Medicinal Music

For some of us, we think that music exists as mere addition to life's entertainments. Little did we know that more than the entertainment that it provides, music also offers delightful mental, physical and emotional benefits.

Physical Benefits
Since last month I had a personal commitment to lose weight by controlling my diet and engaging myself to regular exercise. The first one is so difficult as it requires a great deal of personal discipline and abstinence to the food that I really crave for. The second one is quite easy for me because my pad (inside the school's compound) is surrounded by nice fitness facilities like 400-m running oval, swimming pool, fitness gym, basketball courts, tennis courts and others. However, my stamina is the problem for I easily give up whenever I start to jog or play some sports. Two rounds in the oval is an achievement already.

However, when I started to jog while enjoying music in my mp3 player, my jogging performance has tremendously increased. I was so surprised to have finished five rounds and then seven rounds until I reached ten rounds of uninterrupted jogging. There was no magic in there! No energy drinks or doping drugs involved. I just enjoyed my run while listening to heart-pumping hiphop, RnB, rock and disco music. It really helped a lot.

Mental Benefits
As high school mathematics teacher in a private school in Bangkok, I could not avoid those paper works which are really demanding. They are demanding in the sense that I have to extract the best idea that my brain could have in order to make a good output. As a teacher I have to arrive with the best and most engaging plan possible for my students.

Instrumental and mellow music are of great help to me whenever I am doing all of them. I could easily concentrate and arrive with ideas every time I am mesmerized by Beethoven's powerful piano pieces. I have watched several documentaries before that would support this phenomenon. The explanation was, if my mind would set me correct, these kinds of music produce waves that stimulates our brain. Thus, helping us think better.

Emotional Benefits
For this one, no doubt, everyone has experiences to share. Music makes those lonely hearts happy, the lethargic hearts inspired, and a lot more emotional transformations. Honestly, there were times when I thought of expressing my feelings to someone because of the music I heard. I even captured a picture of two lovers in which the other one is me because of a song I heard. I could not deny that, in one way or another, there were songs that inspired me.

I could still remember, as a kid, how I laughed after I cried because I heard a song that tickled my heart.

So folks, you know what to do whenever you want to change the ever-changing mood. MUSIC is the answer! However, we could not blame everything to music and we could not give all the burdens to music. Our mind is still more powerful that anything else. Still, I would pronounce, it's all in the mind.

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
--Berthold Auerbach