This talk, delivered in the 4th international meet on Music Therapy at Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, discusses the concept of Salutogenesis and highlights how a music therapist could help create an Optimal Healing Environment. Curing is not the same as Healing but they are complementary and both are perhaps essential for holistic wellness.

1. Music Therapy for Wellness
by Prof KR Sethuraman. MD,PGDHE
Vice-chancellor,
Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Pondicherry

2. Part -1
From chasing Pathogenesis
to fostering Salutogenesis
Part 2 –
Music Therapy &
Optimal Healing
This is a 2-part talk:

3. Peace
versus
Anti-war
“- I will never participate in anti-war demonstrations.
“But if you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.”
• Mother Theresa
If not at war, are you at peace?
If not ill, are you well; if no disease, is it health?

4. And Not merely the absence of disease

5. Salutogenesis  Pathogenesis

6. Salutogenesis
• Derivation of Greek + Latin
• Latin: salus = health
• Greek: genesis = source
• In combination = Sources of health

7. ‘Father’ of Salutogenesis
• Aaron Antonovsky
• (1923 – 1994) - Austria
• Medical Sociologist
• Coined term in 1968 to explain
Why did some manage to
avoid illness and do well even
under extreme stress? (Nazi
Holocaust survivors)
It is appropriate to that an Austrian
Scholar of international repute,
Dr Gerhardt Tucek is our chief guest!

8. SALUTOGENESIS versus PATHOGENESIS…
Pathogenesis
• What causes diseases?
• About Avoiding Problems
• Disease/Illness an anomaly
• Reactive - Absence Disease
• Against pain or Loss
• Prepares one to live
Salutogenesis
• What causes Health?
• About reaching Potential
• We are inherently flawed,
• Proactive - Presence Health
• For Gain or Growth
• Discover how to live fully
AND

9. Salutogenesis = Foster Wellness
• Medicine is increasingly focused on the origin of
illness
• Equally important to ask:
"what is the origin of health & wellness?"
• Aaron Antonovsky:
“Relatively unstressed people were more resistant
to illness.”
• He proposed: “the experience of well-being is
based on Sense of Coherence.”

10. Sense of Coherence
“My world is
understandable”
“My world is
manageable”
“My world has
meaning”

11. Part 2 – Music Therapy for
Wellness & Optimal Healing

12. • Healing: “the processes of recovery, repair, renewal,
and reintegration that contribute to a person’s
physical, mental, social, and spiritual health and well-
being.”
• Healing and Cure are mutually complementary, and
both are essential.
• Adopt Healing-oriented practices and environments
to create an optimal healing environment (OHE)

13. 4 domains of Optimal
Healing Environment (OHE)

14. *OHE: 1-Internal Domain
• Music therapist
attends to the internal
factors
• Mindfulness = Focus
• Wholeness
* optimal healing environment
PERSONAL

15. OHE: 2-Interpersonal Domain
• Music-therapist attends
to the interpersonal
factors
• Therapeutic relationship
for wellness
• Promote Holistic healing

16. OHE: 3-Behavioral Domain
• Music-therapist
attends to the
behavioral factors
• Promotion of “healthy
lifestyle through music”
• Integrates well with
“Western Medicine”

17. OHE: 4-External Domain
• Music-therapist
attends to the external
factors
• Foster
Equanimity, Joy &
symbiosis with Nature
through music and
sound vibrations

18. Summing up…
• Preventive and promotive practices protect against
pathology
• Health goes beyond mere absence of pathology
• Up to 40% of illnesses have no pathological basis (MUS)
• Lifestyle-based wellness choices can maximize
positive life experiences (salutogenesis)
• joy, vitality, serenity, happiness, self-actualization, and
other qualities, which make life worth living
• Music therapy promotes wellness and healing by
creating optimal healing environment.

19. From:
“what did I do today to treat
disease / illness?”

20. To Asking this too:
“what did I do today to create
health/wellness?”

21. Thank You All !
Music washes away from the soul,
the dust of everyday life.
-- Berthold Auerbach