The Healing Power of Music

(Photo by Dark Rider on Unsplash)

The Healing Power of Music

by Dawn Pisturino

Both Aristotle and Plato commented on the healing power of music. But it was not until the 20th century that the idea of music therapy began to take hold.

Music therapists are trained healthcare professionals who utilize music to encourage wellness, healing, and a better quality of life. They work in psychiatric facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, hospice programs, schools, and other organizations.

People with mental illness benefit from the influence that music has over mood and emotions. In the hospital setting, music has been used to reduce pain and suffering, relieve tension, and promote sleep.  Nursing homes employ music therapists to keep senior citizens active and socially involved. Music has been used in hospice programs to provide comfort, relaxation, and a better quality of life for people who are terminally ill. Music therapy is used in special learning programs at schools to improve communication and coordination skills.

Research has shown that music can improve depression and insomnia, reduce blood pressure, lower respiration and heart rates, and alleviate nausea caused by chemotherapy.

Children who take music lessons tend to have higher IQ scores and do better in school. In the home, music is a valuable tool for reducing stress, engaging in physical exercise, and creating a more positive environment. Employers have found that background music in the workplace can help reduce stress among employees.

Listening to the sounds of nature can also be therapeutic. Birds singing, waves crashing on the beach, a babbling brook, the wind blowing playfully through wind chimes, whale songs, the purring of a cat — these all have the power to soothe frazzled nerves and fill us with a sense of comfort and joy.

Dawn Pisturino

April 2, 2007; March 13, 2023

Copyright 2007-2023 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Published in The Kingman Daily Miner, April 24, 2007.

[Please note that I will not be posting again until Friday]





Brownie and Other Wild Birds

(Photo by Dawn Pisturino. Copyright 2023 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.)

This little fellow freezing his tail off in 26-degree weather is Brownie, a curve-billed Arizona thrasher. He’s cold and hungry, waiting for his meatball. Yeah, you heard me right. Brownie likes meatballs, and when he shows up looking for food, he gets one-half of a mini meatball. He grabs it with his bill and carries it away, sometimes with a smaller thrasher hot on his trail. Sometimes the smaller bird gets it, and Brownie has to do without. When the two had a baby bird during the summer, the baby would run up to Brownie, shake his feathers, and shriek like a maniac. He would keep doing this until Brownie fed him. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Before the rains came, though, he was getting very aggressive with the other birds. I watched him viciously attack a sparrow who was encroaching on his territory after I put out birdseed. He held him down with his claw and pecked him, while the poor bird was screeching for dear life. Thankfully, the little sparrow managed to get away.

Back East, where there’s plenty of water and vegetation, birds thrill us with their birdsong, beauty, and peaceful demeanor. They are equally beautiful and melodic in the Arizona desert, but drought and sparse vegetation can make them competitive and aggressive. They begin to prey on one another. We ended up with no baby doves last summer because predators kept attacking the nests. My husband and I were heartbroken.

Buddy is a dove that hangs out on our property. In 2014, he was attacked by a hawk and managed to get away. But he had a huge gash in his breast and had difficulty flying. There was nothing we could do to help him so he hung out under an oleander bush, and we made sure he had plenty of food and water. Miraculously, he survived. His feathers grew back in, leaving a big black mark where his wound had been. But we can always identify him as our little “Buddy,” and he almost always shows up for feeding time. When he doesn’t show up, I worry myself sick that something happened to him. But he’s strong and healthy and gets right in there with the other birds and seems to get plenty to eat. He had to learn to be assertive to survive.

I’ve never been able to get a good photo of Buddy. I was already outside with the camera taking pictures of the snow on the mountains when Brownie showed up. He very politely posed for me!

Dawn Pisturino

February 17, 2023

Copyright 2023 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Birdie, Birdie – A Poem

(Baltimore Oriole)

Birdie, birdie in the tree,

Are you lonely just like me?

Rise into the morning sky

And fly, birdie, fly!

Tired of the verdant bough,

Hanging low with apples now?

Look, the yellow sun is high.

Fly, birdie, fly!

I wish I could fly like you,

Sing a song or maybe two,

Flutter softly my good-bye,

And fly, birdie, fly!

When the moon began to rise,

I would leave the darkened skies,

Fold my wings where I would lie,

And die, birdie, die.

Up to heaven I would go,

White and pure as new-made snow,

Safe beneath the father’s eye:

Fly, birdie, fly!

All the world would miss my song,

Sweet and pure and not too long,

Partly triumph, partly sigh;

Fly, birdie, fly!

1985

Dawn Pisturino

June 9, 2022

Copyright 1985-2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Spring Poems

(Photo by Michael O’Grady)

Spring Poems by Dawn Pisturino

April Showers

I looked into the heavens

And saw the face of God.

He was a kindly gentleman

And not too very loud.

He wore a watch upon his vest

Which gave the time of day.

He looked at it: “The time has come,”

Was all he had to say.

And soon a gentle rainfall

Came from the April sky.

It kissed my wondering up-turned face

And poked me in the eye.

But then a very curious thing

Did happen at my feet.

A tiny flower sprouted up,

All blooming and complete.

It opened up its tiny leaves,

Embracing fast the rain,

And if I ever doubted God –

I never did again.

November 25, 1985

~

Spring

Spring! The vigor of new life soars in my veins!

I am free and alive and wonderful,

Free as the silly sparrow twittering in the tree-top,

Too gaily alive.

Alive as the new-sprung fountain of youth in the riverbed,

Which knows not that it is bound by grassy banks,

But runs down the waterway in a mad race for the finish.

And, wonderful as the tiny petals of a flower,

First opening up to the Father Sun

Like a virgin bride in the marriage bed.

Sun gives new life to the blood,

And blood gives new life to the body,

And the body gives new life to the soul,

Ad infinitum, ad infinitum, ad infinitum.

But every Spring plays its part as a new beginning,

And we never tire of the encore.

1987

~

Robin Red-Breast

When Robin Red-breast comes to town,

All the children dance around,

Clapping hands and stamping feet,

Happy with their little treat!

February 2, 1987

~

Have a wonderful Spring day!

Dawn Pisturino

April 25, 2022

Copyright 1985-2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Springtime – A Poem

Springtime

by Dawn Pisturino

Springtime struggles to survive

The clasping arms of winter,

Stirring up the honey-hive

And bringing forth the flower.

She hastens to restore the sun:

The melting snows recede;

And when the sap begins to run,

The worm returns to feed.

A flock of sparrows in the sky;

A big, red-breasted robin

Perched to catch a passing fly,

His little heart a-throbbin’.

Daffodils with yellow heads

Bobbing in a row;

Rich brown fields and grassy beds

Waiting for the plow.

Winter, dying in the wake

Of Springtime’s warmer rain,

Thaws the river and the lake

And disappears again.

February 21, 1986

Published in World of Poetry Anthology, 1987 and Best New Poets of 1988.

Copyright 1986 – 2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

OUR GREAT EMU ADVENTURE

Steve Pisturino tries to capture a lost emu wandering down Chinle Road in Golden Valley, Arizona.

Our great EMU adventure began when the neighbor’s dogs started barking at something in the field across the road.  We figured it was the coyote that comes to drink water in our front yard. Boy, were we wrong!

Racing through the desert was a prehistoric-looking creature with long legs and a long neck that looked tired, hungry, and thirsty. I don’t know how long or how far he had run, but the temperature was at least 110 degrees outside, the noontime sun burned with fierce intensity, and the only water available  came from human sources.

My husband grabbed some water and followed the animal in his truck while I got on the phone and called every agency I could find in the phone book. The standard response? “We don’t handle emus.” It didn’t matter that the creature was going to die without food, water, and shelter. Frustrated, I called the local newspaper and reported what was happening. Happily, one of the reporters also got on the phone and began calling people.

I finally got hold of a local animal rescue sanctuary, and the owners told me that if we could corral the emu, they would come and get him! Finally! Results!

By that time, my husband had returned home. He had offered him water, but Big Bird ignored it and ran off — luckily, into a residential neighborhood. We took off in the truck and scoured the neighborhood, hoping to find him, capture him, and send him off to the animal sanctuary.  We finally found him wandering down a dirt road, tired and worn out.

As you can see in the above photo, my husband tried to befriend him and lasso him with a soft nylon rope. But the animal wasn’t going for it and took off again into the desert. I ran after him, trying to herd him back to the road. Once or twice, I got close enough to touch him. He never tried to bite or kick me and seemed friendly enough. He was obviously accustomed to humans. But he was scared and didn’t know his way home.

I chased him to the edge of a wash. Big Bird realized that the sides of the wash were too steep, and he let me herd him along the edge and back to the road. Several times he looked back at me with a glint in his eye, like it was some sort of game, and I had high hopes that eventually he would stop and let me catch him.  That was an idealistic thought!

Back on the road a man in a red truck offered the bird water, but once again he ignored it and headed on down the road. My husband parked his truck and threw me the rope. Finally, I got close enough to the bird to throw my arms around him and hang on for dear life. I managed to loop the rope around his neck, but I was so scared of hurting him, I let it hang loose.

My husband asked me, “Okay, now we’ve got him, what are we going to do with him?” Good question! The man in the red truck had taken off, and we had nobody to help us. We decided to walk Big Bird back to the truck and somehow get him into the back.

When we got back to the truck I told my husband, “You get behind him and push.” He reluctantly grabbed the back end of the bird and tried to push him up into the truck.   

Big Bird bolted, gouged my left ankle with his huge toenail,  knocked me flat on my back, and ran off into the desert!

Hot, tired, and thirsty, I laid in the dirt with the sun in my eyes and waited for the stars to stop swirling around my head.

As my husband helped me up I said, “I’m done. I can’t do anymore.”  Beaten, bruised, scuffed, cut, dirty, sweaty, and stunned, we drove home in defeat.

To this day, we don’t know where the emu came from or where he ended up. We suspect that somebody who didn’t want him anymore let him loose in the desert. A cruel thing to do in the hot summer! At the very best, somebody found him and gave him a home. At the very worst, coyotes attacked and killed him. Even as I chased him through the desert, vultures circled overhead, waiting for a fresh kill.

Was it worth it? Even though he injured me, and we weren’t able to catch him, I feel happy that we at least tried to help this poor creature. I have the satisfaction of knowing that the newspaper reporter tried to track down the owner.

And I have a great story to tell my future grandkids.

Dawn Pisturino

Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved. Photo by Dawn Pisturino.