Melodious Medicine / Music Therapy

Every morning as i browse through the newspaper with a mug of decoction kapi, i get some feeds for my blog :-) "....Music may “pump” the brain and the body. At Stanford University, near San Francisco, researchers found that listening to 18th century symphonies improved listeners’ focus between movements, when they mentally updated shopping lists". Read more on,

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOI&BaseHref=TOIBG/2008/12/23&PageLabel=13&EntityId=Ar01301&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

This is nothing new to us Indians - in the land of ancient Carnatic Music. Music Therapy is a special branch of alternate medicine where the 72 Parent ragas are being used to cure various ailments. It is believed that the 72 parent ragas control 72 important nerves in the human body. The Apollo Hospitals have a course dedicated to this music therapy. A few instances are, Raga Todi is said to control hyper-tension, Raga Sahana is said to control anger, slow bhajans are said to relax our mucles and nerves, hindustani ragas are said to have an impact on the intestinal disorders and so on.

This Marghazhi Utsav season, let us all relax, get rejuvenated and become more calm and composed and ease our nerves and muscles and bones and prepare ourselves for a better 2009! for 2008 has been an year of ups and downs with terror attacks, robberies, recession and what not. Lets us all put to use our home-theater systems to hear some melodious Thiruppavai in the mornings and enjoy great evenings with those garma-garam kacheries and Kapis. Chennai-ites - I envy u all, i really miss those Gana Sabhas, kacheris and stage plays!