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The Effects of Music on the Body, Mind and Spirit
Sylvia Hackathorn
Professional/Academic Paper

May 13, 2015

Copyright © 2015 Sylvia Hackathorn
All Rights Reserved

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my beloved teachers, mentors, classmates, advisor and reader, with hopes that this paper may
prove informative in your own work.

And, to Inanna with love, thank you for everything.

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Pythagoras of Samos was born in 570 BCE. He was a scientist, astronomer, musician, mathe-
matician, philosopher, teacher and healer. In the course of his studies he proposed that the order
of the universe can be explained in mathematical terms, and that music is composed of those
same mathematical formulas. He articulated this profound theory, which has been termed ‘The
Harmony of the Spheres’ by Plato and other subsequent philosophers. Later philosophers and
scientists, some who had been his followers, expanded on his research.
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According to Iamblichus,
one of his biographers, “Pythagoras devised melodies to heal the soul by soothing its passions
and cleansing it of negative conditions such as sorrow, rage, pity and anger”. For his followers
he created music on the lyre to encourage certain moods and to cure maladies. He played for
them specific types of music in the morning, mid-day and evening. There is a story Iamblichus
tells, which appears throughout scholarship on Pythagorus, of him curing the rage of a young
man determined to burn the house of his lover in a jealous fit. He changed the mode of the music
being played, presumably by street musicians, from the phrygian to the hypodorian mode and
slowed the rhythm to a
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spondaic beat. The story tells of the young man calming down and going
home without performing any act of violence.
This preamble barely touches on the Pythagorean and Ancient Greek ideas of the quali-
ties of particular musical modes and their potential uses in healing of the mind and body. I only
want to use Pythagoras and his followers as a starting place, and to point out that the use of mu-
sic as medicine in some form goes very far back in the evolution of Western traditions. I also
would like to connect it to the work of music-thanatology.

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In contemporary Western culture the practice of medicine is reliant upon the notion of
quantifiable and empirical evidence. Mainstream medicine has been far removed for centuries
from any connection with music. It’s been only recently that the medical community has begun
to consider again, let alone integrate, the effects of music on patients. If we were to have a pa-
tient today similar to the young man in Pythagoras’ example, and wanted to use music to address
his agitation and anger, how would we proceed? And how would we quantify that?
There are recent studies that are providing us with some very pertinent information. It is
apparent that Pythagoras, in treating this angry, agitated young man specifically addressed
rhythm/meter and mode/intervallic relationships as part of his “prescriptive thinking”; the phrygi-
an mode is replaced by the hypodorian in his “prescription”. The spondaic rhythm consisting of
two long notes replaces what we can assume was a faster, more complex rhythm. Tempo was
most likely factored into Pythagoras’ prescription, but I found no written evidence of that.
In citing the following example, I am equating increased heart rate and heightened blood
pressure with agitation.
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Heart, a British Medical Journal, published a study in 2006 showing that
listening to fast music increases blood pressure, whereas listening to slower music has the oppo-
site effect. And, the study found that music with faster tempi and simple rhythmic structures sig-
nificantly increased respiration, ventilation, blood pressure and heart rate. The effects appeared
to be dependent on the tempo of the music rather than on the style. It is significant, especially
considering the use of silence in music-thanatology work, that the researchers played a program
of six pieces of music with varied tempi, one after the other, without pause for part of the study,
and then played those same pieces with pauses between them. They found that those

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two minute pauses were associated with the lowest blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration per
minute.
We as music-thanatologists mostly rely on our observational skills to measure the effects
of the music we deliver on the bodies and minds of those we are in vigil with. I have been in vig-
ils with patients who are noticeably agitated at first and I have observed them transition into a
deep sleep within minutes. I can take the pulse at the beginning and end of vigils and note a
slowing of the pulse of patients who begin the vigil agitated and end it no longer so. One reason
for that change could very well be that the tempi of the pieces played in vigil were slow. The
study noted above would corroborate that. Tempo, along with many other factors during the vig-
il, may be responsible for these changes.
Respiration is a factor that we will consider when making our prescriptive choices in vig-
il with patients. We often try to match the patient’s respiration with the idea of entraining the
rhythm of the music to their breathing as a way to offer them the comfort and support of having
someone with them. Once we have established this entrainment we may adjust the tempo and
therefore have the patient’s respirations entrain to the music. Sondra D. Phillips, a woman with
her Master’s Degree in Music did her thesis on
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The Effect Of Music Entrainment On Respira-
tion Of Patients On Mechanical Ventilation In The Intensive Care Unit. The purpose of this
study was to examine the effect of music entrainment on the respiration rates of patients receiv-
ing mechanical ventilation in the Intensive Care Unit. The experimental group received one ses-
sion of live music during the spontaneous breathing trial, which was performed every morning
during the process of weaning from the ventilator. Data were collected on the measures of rapid
shallow breathing index, respiration rate, heart rate, and oxygen saturation rate. The researcher
ascertained the patient’s preferred music in a family interview and used that to fashion her musi-

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cal intervention. Based on baseline readings, she matched the musical tempo to the patient’s be-
ginning respiration rate. The patient then listened for twenty-five minutes to four different songs,
which either gradually increased or decreased in tempo. Based on beginning respiration, the re-
searcher set the music tempo and began to play and sing, accenting the first beat of every meas-
ure with the voice and guitar in an attempt to entrain a four beat inhale and four beat exhale res-
piratory pattern in the subject. Results of a
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Two-Way ANOVA indicated a significant decrease
in the rapid shallow breathing index readings of the medical group who received the music.
Since the brain is the control center for our bodily functions such as respiration and
heart beat, this is where music will first make its impression. Neuroscientists have been able to
make impressive strides in dealing with brain injury since the introduction of the new technolo-
gies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron-emission tomography, elec-
troencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (MEG). In an article in the journal
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Cerebrum, Michael Thaut, Ph.D., and Gerald McIntosh, M.D discuss how the research done so
far points out two important things to them:
1: The brain areas activated by music also process other functions.
2: Music learning changes the brain.
They speak of studying the “shared mechanisms between musical and non-musical functions in
motor control” The part of the brain that processes our motor skills such as timing and rhythm is
the part of the brain that processes the music we hear or play. We time our movements and re-
sponses in anticipation to a rhythm we hear or count. The researchers hypothesized that by using
musical rhythmic cues as timing signals, patients would synchronize their movements with the
cues. The results were instantaneous and stunning. Patients recovering from strokes and patients

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with Parkinson’s disease made swift progress in walking skills as well as the more complex
movement controls like recovering neuromuscular activation and limb coordination.
Entrainment, then, can create quantifiable results on our bodies by way of our brains.
Measurements done of the various frequencies of our brain’s pulsations and oscillations have
determined that our beta brain waves resonate from 14 – 27 hertz (Hz), or cycles per second.
Alpha waves have frequencies between 8 and 13. Theta waves are sound waves between four
and seven Hz. It is worth noting that the electromagnetic field of the earth was measured by the
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Schumann Effect/Resonance to have a frequency of 7.83 (within the alpha wave frequencies).
These are all frequencies that are below the range of human hearing (the human range is com-
monly given as 20 to 20,000 Hz). We cannot hear them as sound, but we can feel them as rhyth-
mic vibration.
The discovery of beat frequencies, or binaural rhythm has made it possible to utilize
those sounds we cannot hear but can feel. Binaural beats were discovered in the 19th century by
German researcher Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. These are tones or vibrations that the brain process-
es through different neural pathways than hearing would process them. Binaural beats are pro-
duced when two tones at slightly different frequencies are heard separately. The brain reacts to
the frequency that is the difference between these two tones, what would be a phantom or third
tone. In 1973 Gerald Oster, a researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City published a
paper in Scientific American in which he proposed that binaural beats could be a powerful tool
for neurological and cognitive research.
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“Oster hooked subjects up to EEG machines while they
heard binaural beats through headphones. Once the brain waves locked on the pulse, Oster
changed the pulse and the brain waves changed — entrainment.”

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According to Jonathan S. Goldman in his article
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Sonic Entrainment our bodies entrain
within ourselves, and can be influenced as well by outside sound. Muscle cells in the heart, when
they move closer together start pulsing together in a perfectly synchronized manner. “As the
functions of the human body can entrain to each other, it is possible to use external rhythms to
affect the internal mechanism of heart rate, respiration and brain wave activity.”
The Oxford Dictionary definition of the verb
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entrain in biology is “(Of a rhythm or
something which varies rhythmically) cause (another) gradually to fall into synchronism with it.”
It is a term used in physics and chemistry as well. In his article Goldman expands on that defini-
tion by writing “With entrainment you are changing the natural oscillatory patterns of one object
and replacing them with the different oscillatory patterns of another object. You are actively
changing the vibrations (the frequency or rhythm) of one object to another rate.” This definitely
refers back to the Thaut and McIntosh study. The Dutch scientist Christian Huygens introduced
the physics of entrainment in the 17th century when he observed that two pendulum clocks (of
which he was the inventor) whose pendulums were swinging at different rates would synchro-
nize to one another within a short period of time just by being in proximity with one another.
The other clear factor in our original Pythagorean anecdote was mode. The story claims
that Pythagoras changed the mode being played from the phrygian to the hypodorian mode.
Much later, in the 1500’s, in his
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Musica Practica, Ramis de Pareja laid out the correspondences
that the Pythagoreans and other ancient Greeks made between the musical modes and the humors
of the four basic universal elements as they apply to human physiology and psychology. The do-
rian and hypodorian modes correspond to the element water and effect the phlegmatic humor,
phrygian and hypophrygian correspond to the element fire and influence the choleric humor, lyd-
ian and hypolydian correspond to the element air and effect the sanguine humor, and mixolydian

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and hypomixolydian correspond to the element earth and govern the melancholic humor.
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Ru-
dolf Steiner, we have learned in our studies, makes correspondences between these humors and
mankind’s four-fold body. In his anthroposophical view water is connected to our etheric body,
fire to our will/ego, air to our astral body and earth to our physical body. Therefore, Pythagoras
believed that the fiery-ness of the phrygian mode was contributing to the agitation of the young
man. To switch to the hypodorian mode presumably brought forth elements of water to counter-
act the fire. In fact, when Iamblichus referred to there having been specific music played for the
followers of Pythagoras in morning and evening, it was stated that the morning music was in the
dorian mode and the evening music in the hypodorian to prepare them accordingly to greet the
day with a certain energy and, in contrast, to be able to unwind for a good night’s sleep.
When we as music-thanatologists do our thematic material analyses, we parse the modes
so as to contemplate their individual characteristics. The intervallic relationships are of consider-
able importance, as we imagine and observe differing reactions to a whole step or a half step in-
terval (as well as a step-and-a-half interval). We have our personal and phenomenological expe-
riences with the modes.
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The Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research published a
study in 2010 in which participants were exposed to the Greek modes and asked to associate par-
ticular emotional responses to them. Using the four emotional responses of happiness, sadness,
serenity and fear/anger, the participants responded to melodies in the hypolydian (our Western
major scale), hypodorian (our Western natural minor scale), dorian, phrygian, lydian and
mixolydian modes. Responses were consistent in terms of happiness being associated with ma-
jor-sounding modes such as the mixolydian and hypodlydian, and sadness with the minor sound-
ing modes of dorian, phrygian and hypodorian. However, tempo increases from 72 to 108 to 184
beats per minute manipulated the emotional responses. At 72 beats per minute (andante) re-

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sponses recorded were serenity for major tonalities, sadness for minor. At 108 beats per minute
(moderato) major tonalities were happiness and minor tonalities serenity. At 184 beats per
minute (presto) all of the modes produced happiness with the exception of the phrygian. The re-
searchers showed much evidence to support intervallic qualities as having differing emotional
effects on participants and that tempo changes alters those responses. The study also very much
reinforced our more common Western perceptions of slow tempi denoting sad music and fast
denoting happy music.

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Kay Gardner (1941-2002) was a composer, author and researcher who founded the field of
sound therapy/healing. She held numerous workshops in which participants gave their responses
to individual intervals. Kay Gardner says that the unison creates a feeling of sameness, rooted-
ness and unity. For the minor 2nd the overall feeling was one of tension, unease, expectancy. The
major 2nd created lightness, opening and mild dissonance. The minor 3rd was dissonant and up-
lifting. The major 3rd brought forth emotions like hope and sweetness; the perfect 4th serenity,
lightness, openness; the tritone created feelings of suspense, strangeness. The perfect 5th induced
feelings of completeness, comfort and creativity. The minor 6th evoked poignancy. The major
6th brought forth feelings of upliftment, peace and a floating sensation. The minor 7th created a
feeling of suspense, movement and expectancy. The major 7th was felt as discord and strange-
ness. Rudolph Steiner associates this interval with the Higher Self. The octave evoked over-
whelming feelings of togetherness, sameness. Gardner used an oscilloscope to measure the sound
waves. The oscilloscope created patterns based on the musical intervals as sung together. It’s in-
teresting that the octave created the shape of the infinity symbol. The sound therapist
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Fabien
Mamon has done research in using intervals for their differing effects on the body. His findings
correlate with those of Kay Gardner. The unison brings immobility, rest and old memories to the

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forefront. The interval of the second creates a tension. “It is difficult to hold this interval for a
long time. This interval brings tension between two polarities, creating movement. This disso-
nance will be even greater with a minor second interval. The interval of the third touches the
emotions. It can produce feelings of lightness, strength and joy. The minor third touches the
heavier emotions such as sadness or heartache. The fourth interval gives a strange impression
that is like awakening after a dream. When the fourth is augmented, the left and right sides of the
brain are stimulated. This extreme tension is maintained until resolution in the fifth interval. The
fifth interval expands in all directions and provokes the widest movement of energy in space”.
Fabien Maman says that “the sixth interval is the sweetest interval – listening to the sixth interval
is like receiving the quintessence of the fragrance of an opening flower. This interval is generally
used in children’s lullabies. The sixth interval seems to carry no weight, no tension, no stimula-
tion and no emotional heaviness. The sixth interval creates a feeling of total opening, of offering
yourself to the universe, contrary to the third interval, which is contained. The seventh interval
creates extreme tension, but it is not a paralyzing tension like the second interval. It is a healthy
tension that provokes a growth in consciousness. The seventh musical interval represents the ul-
timate dissonance before resolution into the stillness of the octave. It has a powerful purpose in
physical, musical and spiritual evolution”. In his experiments Maman found that it was generally
the seventh interval that can destroy cancer cells. “As the notes of the scale was played to the
cancer cells in test tubes they began to break up when the notes A# and B were played. The ef-
fect was particularly strong when metal instruments were used”. He says that this reveals the

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power of the seventh interval to affect change at the cellular level. In his work with scien-
tist/researcher Helene Grimal they were able to photograph cancer cells being destroyed when
the interval of a minor 7th was played.
Rudolf Steiner was concerned with the effects of music on or correlations to our spiritual
selves. His interpretations of the various intervals are in line with how they advance us on our
spiritual paths. For instance he states that
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“the third guides us to our inner being.” I believe he
was also stating that the third makes us aware of our earthliness, corporeality. With the experi-
ence of the fourth, he says, “man moves about, as it were, in the divine world; he stands precisely
at the border of his humanness, retaining it, yet viewing it from the other side, while the fifth lifts
him out of himself into the realm of the divine”. His lectures from as late as 1923 state that we
have not truly experienced the fifth as it used to be. In civilizations past the fifth would take the
soul into the realm of the divine. There would be no awareness of the corporeal body. Upwards
to the octave, he claims that “in the future the feeling for the octave will be something complete-
ly different and will one day be able to deepen the musical experience tremendously. Every time
the octave appears in a musical composition, man will have a feeling that I can only describe
with the words, “I have found my ‘I’ anew; I am uplifted in my humanity by the feeling for the
octave. The particular words I use here are not important; what is important is the feeling that is
evoked.”
I have a strong belief that the work we do as music-thanatologists is profound far beyond my
abilities to comprehend. To touch on the possibilities has been my intention in this paper.

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I have believed in the power of music since I was quite young, but in a vague, inexplicable way.
I am content with that, but I also enjoy finding some concrete ways in which that power can be
explained.
I would like to end with a quote from Joa Bolendas, the channel for the visionlieder that we
use in our work. She is having a vision and speaking with the man who helped transcribed the
visionlieder for her, Franz Eibner. He has died, and in one of her visions of him he says to her:
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“Music lives, immanent in vibrations. It can be understood scientifically. It is life, a creation in
the universe, including the earth. It releases moments of energy. Its vibrations belong to the cre-
ating of the human being. Humans need music; it moves soul and spirit — the nervous system is
animated.”

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END NOTES

1
Sacred Geometries & Their Scientific Meaning, Article 14, Why Ancient Greek Modes are Sa-
cred by Stephen M. Phillips.

2
The Century Library of Music, 37.

3
Heart, a British Medical Journal, 2006; 92:445-452 doi:10.1136/hrt.2005.064600.

4
Phillips, Sondra D., “The Effect Of Music Entrainment On Respiration Of Patients On Mechan-
ical Ventilation In The Intensive Care Unit” (2007). Electronic Theses, Treatises and Disserta-
tions. Paper 934. http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/934.

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In statistics, the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is an extension of the one-way ANO-
VA that examines the influence of two different categorical independent variables on one con-
tinuous dependent variable. The two-way ANOVA not only aims at assessing the main effect of
each independent variable but also if there is any interaction between them. Two-way analysis of
variance – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2010/How_Music_Helps_to_Heal_the_Injured_Brain__Therapeutic_
Use_Crescendos_Thanks_to_Advances_in_Brain_Science/h.

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http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/q768.html.

8
Mannes, Elena. (2011) The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of
Song. New York, NY: Walker Publishing Company, Inc. 201

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9
Music: physician for times to come: an anthology, 2nd Edition. Quest Books/Theosophical Pub.
House, 2000.

10
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/entrain.

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Ramis de Pareja, 1482. Musica Practica. Bologna.

12
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher and educational reformer (1861–1925) from
encyclopedia.com.

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http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-879X2011000200010&script=sci_arttext.

14
Heather, Simon, The Healing Power of Music.

15
Mamon, Fabien (1997) Tama-Do Press (AKA Tama-Do Academy); 3rd edition

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Steiner, Rudolf, The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone, Lecture V.

17
Bolendas, Joa. (2001) Alive in God’s World: Human Life on Earth and in Heaven. Great Bar-
rington, MA: Lindisfarne Books. 73-83

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolendas, Joa. (2001) Alive in God’s World: Human Life on Earth and in Heaven. Great Bar-
rington, MA: Lindisfarne Books.

Byrne, David. (2012) How Music Works. San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s.

Campbell, Don. (1991) Music: Physician for Times to Come: an Anthology. Wheaton, IL: Quest
Books: The Theosophical Publishing House.

Ferguson, Kitty. (2008) The Music of Pythagoras: How an Ancient Brotherhood Cracked the
Code of the Universe and Lit the Path from Antiquity to Outer Space. New York, NY: Walker
Publishing Company, Inc.

Heather, Simon. The Healing Power of Music (2008)

Levitin, Daniel J. (2006) This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New
York, NY: Plume.

Mamon, Fabien (1997) Tama-Do Press (AKA Tama-Do Academy); 3rd edition.

Mannes, Elena. (2011) The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song.
New York, NY: Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

Wong, Dr. Lisa. (2012) Scales to Scalpels: Doctors Who Practice the Healing Arts of Music and
Medicine. New York, NY: Pegasus Books LLC.

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