Something about violin?

CEBU, Philippines - People who are in mourning or into depression tend to do two things – either they eat too much or don’t eat all. Whichever way the drawback is always disastrously unhealthy.

Taking anti-stress pills can only give placebo medication – meaning measured deception or sham or simulated medical intervention. In placebo treatment, a patient is given an inert pill and told that it may improve his condition. Placebo intervention causes a patient to believe that his condition improved and that the pill has some therapeutic effect so that the patient tends to feel his condition improved.

When you take anti-stress pills, it could do more harm to your body than relief because you don’t know what ingredients are mixed into a pill.

When my father, Ramon Mercado, died on October 15, I had to suppress grief and mourning. I was scheduled to be the piano accompanist for a violin recital. Sir Jaymee Rebustillo, a violinist and violin teacher requested me to be the pianist for his violin students. That meant I had to keep my mind, soul and spirit focused on the music. I thought I couldn’t take it. In the run off to performance date, I went through rehearsals everyday since the death. I became apprehensive that my performance might be compromised. Remarkably the violin and piano took care of the healing.

Genius in Music

Studies have proven that listening to violin or playing on the violin or playing as accompanist to a violinist has a profound way of healing. In what is called the Mozart Effect, it was found that listening to Mozart music or classical and baroque music can enhance the intelligence quotient of a person.

It is said that the genius in Albert Einstein was unleashed when he played the violin. An orchestra director of Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology quoted Einstein to have said that he got some of his greatest inspirations while playing the violin because it liberated his brain to imagine.

The Irvine’s Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory also found that children who go through musical training have higher level cognition for mathematics and engineering. The phenomenon is that singing and playing musical instruments like the violin and the piano affects the cells in the body.

When you are stressed out and burned out because of your next door neighbour who can’t bring down the volume of their sing-along karaoke, from deadline demands of work or from intrigues from people around you, it’s time to put on those headphones and earphones and listen to Mozart or classical and baroque music. That way your cells are soothed and enlivened and are reproduced in a natural way.

All that violin and piano playing put me in a healing state as I went through the grief and mourning. People wonder sometimes how a person can look refreshed and calm even when in sadness. The intervention and treatment is in the music – not just any music – but classical, baroque and Mozart music.

In a similar logic, there are tablets that claim to boost memory or turn mediocre intelligence quotients into geniuses. One needs to be careful with this measured deception. That tablet could reverse your memory.

The best healing treatment is the music that touches the soul. The best way to become a genius is the music that activates brain cells to unleash imagination. (THE FREEMAN)