Sufi Music Therapy with Makams

Sufi Music Therapy with Makams
as a Potential Intervention for Common Mental Health Disorders

Music has been used as a healing form from primitive times, with this having been witnessed all around the world. The primitive version of using the healing power of music pertained to it being a way to communicate with God. However, when Greek philosophers explored the special effect of music upon people via very basic experimental improvisations – for example, Plato played musical modes to make people sleep, laugh or cry when they gathered around him – it was found that producing or listening to music had an effect upon people’s moods, even if those effects were not clear yet.

Spirituality appears to be a new term in the health care profession, therefore finding a general consensus on one definition of it is hard as studies of this are only on the nascence. Spirituality and religion might be used interchangably in practice, even though they are diffferent terms. Spirituality refers to an individualistic sense of an intense connectivity with the self, others and sacred, whereas religion is more of an institutionalised structure and depends on society-based rituals and ceremonies.