| Dancing til Dusk, Hing Hay Park July 30, 2026 (Constance Brinkley photo) |
| Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. —Ludwig van Beethoven |
Using half a dozen metal singing bowls, our family friend, Trevor, performed a sound bath last Monday for my stepdad, Don, who is currently in hospice care. My mom, sister and I were all crowded into Don’s small room, and the beautiful ringing tones and droning timbres becalmed and brought us all, in turn, to tears. While Don is minimally communicative at this point, he went from fussing, as he’d been doing for hours, to sleeping peacefully over the course of the performance.
Sound therapy, which includes sound baths, can impart numerous health benefits, states a blog entry by UCLA Health. The relaxation resulting from listening can enhance one’s mood by lessening stress and anxiety, lowering heart rate and blood pressure, and providing relief from pain.
As dancers, we’re aware how music can dramatically affect our mood, from feeling uplifted and joyful, to intensely sensual, to poignant and thoughtful as we groove in turn to a swing, blues or tango, and waltz song. Indeed, a Harvard Medicine article reports that music “lights up nearly all of the brain — including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body’s motor system.” With so much stimulation, music “ends up being encoded as a rich experience.”
Interestingly, understanding and harnessing music’s power could provide therapeutic solutions to a range of ills. “Growing evidence suggests,” the article continues, “that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy… By identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases” such as Parkinson’s, depression, and Alzheimer’s.
Here’s wishing you richly exquisite and soulfully healing experiences with music and dance this week. See regular and newly announced classes and events online at the Dance Calendar.
See you on the dance floor —Sean Donovan