What is Therapeutic Music?
Live therapeutic bedside music is an enhancement to healing. It is not a performance for entertainment, but rather a service that helps to create a healing environment and is focused and tailored to the individual patient.
Therapeutic Music Can:
- reduce blood pressure
- relieve anxiety
- calm and regulate heartbeat and respiration
- reduce body and muscle tension
- augment pain management
- provide time for contemplation
- promote a feeling of well-being and peace
- facilitate the transition process of the dying
Music can be beneficial to those who are agitated, restless, apprehensive, crying, have high blood pressure or low oxygen saturation, are tense or in pain, have respiratory difficulties, pre- or post-surgery, conscious or sedated, or are near death. Those who are acutely ill or injured, chronically ill, critically ill, those suffering from dementia, premature babies, and even patients receiving dialysis have found music helpful. In some cases it is the family members who need the relief.
What does it sound like?
These recordings I made aren’t the same as the live experience, but they can give you an idea of what it’s like to hear life therapeutic music
- Slow, Steady Therapeutic Music – Guitar – Kirk Moore
- Slowing Therapeutic Music – Guitar – Kirk Moore
What is a Music Practitioner?
A Certified Music Practitioner brings live, acoustic, therapeutic music to the bedside of the ill and dying. They are professionals who are trained to be responsible, trustworthy and unobtrusive. Their playing is not a performance or concert, but provides beneficial, therapeutic music that is tailored to the particular condition of the patient by changing melodies, modes, rhythms and dynamics, and modified based on the response of the patient.
(Music therapy is interactive with the patient, usually consists of multiple sessions, the goal is to rehabilitate or cure, patient progress is tracked, and uses either live or recorded music.)
Kirk Moore, CMP, is certified through the Music for Healing and Transition Program, Inc. (MHTP). MHTP is accredited by the National Standards Board of Therapeutic Musicians. Kirk plays the guitar and also sings with the intention of creating a healing environment. Therapeutic Music fosters comfort for managing pain and strengthening the spirit of the patient.
What is Expected of the Patient?
It is not necessary for the patient to interact physically or even verbally with the Music Practitioner. The patient should feel free to relax and even fall asleep. The music can be beneficial to patients during surgery and under anesthesia, and research shows that even unconscious and comatose patients can benefit from live therapeutic music.
Therapeutic Music 