Music for the soul: music for coping with breast cancer

There is a lot of stories and believes about alternative ways to chymio vto battle against cancer. As
this illness is understood as a holistic disease, and not just something organic, the challenge
becomes more diverse. This fact may ease the solution or complicate, it depending of each case
but at most of the disposition of every patient to know themselves better and heal their emotions
and/or habits that caused the illness and that could be sustaining it.

In this sense, the therapeutic use of music is one of this alternative ways that can really help
discovering and healing emotional issues of the patient and even healing him/her at an organic
level , depending on the method and resources applied, as well as on the expertise of the
musictherapist. The music and the world of harmonic sounds is one of the easiest ways for letting
the soul to express itself and remember the most hidden memories that may be sustaining an
illness or a vice, but also can let it discover their own resources to overcome them with grace and
love.

I’m psychologist and yoga teacher specialized on psychoneuroimmunology, and formed as well as
facilitator in musictherapy. These stories I’m about to share with you are from some of the
patients I treated with resources of music and sonotherapy and also a few of breathing techniques
learned from Kundalini Yoga. All of these patients were women, more than 30 years old and most
of them mothers or with caring responsabilities over children or sick people, demonstrating that in
most of cases, breast cancer is a lack of self-compassion, where the women must remember to
love herself first and find an opportunity to learn how to listen to her own heart deeper.

The stories

Anna

The first of our ladies (let set a nickname for confidentiality: Anna) was 39 years old, a mother with
her only son living abroad, because the socioeconomic situation in her country Venezuela has
been pushing the young generations away, searching for new opportunities and social safety.
These, sumed to the lak of medicaments and medical supplies, gave a extra challenge not just for
her but also for the main female population in this coutry when they get sick.

During the sessions, Anna started to recognize to me and to herself emotions like fear and anger,
and the real hidden intensity of some resentment against herself and her own mother. Because of
this, I used songs related to the maternal figure like ‘Retoño Mío’ (My Offspring) from Snatam
Kaur, a wonderful singer of mantras from yogic culture, who dedicates this musical piece to her
next descendant.

It’s important to let you know that in a lot of cases, the repressed feeling in this type of cancer is
associated with the mther, so the maternal part of the woman seems attacked as response. They
attack their own perception of what being a mother is, but they don’t realice it and hide that
feeling until it turns into cancer. It’s not an absolute rule, but relly important to consider if you
want to heal or support others individually or as information of main importance to share in a
cancer forum or mental health forum.

Another very simple but very useful is singing vocals. The resonance of the sounds produce a (re-
)connection with certain aspects of the self. For example, chanting the vocal ‘a’ resonates specially
in the chest zone, and this applied therapeutically helped Anna recognizing hidden emotions
related with love, with the heart, located in the chest.