Music is a Magic pot, full of memories- pleasant and unpleasant. Each one of us have active, forgotten and buried memories in the sub conscious which re-surface at times when we listen to familiar tunes, associated with those memories.
One such incident happened the other day, when I was giving a lesson in Carnatic Music to one of my students. A parent, waiting in the lounge, met me after the class and recalled his childhood days which resurfaced as he was listening to the lesson. His eyes lit up while he spoke about his bygone days. To his surprise, he remembered each and every single note of that lesson learnt about 25 years ago. I am sure this experience must have been overwhelming so much so that he expressed his interest in pursuing Carnatic music again. This is the magic of “Music”.
Music is an extremely powerful tool which can be anchored to a resourceful state and recalled whenever one wants to get over an unresourceful state. “Anchoring” is one of the powerful techniques of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), using which one can get rid of unpleasant state of mind, memories and experiences. If one is musically inclined, his/her favourite song/tune(be it a nursery rhyme, if it has pleasant memories associated to it) can become their respective Anchors.
For ex: If you want to work on say, nervousness/stage fear, all you have to do is
- Relive one of your past incidents, with closed eyes, when everything went perfectly right and you were in a state of super confidence (If you can’t recall one, imagine the state of Confidence that you would want to be in) . See all the images, hear all the sounds and feel the experience associated with this pleasant memory in your mind’s eye.
- Elicit the experience by adding colours/sounds etc., if required, to this pleasant image, to make it even more memorable and attractive.
- Anchor your favourite song/tune/rhymes, to this state of Confidence that you have experienced. Hum it loudly till Confidence transcends on you.
- Open your eyes, when you are done.
The next time, when you are nervous about something and you don’t want to be in that state, simply hum the tune and experience the magic.
Do not forget to share your experience with me 🙂