This Peace of Music

Can Music Make You More Productive? 

It’s difficult to go anywhere today and NOT hear the music. It’s in our homes and on computers, on TV shows and movies, at the restaurant, in the shopping mall, church, and temple, and unless your Amish and plow your fields with mules, music is probably in YOUR workplace. 

Does music at work help you be more creative and productive, or does music make a tedious task bearable? I think most of us would agree that a dumb, repetitive task can become easier when we listen to music. And it’s here that familiar, up-tempo music can get our juices going and help us get the job done. Research reports that substantial economic benefits can result from the use of music on the factory floor. 

Inserting tab A into slot B on the assembly line is more accurately completed by workers who are in a good mood. Studies prove that playing mid-tempo music in a Major key tends to bring workers into their happy place, where they are more productive. 

In my bedside practice, I deliver prescriptive music that first matches the mood of my patient, and then I evolve that music to a Major key where the patient responds with a corresponding positive change of attitude and works with 9 out of 10 patients. 

If you work in an open office, the snips and bits of conversation that you overhear can impair your ability to concentrate far more than that carpet cleaner growling in the next room. We possess the mental bandwidth to process 1.6 conversations, so every time you hear a bit of a colleague’s conversation, your remaining bandwidth for processing another conversation is reduced to .6. That’s what you have available to talk to your customer or colleague on the telephone in your open office floorplan. 

Personal earbuds or headphones can help a worker manage their personal soundscape and be more efficient. Again research shows that employees who use music to manage their mood tend to complete tasks more quickly and efficiently. 

I’ve heard the arguments for open-plan offices supporting collaboration. However, every office I visit as a soundscape designer has such a constant din of ‘blah blah blah’ most everyone wants some quiet to think and problem solve. A good alternative is an acoustically treated open floor plan that keeps the noise down, and small meeting rooms with doors that can support spontaneous, collaborative meetings. 

For creative work, immersive, ambient music and soundscapes can pull us into a sonic world of our design, where we can masque outside noises and conversations. My experience is that when I want to create, I use this type of music – from Gregorian chant to Rainforest ambiance with shifting sonic and musical themes. 

If the music is too busy, it becomes a distraction and draws our attention out of our creative zone. Lyrics trigger the language processing-side of our brain and that can overwhelm the more creative brain centers. 

As I mentioned earlier if the work is redundant, like a workout at the gym, then lyrics and songs can help us sustain the mood and energy to complete the task. 

What about Western Classical Music? The best recommendations are for mid-tempo baroque music. The melodies are perky, often in a major key with constant dynamics and tempo.  Just what you need for balancing your checking account. 

Chillout, down-tempo ambient instrumental music, can help us with many work tasks. The tempo helps us settle into a sustainable, steady heart and breath rate for work. The absence of lyrics doesn’t call our attention and helps us to keep focused, and the music is fairly repetitive. Our brain get’s comfortable, there are enough sonic changes to keep our brain mildly attentive, but we can easily shift to the task at hand. 

Now I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever used music to reinforce your work? What type of music is played in your workplace? How does it make you feel? How noisy is your workplace? Would you prefer some quiet place to work? What about when you work at home, what type of music do you use? 

Please leave a comment here under the episode and share with our community. 

Did you like this article? Then subscribe and share it with your friends. 

If you’d like to have the therapeutic music that I use with patients, please visit JamesSchaller.com.  Check out the online course The Healer’s Visit for complete training of how any caregiver can understand and use therapeutic music. 

Sign up for emails to receive tips on how to use sound and music to create healing environments. You’ll also receive resources for healing music, inspiration, and ideas about how you can use music and sound to rest and re-charge. I’ll see you next time. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers on how to use therapeutic music and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Does Music Help Dementia Patients? 

What happens when dementia patients hear music? Not a day goes by without a story on my news feed about someone playing music for dementia patients and raving about their success at engaging with the patient. 

When asked by caregivers what music to use with their patients I recommend that they make a file with recordings of music that was popular when the patient was a youth or young adult – say from the ages of 14 – 26. 

The results have been compelling. In one case after listening to the music (and singing along), the father recognized his son for the first time in 6 months and they conversed! 

Often a musician plays music live for the patients, and within moments of starting, some of the patients become alert and are mouthing the words to the songs. Afterward, they’re more responsive and even-tempered, and the benefits can last for hours. 

A more active approach is to engage the patients in music-making activities that are usually conducted by a music therapist. Many patients who have suffered cognitive losses can carry a conversation and love music; some are listless with little response to stimuli. Both groups can respond to music making, and generally, there is a measurable improvement in the quality of life. 

Volunteers who have trained with my online course, The Healer’s Visit, use music to make a dramatic difference. It takes sensitivity and a desire to serve, but the rewards are deep as you’ll share intimate moments with patients and contribute to their quality of life. 

I’ve played for patients who exhibit agitation or sundowner’s syndrome. In this situation, I use therapeutic music designed to reduce pain and anxiety – usually unfamiliar to the patient.  The patients have responded favorably with reduced agitation and going to dinner with less agitation or remaining peaceful for more extended periods. Appropriate recorded therapeutic music can also yield excellent results. 

The issue at many nursing homes is the soundscape has no design, and it’s random and often contains sound sources that can agitate a patient or elevate agitation in a sensitive patient. Televisions can be most offensive but are usually on all day as the easy baby sitter for these folks. 

Now I’d like to hear from you. Do you know anyone who suffers cognitive impairment? Have you used music to reach them? How did they respond?  What type of music? 

Please leave a comment here and share with our community, and then subscribe and share it with your friends. 

If you’d like more real-deal, practical resources about sound, music, and healing, then sign up for updates at JamesSchaller.com. I often email specials like free music, tips on how to create healing environments and referrals to essential resources for healing music, inspiration, and how to rest and re-set. I’ll see you next time. 

 James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers on how to use therapeutic music and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

What's a Gong Bath? 

When’s the last time you took a Gong bath? I’m a musician, and I was a bit skeptical. As with many healing modalities, there were a lot of claims made of ‘vibrations to bring about healing’, ‘being bathed in meditation gong sound waves’, ‘in use since 16,000 B.C’ (how do we know that?), ‘helps with pain management’, ‘destroys cancer cells’!  This sounds (pun intended) exciting and not to be missed. 

I arrived at the yoga studio with my mat and the recommended bolster or cushion as participants take a gong bath fully clothed while lying prostrate on a yoga mat. The cushion is for your head and the idea is to get comfortable for the hour-long experience. 

I’ve played with a lot of percussionists and seen some unique drum kits. But this setup was inspirational – if you like cymbals and gongs. There was a 3-sided drum cage made of PVC that was about 7 feet high. And suspended from a myriad of cross-member supports were gongs and cymbals of every conceivable size – from a modest 8 inches to a monster 5 footer! 

On the floor, I positioned myself stereocenter and snuggled in for the experience. The player began with the small and mid-size gongs as he began to build towering waves of moving sound. I was aware of the fundamental tone and many over-arching harmonics in this rich cathedral of sound.  As the intensity built, the player (the gonger?)  began mixing and moving from various gong to gong as he composed a tapestry of rich, deeply textured sounds, themes, and vibrations. 

Once I let go of my analytical mind (which is the whole purpose of the exercise) I was transported on a journey to various destinations much as a leaf or branch rides along a stream’s current - sometimes slow, sometimes faster. 

The time became timeless and then – it was over. I knew most folks in the room had shared a similar experience because of the deep silence – and absence of snoring. Finally, I began to move and rose to a seated position. 

My breath was shallow and slow.  My heart rate was probably about 60 bpm or less.  I felt rested, but not groggy. There was some feeling of energy – and ‘Can we do that again?’ 

I’d just experienced deep entrainment. That’s when one system of vibrations imparts control upon another.  My vitals had been tuned to the vibrations of the gongs. When massive walls of harmonics collide, throbbing sub-rhythms are created – like when side-chain audio compressors are used with modern dance music to build a powerful throbbing rhythm in the track.  It’s cool! 

Reflecting back on my experience, I can see the potential for pain management as neural pathways are flooded, and pain-gate neural pathways can be overwhelmed with new data. I don’t know about the disintegration of cancer cells, but hey we can crumble kidney stones with sound so ….maybe? 

As an aid to meditation, this could be very powerful, especially if you may be new to meditation and your mind screams at you every time you sit to try to meditate. 

I think the strongest part of my experience was the actual physical immersion in a physical sound field not  - electrically amplified. My entire body was bathed in physical vibrations that were being masterfully orchestrated by the player. That’s a big difference because even a harp, guitar, or any other instrument will not give you the same immersion into a sound field that has such extremes in frequencies, volume, and sheer spectrum saturation. 

Now I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever taken a gong bath? What about other sound healing modalities, like bowls, chimes, sound beds, etc. What was your experience? Would you do it again? 

Please leave a comment here and share with our community. 

Did you like this article? Then subscribe and share it with your friends. 

If you’d like to have the therapeutic music that I use with patients, please visit JamesSchaller.com.  Check out the online course The Healer’s Visit for complete training of how any caregiver can understand and use therapeutic music. 

Sign up for emails to receive tips on how to use sound and music to create healing environments. You’ll also receive resources for healing music, inspiration, and ideas about how you can use music and sound to rest and re-charge. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers on how to use therapeutic music and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Can Music Cure A Disease? 

What if you could listen to a specific melody and the tissue in your lungs would begin to repair. What if there is a specific drum rhythm played by an indigenous people in remote Africa that could trigger your body’s repair of its immune system? What if Mozart could heal your cat? 

I’m not here to say any of the above examples are impossible. I’d like to share my experience as a clinical musician. 

First we have to consider the placebo effect, because that amazing mind ability can assign healing to any treatment modality in which we believe healing will occur. Medical science has no idea of how it works, just that it does sometimes occur. So if your mind fervently believes that listening to a specific type of music will heal you, then it just might.  But as with the placebo effect, we can’t predict who will be affected ….or why! 

When a cure happens, a part of our body is restored to the condition that existed before the onset of disease or injury. 

As humans our bodies are extremely diverse, complex and have dozens of internal system clocks. Our physiologies change as we age, are exposed to powerful emotions, suffer stress, make lifestyle choices, and pursue various diets. 

We can’t predict that listening, playing or singing will always ‘cure’ a condition. In my online course The Healer’s Visit, I describe how specific types of music can support healing and recovery. 

Music CAN help you feel better. Music can deliver amazing beneficial, therapeutic results. Sound and music can be used to create environments that support healing that may speed a cure. But we can’t assign specific curing properties to a type of music, and predict with confidence that listening to that type of music will result in a cure every time, to anyone who listens. 

Now I’d like to hear from you. Did you or anyone you know ever have a healing experience with music? Was the experience just maybe feeling better, or was there some kind of reversal or cure? Do you believe music can heal or cure? If so, what is it about music that sparks this belief? Do you reach for music when you don’t feel well? If so, what kind of music? Is the music a song or instrumental? Do you have a favorite instrument that when you hear you feel better? 

Please leave a comment here at JamesSchaller.com and share with our community. 

If you’d like more real-deal, practical resources about sound, music and healing, then sign up for updates at JamesSchaller.com. In my emails I often send specials like free music, tips on how to create healing environments and referrals to essential resources for healing music, inspiration, and how to rest and re-set. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Can Music Heal Physical Pain? 

Chronic pain plagues millions across our society. Young and old, no matter what the economic strata, there are countless people who suffer, and all too often in desperation reach for drugs that can turn deadly. 

In my clinical work pain and anxiety are often the prime targets that I seek to resolve with therapeutic music. In hospice, patients are often under various medications and a key benefit of therapeutic music is that it has no contraindications.  It can be used with a variety of other treatments and won’t have negative effects. 

When asked about my work delivering prescriptive music at the bedside I often say that I’ve seen miracles when it comes to the reduction of pain and the increase of comfort.  Music can have powerful effects. 

There is considerable research available on the use of music to reduce pain and anxiety.  Some researchers believe that music stimulates neural paths that carry pain messages.  It’s called the ‘gate theory’.  Flooding these sensors with music, distracts from pain. 

Certain types of music can lower the heart and respiratory rates and that results in lowering of anxiety which often contributes to pain perception. Other types of music can flood the language processing side of the brain and again we see reduction in anxiety, and an increase in the ability to achieve deep rest. 

In my online course, The Healer’s Visit, there are descriptions and examples of music that can reduce pain and anxiety and how to use that music to create healing environments. 

Yes!  Music can reduce physical pain…and also emotional pain which can often exacerbate physical pain. 

Now I’d like to hear from you.  Were you ever in a lot of physical or emotional pain and you reached for a special song or piece of music?  What was that music? Were there vocals, or was it an instrumental? Was the tempo slow or fast? How long did you listen? Do you always listen to the same song or music at these times? Or is it more a choice of genre? 

Please leave a comment here at JamesSchaller.com and share with our community. 

If you’d like more real-deal, practical resources about sound, music and healing, then sign up for updates at JamesSchaller.com. In my emails I often send specials like free music, tips on how to create healing environments and referrals to essential resources for healing music, inspiration, and how to rest and re-set. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consult with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Can Music Heal The Brain? 

What if 100,00 years ago our species learned to take two biological traits  - say blinking, and release of dopamine. And then through technology (maybe simulated bright lights), we learned to stimulate blinking much more than needed to simply keep our eyes lubricated. 

We could call this practice….winking. Over thousands of generations humanity would create a cult of pleasure across all cultures that would indulge in ‘winking’. Books would be written, religion would co-opt, genders would develop accepted norms for winking…and of course there would be ‘the disruptors’. 

Well that’s one theory advanced about how the practice of music had no specific biological need or trigger, but co-opted various parts of our brain that became stimulated in the process of making or listening to music.  And humans found this pleasurable!  (The why and how of music even left Darwin scratching his head.) 

To answer the question ‘can music heal the brain’ we must first come to grips with the extraordinary complexity of the brain (beyond our ability to comprehend), and the many areas of the brain that respond to music. 

The dramatic ways in which music can affect the brain are best told by Dr. Oliver Sachs in his book Musicophilia. There you’ll read about many deep cognitive functions dramatically affected by music. Sometimes the patient became suddenly musical, sometimes music brought peace and internal alignment. Other patients became driven to express their new found musical talents. 

In another blog I’ll discuss how music can benefit dementia patients.  But for now we can say: ‘Yes, music can powerfully affect the brain, and possibly re-arrange the furniture.’ 

As for healing? Many music therapists use music to improve cognitive and physiological functions. We need to be more specific. Healing the brain would be like…healing the galaxy! Some parts will respond positively to a comet, random asteroid or supernova. Other parts…hmmm maybe not so much. 

In my online course The Healer’s Visit I teach how to use music to reduce pain and anxiety and work with dementia patients.  So while music dramatically affects the brain, it’s too early in our research to say that a particular type of music will cure or heal a specific area of the brain. 

Now I’d like to hear from you.  Take a moment to recall your music memories. Have you had an experience with music that you found affected your thinking or feelings? What type of music helps you concentrate? Do you have a type of music that can help you forget unpleasant memories or feelings? Do you have a special song that triggers deep memories of people, places, or events? 

Please leave a comment here at JamesSchaller.com and share with our community. 

If you’d like more real-deal, practical resources about sound, music and healing, then sign up for updates at JamesSchaller.com. In my emails I often send specials like free music, tips on how to create healing environments and referrals to essential resources for healing music, inspiration, and how to rest and re-set. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Can Favorite Music Heal? 

 

What’s your favorite music?  Is it a genre, classical, jazz, urban, soul, spiritual, rock or pop?  Or is your favorite music more defined as by artist, or album or even a song? 

For me I tend to change favorite genres over time.  Right now my favorites are trans-underground EDM laced with ethnic rhythms and instruments from across the middle east. Also known as ‘that weird music that dad listens to.’ 

Can your favorite music heal? 

What is healing?  The root word of healing is an Anglo-Saxon word HAL which means to be ‘made whole’.  To be made whole can be a physical, emotional or spiritual experience.  So in one sense yes, if your favorite music makes you happy, energized, peaceful, or pleasantly sleepy, some part of you is coming into balance and yes, experiencing healing. 

I once played bedside for an elderly patient who had most of her family gathered together as she was in her very last days. While I’d been playing music designed to reduce pain and anxiety there was a request for a song. 

As the family sang the woman asked to be helped to her feet. It was literally her ‘last stand’ upon this planet in her lifetime. Was there healing? You bet! There was a tremendous sense of unity in the family and the woman felt loved, surrounded by care, inspired to rise once more and surrender to the inevitable. 

A familiar song is not what I typically play for patients for a variety of reasons described in my online course The Healer’s Visit.  But in this situation that favorite song brought healing. 

If you find pleasure as you listen to your favorite music, then you’re gaining physiological benefits. If you need deep rest to recover from surgery, illness, a bad cold or flu, then there are other choices for music that may bring you deep rest and speed your recovery. 

Now I’d like to hear from you. What’s your favorite type of music? Why do you like this music? Is it because you like how it makes you feel? Or maybe how you think?  Have you always enjoyed the same type of music? Or do your preferences change over time? 

Please leave a comment here at JamesSchaller.com and share with our community. 

If you’d like more real-deal, practical resources about sound, music and healing, then sign up for updates at JamesSchaller.com. 

In my emails I often send specials like free music, tips on how to create healing environments and referrals to essential resources for healing music, inspiration, and how to rest and re-set. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Listen Then Look! 

Humans are primarily visual creatures with large amounts of brain resources assigned to processing visual data.  And rightly so, how else would we have found our way down from those trees in Africa long, long ago…in a galaxy far away? (But that’s another story.) 

Human embryos hear long before they see – months before.  The first sense to develop in the womb is our ability to hear.  Why? Early in our womb experience we hear and bond with our mother’s voice.  That’s because when we jump out of the womb, we can’t see very well, but we can hear and we immediately locate and focus on the re-assuring presence of that voice we’ve heard for months.  That voice represents nurturing care and is our refuge in a very strange new world. 

We then immediately begin to learn language. And our prodigious language-learning skills would make any polyglot supremely envious.  Again our sense of hearing and our ability to discern and interpret sounds is developed far sooner than our other senses. 

We also quickly discern the friendly, nurturing sounds (parents, and grandparents baby-talk from threatening sounds (sudden, loud sounds and grouchy strangers who don’t like children). 

Most spiritual traditions place sound as the most important force in their cosmology.  Across cultures deities create their world through words of command, mystical songs, mantras and music of the spheres.  Why this recurring theme of Sound as the most important force? 

I believe there was a lot of intuitive knowledge going around back in the early days of spiritual practices that realized the power of sound to affect the human physiology.  Just look at the fun ‘Mystery Schools’ of the ancient Greco-Roman world.  Members would blindfold the initiates, give them hallucinatory drugs, take them into a subterranean room and scare the hell out of them with loud sounds that blended animal with other-worldly sounds contrived by priests tripping their brains out on hallucinatory drugs and ‘making music’ with a lot of weird noise.  (I know some of you are fondly thinking back to your college parties that resembled the above scene. BTW Frank Zappa scared the hell out of me when I was a high school sophomore – we didn’t call it a Mystery School.) 

Fast forward 2,300 years and we now have extremely sensitive equipment that can measure the subtlest changes in our physiology as we listen to music.  We know that it takes about 7 minutes to feel the effects of music.  There is no ‘music center’ in our brain.  When we listen or play music, many regions of our brain fire in a sequential, orchestrated order. Respiratory and heart rates are affected as is the limbic area of our brain (a holdover from our reptilian ancestors). 

When you walk around today you hear music everywhere and your brain filters most of it out as ‘useless data’.  But 2,500 years ago the world was a very quiet place and when you heard music, your brain and nervous system were ‘charmed’, or scared out of your wits if you were at the Mystery School hazing ritual. 

Sound is the most important sense in that it has deeply profound effects upon our physiology.  Infants know this, the ancients understood this truth, and anyone who rides the New York subway (a modern Mystery School) knows that earbuds elevate their experience from barely tolerable to blissfully ‘checked out’. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

Music is a Drug 

Have you ever been ‘high’ on music, just the music no other recreational ‘stimulants’?  I have, and I continue to experience transformative moments as I listen to music, and they come unbidden at the most surprising times. 

What other legal ‘drug’ can bring you back immediately to a wonderful experience of adolescence, or maybe even to a cherished childhood memory.  The music induced memory often is all-encompassing and more effective than any virtual experience because often we recall the smells, the temperature and emotional feeling of the moment – and it comes in a non-linear experience. 

Spiritual mystics refer to this immediate, all-encompassing, fully-engaged encounter with the Divine as a high-order experience on their way to Nirvana, Union or Unicorn. In their descriptions one common theme is that the experience is non-linear.  They did not recall a thought, that led to a ‘bigger’ thought that opened to a feeling that yielded a vision.  The entire experience all ‘hit’ at once and in an instant the cosmos was revealed. 

For some of us the experience was far more modest, say an embarrassing date as a high school freshman complete with wild feelings of passion, the taste of way too much alcohol and the smells and sounds associated with wacky, wonderful first dates. 

But… the manner in which the experience unfolded is similar to deep spiritual experience. (Note: I do not suggest that trolling through your adolescent music collection will yield the same spiritual growth as a full comprehension of the Way of the Cross, or Pantajali’s 8 limbs of Yoga.  …Too bad, so much easier.) 

I have a friend who regularly ‘medicates’ himself with music. Throughout his day he has music that supports his work, inspires him, helps with his workout at the gym, unsticks emotional constipation and elevates his spiritual practice.  The benefits are great, the cost is low and it can travel anywhere and be used anytime with no medical contraindications.  What other drug can do that? 

Any drug advertised on CNN that claimed just one of those benefits would have a full half of the commercial devoted to listing those ‘potential side effects’ i.e. spontaneous bleeding, vision impairment, loss of limb or slow painful death. 

Music delivers benefits that out-performs drugs with no ill side-effects.  You can find comfort, healing, nurturing, fun, emotional catharsis, spiritual inspiration, release of stress and a damn good time, and all for the price of an internet radio subscription, or a favorite CD recording.  Go ahead, be bold, get high and find your custom music medication.  Who knows, you may be able to cut back on your prescription and recreational drugs. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.

The Mystery of Noise 


 

Music is in the ear of the beholder.  Some of you would be very annoyed if I turned up a Death Metal track while you’re reading this blog.  Others would feel; “Yea, that’s it!” 

Some of you would wax rapturous over Bach’s Air on a G String. While I’m afraid that music would drive away our Death Metal lovers.  What’s noise for one person is exciting, emotive, familiar music to another.  These types of preferences result from cultural experience, peer group pressures, the relation of positive life experience to a piece of music, resonance with the music’s performance energy, emotional content and other cultural experiences around the music.  But both of these pieces qualify as a ‘musical’ experience for some group of listeners. 

Noise is well……just noise.  If you walk into a coffee shop and the sound of the food refrigerator prevents you from hearing the counter person, you are experiencing noise – not music.  What’s the difference? 

Music contains various sounds of pitch and duration set to a rhythm that for some not-fully-understood-reason our brain recognizes as ‘music’.  The theories range from speech identifying brain functions, to ancient song and dance mating rituals.  (I’ll leave you to choose your preference.) 

Noise however is not recognized as music, and the brain will begin to work to overcome (listen ‘harder’), or filter out (think of a notch filter).  Both of these functions require additional energy resources and can result in short-term fatigue and long-term health hazards. 

One study showed that women who lived near airports experienced higher levels of disease.  We have all experienced noise that ‘gets on our nerves’.  The reality is that noise does more harm than a simple annoyance.  Nighttime noise can interrupt our deep sleep patterns which increases daytime fatigue and leads to poor performance. 

Ongoing noise causes our brain to work harder to filter out the noise source.  And sometimes this ongoing steady noise (like a loud AC unit in a hotel) can mask a more annoying, irregular noise like city sirens and car alarms.  I’ll take the loud AC unit sound, but after time the steady, loud noise of the AC unit will contribute to fatigue as your brain works to filter out that stimuli as non-important, non-threatening data. (But how will you hear if a lion approaches your cave while you sleep?  Most of us (when sober) wake up for sounds because those who didn’t are no longer members-in-good-standing of our gene pool.) 

Listen, wherever you are and if you can control your environment, get rid of noise.  It’s not good for you or your health.  Why did those ancient holy men always seek out the ‘holy cave’?  The HVAC was quiet and efficient and the temperature was steady.  They could then hear what was really important as they turned their attention inward to plumb the depths of consciousness and unravel the secrets of their existence.  For you, the benefits might simply be a better nights’ sleep, but it’s well worth the effort. 

James Schaller, CMP is a clinical musician and consultant who trains caregivers how to use therapeutic music, and consults with healthcare facilities to create soundscapes that benefit patients and staff.