Can music help children escape post traumatic stress disorder? Some Insights from neurology, music and Kabir 

Last month, I started reading ‘Body Keeps the Score,’ a book by Bessel van der Kolk. I am not a great fan of complex and scholarly books but despite that, I read them these days.

“What is the impact of your work?” It is a question that is thrown at us more often than “Would you have tea or coffee?” (Just joking!) In the last two years, our conversations with mentors, advisors, supporters, and educators ultimately come and revolve around the impact of running music interventions for children from marginalised communities. Unfortunately or fortunately, nothing much has been done in this particular area. We have broad hypotheses that talk about increased attention, memory, communication skills etc. Studies and research projects done abroad have documented some concrete outputs from sustained music intervention. There is hardly any research available in the context of Indian children and Indian music.

Measuring the impact of music beyond Socio-emotional learning parameters is quite elaborate and expensive but I feel that’s where the real impact of music happens. Hence, I always get my hands on books that unfold the workings of our mind-body nexus and draw some parallels. As I started reading ‘Body Keeps the Score’, it was inevitable to draw some parallels and I am sharing the same in this article. 

Trauma is more common than we think.

Whenever I go to classrooms, I see children unable to make eye contact with anyone; as if they wish to disappear and totally isolate themselves from people and their surroundings. They don’t laugh nor do they cry. They are stuck somewhere. After reading many cases of PTSD discussed in the book, I can make some connections. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and while it is not possible to say with full confidence that the child has undergone some sort of trauma, it is impossible to rule it out completely either. 

As I understand from the book and also from the experience of observing and working with children, trauma is very deep-rooted in our physiology. At times, even when a counsellor talks to the victim about it, the victim starts ‘re-living’ those painful moments. The job of the counsellor then is to get the child to a position where the child can look at the traumatic episode as a third person without getting affected by its memories. 

Amygdala locks the door.

It is like a black box or as the book calls it, a ‘smoke detector.’ The amygdala decides whether to flag a person, a memory or an incident as a ‘threat’. The book mentions that the only way to access the Amygdala and re-calibrate it is through the medial prefrontal cortex. Interestingly, the medial prefrontal cortex is what makes us ‘self-aware.’ In short, any activity that builds our self-awareness can act as a gateway to the Amygdala and help us get out of the grabs of trauma. The author of the book has emphasised the role of singing, chanting and other similar activities and how they can impart better results than even medication. 

Music and Self-awareness

Music creation forces one to be aware and in the moment. One of the activities that we do in teacher training, is singing together and then reflecting on what one was thinking while singing. Interestingly, almost everyone mentions they don’t think of anything and were fully focused on their breath and were present in the moment. Music-making essentially involves building a relationship with oneself. Every time we sing or play an instrument, this relationship gets redefined.

We have seen agitated children calming down, and dejected children brightening up in our sessions. We have seen the restlessness of children going down significantly. The resultant relaxation is often overwhelming in a positive way and we have seen children falling asleep in the sessions. 

The schools and centres where we work cater to some of the most marginalised children. In many cases, the primary caretakers of these children are themselves victims of trauma and abuse. Even if we keep aside the psychological benefits the children get out of engaging with music, just the sheer amount of joy they get is invaluable.

Kabir’s Perspective

नींद निशानी मौत की, उठ कबीरा जाग।  

और रसायन छाँड़के, नाम रसायन लाग।। 

Sleep is a sign of death. Wake up, Kabir. Leave aside the chemicals (drugs) and start chanting the ‘Naam’. 

What Bessel van der Kolk emphasises again and again in his book, Kabir mentioned it a few hundred years ago. The sleep Kabir talks about is not physical sleep but the perpetual state of unawareness in which we drag ourselves throughout our lives. I am sure Kabir did not know the connection between the prefrontal medial cortex and and Amygdala but he knew for sure that being aware is the only way of bringing about change in oneself. He had sensed that being aware is like ‘keeping the doors open’. Unawareness makes us move in the same loop whereas awareness can break vicious circles of habits. 

If you ask me if we have measured the awareness levels of the children before and after Baithak sessions, the answer is no. What I can certainly say is, I have actually seen them changing for the better in our sessions. Teachers report dramatic shifts in the behaviour of children and their responsiveness after attending a few sessions. Till we figure out the ways to capture this in a water-tight way, what we see is enough to keep us going!