Exploring the Power of Psychedelic Music in Guided Healing Sessions
Psychedelic music works beyond a background noise in psychedelic therapy. It works as the healing music tool to alter a patient's experience, emotions, and to gain positive therapeutic results. Using therapeutic music for spiritual healing is dated back from early shamanic ceremonies in Africa and America as well as throughout the history of human cultures. Music has been highly valued in these contexts for its ability to direct the psychedelic healing. However, let’s explore how healing music strategy works to treat mental problems under psychedelic therapy.
Music as a Therapy in Early History
The connection of healing music with psychedelic substances is thought to be nearly as old as the use of these substances. The role of therapeutic music and altered states of consciousness found to be strongly linked with each other. In religious rituals and events people believed that music played a significant role to be closer to God. Shamanic traditional rituals use psychedelic music to gain spiritual realm. More contemporary settings, like raves, where crowds "trip out" from both the mind-altering drugs they take and the techno music they are surrounded by, have considered music to be extremely important when taking psychedelics.
The Science Behind Therapeutic Music in Psychedelic Therapy
Using music in psychedelic treatment accelerates the healing process. As per the functional MRI research, psychedelic music synchronizes brain activity, especially in the areas connected to emotion, memory, and decisions-making parts of the brain. Neuroimaging research shows that healing music practice in psychedelic treatment, affects the brain's default mode network (DMN), which is responsible for self-referential thought and the "ego." As a result, the DMN calms down under psychedelic substances, leading to ego dissolution, a condition in which boundaries between people blur and a strong sensation of connection is frequently the outcome. Healing music amplifies this impact by fostering emotional guidance and a sensation of flow.
Role of Music in Contemporary Psychedelic Sessions
It is generally accepted that music plays a significant role in the psychedelic experience, and that carefully selected music promotes long-term beneficial effects on mental health. Among other advantages, music has been linked to feelings of safety, mental imagery, and therapeutically beneficial emotions. It has been extensively demonstrated that therapeutic music supervised by a qualified music therapist, promotes favourable clinical outcomes.
The surrounding area and the theme of the room where the sessions will be held plays an essential role in long-term mental healing. Creating a supportive environment is vital for psychedelic therapy sessions. The main aim of the therapeutic setting while planning for sessions is to create a living room-like setting. This involves having comfortable sofas, rugs on the floor, posters on the walls, and soft ambient lighting. Using soft music while the patient wears eye masks.
Using Music to Navigate Changing States
Deeply altering consciousness, psychedelics dissolve the ego and allow for intense psychological and emotional experiences. Patients can better navigate these different states with the organised anchor that music provides. Healing music that is thoughtfully promotes the release of emotions. Using music in a healing course supports self-reflection and assists patients in processing challenging memories or ideas. Music offers consolation and stability in times of stress.
2. Improving Emotional Intelligence
The limbic system, the area of the brain in charge of emotions and memory, is directly impacted by music. Music can elicit strong emotional reactions during a psychedelic experience, when the brain is in a highly neuroplastic and open state. This enables people to deeply process trauma, loss, or repressed emotions.
3. Music for Visual Imagery Hallucination
Visual imagery can be defined as altered perception in the visual field, ranging from little adjustments to colour brightness or edge sharpness to experiencing complete hallucinations of places where people are not actually there. Such imagery has been observed after psychedelic use, with increased dosage frequently resulting in more intense and vivid visuals. Additionally, hallucinations and a loss of awareness of reality have been linked to dose increases. The capacity of music to influence the dynamics and perception of such visual imagery during a psychedelic experience is known as audio-visual synaesthesia.
4. Improving Therapeutic Results
Healing music tools can work by using different musical elements—tempo, harmony, and rhythm—can influence the arc of a psychedelic adventure. Many therapists employ meticulously crafted playlists with a predetermined flow:
Starting: Calm, gentle music to reduce tension and establish goals.
Peak: Deep investigation is facilitated by expansive, emotional, and frequently classical or ambient music.
Integration: Music that is familiar, rhythmic, and grounding to assist patients in regaining stability.
Research indicates that some musical genres including ambient, orchestral, and indigenous or ceremonial sounds are associated with improved therapeutic results.
5. Supporting Mystical Experience
One of the six dimensions of mystical experiences, transcendence, is linked to a greater production of happy feelings when listening to music when under the influence of psychedelics. Qualitative research has advanced our knowledge of the role that healing music plays in promoting the mystical experiences. A mystical experience while listening to music while under the influence of psilocybin has been linked to lasting reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms in those diagnosed with life-threatening cancer, as well as to long-term changes in personality, specifically openness, in a healthy population.
Summary
The role of healing music in psychedelic therapy is believed to enhance mental health. It has also been suggested that psychedelic music plays a vital role to achieve positive results. It is so widely accepted that music shapes the psychedelic experience that systematic guidelines have been created to help physicians choose the right musical stimuli. Psychedelic facilitator with a sound therapy certification knows how music works to treat several mental issues under the dosage of psychedelic substances.
