Music’s ability to heal mind & soul
Rebecca Sewell on how playing the violin has helped her recover from trauma, and formed her identity as a woman in a male-dominated world.
“I’ve always felt a special connection with the violin. I feel it gives a voice to my soul that allows me to express the feelings that lie at the depths of my heart.
This ability to convey feeling in such a direct manner to others allows a special connection to take place between myself, as the performer, and the audience, as we’re all able to empathise with those feelings which lie at the heart of what it means to be human.
The etymology of the prefix “psych” comes from “soul / consciousness / mind”. Music is the language of the soul. It is considered the universal language because where words fail, music speaks.
A Harvard University study titled “Universality and Diversity in Human Song” has recently demonstrated that from lullabies to dance music, the commonalities in tonality, rhythm and tempo across musical cultures, mean it is possible for people to understand the psychological purpose behind the music, regardless of cultural background (Mehr et al., 2019).
As the universal language of the soul, music is simply pure feeling, which is why it’s often able to transport us into other states of being so powerfully, particularly through live performance.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been exposed to music from the very beginning of my life. I was inspired to play the violin by my elder brother as I avidly used to watch him practice. Desperate to copy him, my mother made a pretend violin for me out of a little box, a ruler for a fingerboard and a paintbrush for a bow. By the age of one, I was able to pretend to play along to recordings of classical music using the dining room table as my stage. I started violin lessons with the Suzuki method aged 3 and went on to study at the Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music.
I experienced the amazing capacity music has to heal people aged 11 when my grandmother was taken into hospital. She was suffering with insomnia because she was too anxious to go to sleep for fear of dying. As a parting gift to me, she bought me a violin which I then used to play to her in order to help her feel at peace.
It felt wonderful to me to see that as I played she relaxed enough to fall asleep naturally for the first time in days. This was my last memory of my granny and I am so thankful that I was able to use my ability as a musician to bring her peace in her final days with us.
Music was also my grandfather’s main passion in life (closely followed by food!) Therefore, I always performed for him, particularly in his final years when he moved into a care home. I’ll always remember one particularly powerful experience when I performed the Lark Ascending to my grandpa and the man who used to sit next to him. I had never seen this man respond to anyone despite his wife visiting every day. However, when I performed the Lark Ascending that day, something special happened for all of us through the music. My grandpa burst into floods of tears in a way I’d never seen before and so did my brother. As I played, I also noticed tears running down the face of the man who was mute due to illness, and I was overwhelmed by the power the music had to touch everyone’s heart to the point of tears.
Music played an important role in my own recovery from a nervous breakdown resulting from trauma, for which I spent a month in hospital. During this time, I was able to practice my least expensive violin, which proved to be a vital creative outlet to help me focus my mind and express my emotions. In this time of deep distress, music allowed my soul to find it’s voice through the violin to express everything I had no words for. My practice routine also had a very positive effect on other patients and staff as they asked me to perform for them. On occasion, I was able to improvise with a guitarist on the days he came to volunteer which provided wonderful freedom to express musically whilst interacting with another musician. Both patients and staff loved these performances, since the music helped everyone to find peace and pleasure. The performances even inspired patients to create works of art based on the music which was wonderful to see, since creative pursuits are deeply therapeutic in times of deep distress.
Inspired by music’s ability to heal, I have been performing in mental health recovery cafés, care homes and hospitals on dementia wards and for pain management services. It’s been wonderful to connect to people through music, and see music’s ability to hold people’s attention and bring peace to those who are normally distracted and ill at ease. Patients have even asked to be moved out of bed in order to be present in the activity rooms where performances were being held, moved by hearing music emanating from the corridors. It was also wonderful to see clients that find it difficult to move as a result of chronic pain clapping, singing and dancing along to the music my acoustic band provided for the Red Cell Celebration Day at St George’s Hospital.
As a result of this deeply positive feedback, I am in the process of setting up a charity called “Call the Musician” which will be dedicated to bringing live music and musical improvisation workshops to those members of society who are stuck in hospitals, care homes, hospices and mental health hospitals etc. This is in order to make live music accessible to everyone, particularly vulnerable and hurting members of society who will particularly benefit from the creative healing music is able to provide and the voice it gives us to express what lies at the heart of our souls.
It’s been incredibly empowering for me as a woman to find this special voice in a largely male-dominated world. I believe it’s incredibly important for women to use their unique gifts to empower themselves to speak out and make a positive difference in society, thus encouraging other women to do the same.”
Rebecca Sewell is a professionally trained violinist and founder of Call the Musician.
To listen to Rebecca playing Meditation from Thais click the link here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZN6EC7Thbtd-6SEsmL5KQ0RtCfnv_9Kv/view