Power of music and the mind explored and celebrated

by | May 24, 2024 | Lifestyle

Many traditions and cultures have subconsciously aided the wellbeing of one’s mind through music and sound.

A neurologist and music psychotherapist tackled the maze of the mind together on Saturday, May 18, 2024, at the Wits Origins Centre through a mental wellness and brain health seminar on International Museum Day.

Human brains have a potential that is unfathomable, and whilst people think we only use 10% of our brains at a time, they are mistaken.

Most of our brain is being used most of the time, even while sleeping, and over 85 billion neurons in our brains are always firing some sort of signal.

However, with all this brain power comes the largest emotional intelligence amongst all mammals. This EQ of humans is the area studied by neurologist and brain health specialist, Dr Kirti Ranchod, and music psychotherapist, Nsamu Moonga.

Music psychotherapist, Nsamu Moonga, leading the audience through a series of musical workshops to release their inner voice and learn to trust in a collective conscious. Photo: Victoria Hill
Dr Kirti Ranchod during her seminar at the Origins Centre, speaking about all things brain health and wellness. Photo: Victoria Hill

Music is all around us — at birthdays, funerals, weddings, political rallies — and each scene sounds very different from the next, which is a subconscious understanding, Dr Ranchod explained.

Dr Ranchod said music is linked to both memory and emotion. When a person hears a specific song, they relive a specific experience, which leads to them feeling a specific emotion.

This is the basis from which Moonga bases his therapy techniques. He explained how humans forget things as a survival technique yet create rituals to ensure they do not forget what is important — the earth rotating completely around the sun, a human life ending, a life of two people beginning for instance.

Yet, Dr Ranchod said how music is exceptionally personal where one type of tune will relax someone whilst it will trigger another. .

To pay homage to International Museum Day, Dr Ranchod spoke about the San Trance Dance which is one of the earliest rituals known to date that used music to bind a group together.

The Trance Dance is a permanent feature at the Origins Centre — which traces human life back nearly two million years — because it sees the beginning of humans living in communities and activating their energies to connect with the spirit world.

With sound, rhythm, movement, and dance used to alter reality, shift consciousness, and change perception, this was the start of music therapy in practice.

Museums document the history we all share and allows for the interception of the past, present, and future. They allow us to understand who we are, where we come from and are the physical pallbearers of memory.

FEATURED IMAGE: Modern-day rock art as appearing in the Origins Centre to showcase how the past is still very much in the present. Photo: Victoria Hill

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Been there, done that

by | May 3, 2012 | News

South Africa successfully hosted a 2 billion dollar soccer tournament in 2010, so building the world’s most powerful radio telescope at the same cost and with many more long term benefits should not be a problem.

Dr. Adrian Tiplady shared some of the advantages to hosting the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radiotelescope in South Africa with the public at the Wits Origins Centre last week. Tiplady is the South African SKA Site Characterisation Manager and one of Mail & Guardian’s top 200 Young South Africans.

The SKA is a global futuristic science project that was first devised in 1991. Tiplady explained that the telescope had to be designed using technology that would only be available in 2016. It will be 100 times more sensitive than today’s telescopes and will have the computing power of 1 billion personal computers.

Scientists use radiotelescopes to see into the past, to the origins of the Universe – an appropriate topic for a talk at the Origins Centre, said Tiplady.

Telescopes like the Hubble use light to take pictures but space dust and other obstacles may hide objects further away. Radiowaves move through these obstacles which means that astronomers can “see” much more by “listening” with radiotelescopes.

These radiotelescopes must be built in areas where there is little cellphone, radio and TV interference. Tiplady said the Northern Cape is the perfect location for this. He also said South Africa has superior technical solutions and is home to the world’s leading science and engineering team.

South Africa is bidding against Australia to host the telescope and rumours are rife that the two countries may have to share the site.

Tiplady said that although a huge disadvantage of this would be the high costs involved, his personal opinion is that sharing will ensure that scientists collecting the data will never miss anything.

At a press conference earlier this year the Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, joked that not sharing the site was about the only thing on which she and the Australian minister agreed.

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