The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit - Hardcover

Campbell, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380974185 ISBN 13: 9780380974184

Publisher: Avon Books, 1997

Synopsis

You know that music can affect your mood it can make you feel happy, enchanted, inspired, wistful, excited, empowered, comforted, heroic. But music has an even more astonishing power, one you may have suspected from your own experience, but which you will now learn well documented. Quite simply, music is good for you-physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Particular sounds, tones and rhythms, especially the music of Mozart, Gregorian chant, and some jazz, New Age, Latin, pop, and even rock music, can strengthen the mind, unlock the creative spirit, and, miraculously, even heal the body. This remarkable phenomenon is called The Mozart Effect.Stimulating, authoritative, and often lyrical, THE MOZART EFFECT offers dramatic accounts of how doctors, shamans, musicians, and health care professionals use music to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, even mental illness. Students who sing or play an instrument score up to 51 points higher on SAT than the national average. During strenuous exercise, the upbeat music of Diana Ross can lessen fatigue and release endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. The director of a Baltimore hospital's coronary care unit says that half an hour of classical music produces the same effect as ten milligrams of Valium. And now, whatever your listening taste, Don Campbell explains how to make the Mozart Effect work for you.

About this title

Review:

With a subtitle of Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit, the casual reader might jokingly ask if the book could also improve chances for world peace, bring free and open elections to third world countries, and give your wash whiter whites and brighter brights. Don Campbell's premise is, however, reasonably straightforward: he asserts that the kind of noise to which one is exposed can have important effects on mental and bodily health. As a trial, try protecting your hearing for a few days from the continuous barrage of noise in a typical urban environment; it really does seem to improve one's attitude and fatigue levels.

Where Campbell's ideas become more provocative is in the realm of music. Supported by much anecdotal evidence, he proposes that Classical music with a big "C" (the music of Mozart's period) can reach out to those who are mentally isolated from their fellows, like the autistic, and can help infants react and think better. (Will prenatal music classes be the next big trend for yuppie babies?) In addition, the music of Mozart contributes to the improved functioning of the higher cerebellar functions, including the ability to deal with logical and mathematical concepts, while contemporary rock actually decreases mental acuity.

About the Author:

Listen to Don Campbell's credentials.

A Texas native, Don Campbell studied with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau Conservatory of Music in France and has worked with Jean Houston, Leonard Bernstein and other musicians, healers and mind/body researchers.

Over the years, his quest to harness the healing and creative powers of sound and music has taken him to 40 countries, including Haiti, Russia, Israel, Greece, Tibet, Indonesia and Thailand, where he has studied indigenous culture, taught and worked with children and young adults, and given his own performances. He has taught and performed in most of the capitals of Europe and lived in Japan for several years, serving as music critic for a Tokyo newspaper.

He founded the Institute of Music, Health and Education in 1988, and is known to the public through frequent television and radio appearances and international lecture tours. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0380974185
• ISBN 13: 9780380974184
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352