Heart Healing

In a story posted yesterday on MSNBC.com, Bill Briggs writes of the doctors who are "increasingly studying—and employing—the physiological dance music does with the body's neurons and blood-carrying cells." Of patients whose rooms are filled with the sounds of harp or Brazilian guitar, post surgery. Of melody's vital role in slowing heart beats, spiking pituitary growth hormone, or dilating the tissue in blood vessels. Of the relationship between song and healing. The harp, as it turns out, has extraordinary healing powers as an instrument whose vibrations are capable of going "to the deepest places of the body," according to Tami Briggs, a harp therapist. But listening to "joyful" music is essential, too, a newly prescribed regimen for those concerned about heart health, and Mozart, too, is a recommended cure.

I write often, on this blog, of dance. My house, when I'm not working, is jammed with song. At night, in the dark, music is there, in my thoughts, and everything I write is pinned to rhythm.
I have never been able to tame my own urgent need for lyric, melody, lift, and sometimes I have been ashamed by that—ashamed by my need to dance, my desire to move, my insatiable want of more song.

Perhaps, I think now, the music is keeping me alive—saving me (mostly) from the extremes of myself and, at least for now, for a while longer, protecting my big, fractured heart.