mood. Serious concentration on music may be relaxing as well as interesting but I don't think falls under a definition of mindfullness which is essentially an internal process. Being affected by the emotional state of a performer is more a process of transference.

Bruce

Absolutely agree Graeme.

We live in a mental construction of time. Intent listening, getting lost in the music is a superb way of focussing the conciousness on the present moment... because it doesn't require effort, unlike meditation. The better the reproduction of timing, the better the experience.

I've had many intent listening moments where time slows down, very similar to the experience when you're in an accident, where the scene unfolds in slow motion. I've read that during those moments the brain is actually *sampling* the scene more rapidly...

That music can reproduce this effect is just another of its beautiful mysteries.

Jan 

A former colleague of mine insisted that my listening sessions were basically meditation. This was a guy who had traveled extensively in the Far East and was also very into meditation. He said so when I described that when I listen to music I'm not really awake nor am I asleep. It's just music and nothing else. Needless to say it's incredibly relaxing and I suppose most of us share the same experience?

I think I'd find it impossible to consciously 'meditate'. 

Many years ago my wife and I were cajoled into going to yoga. A room filled with prostrate strangers and a 'Yogi' at the far end imploring us to imagine we were a river.

I spent the time desperately suppressing the urge to start s.n.i.ggering. It was painful.

G

I laugh a lot as it happens Char. That just wasn't the time or place.

G