Your Music For Healing

Author: Alex Jacobs

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  • Healing Music for Alzheimer’s and Dementia

    My first experiences of sharing healing music were with seniors with Alzheimer’s and dementia, starting around 2009. Starting then, I continued to make many visits to skilled nursing facilities, as well as senior day programs.

    “We need to take you home with us. She’s speaking in full sentences, which she has not been doing since she had a stroke.” – Family member of person I played music for in the hospital

    Music is universally recognized as a healing tool for people in “memory care” facilities. Even during my training as a CMP (Certified Music Practitioner), our guidance for playing for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, was to play “familiar music”. Current guidance recognizes that it’s even better to play the music the individual would have been exposed to during their teenage years (13-19).

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  • Inviting Myself To The Right Concert

    I’ve always been focused on playing healing music for the moment. Not so much on figuring out how to market myself. So, I couldn’t figure out how to get the attention of the organizers of a big annual musical Summer Solstice showcase in Oakland. However, I knew my music would be perfect for the event. So I just brought my guitar and set up in my own little section of the sprawling Chapel of the Chimes, to my delight and that of the visitors that came through where I was set up.

    Among the people who filtered in and out of the room where I was playing was a DJ of a very established weekly radio program on KPFA called “Music Of The World”.

    She slipped a note in my guitar case that said, “if you want to be on the radio, contact me.” I did, and it was a highlight of my musical life, getting to play a live concert for healing, to the whole radio audience at once!

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  • Healing Music For The Support of Unthinkable Loss

    It’s amazing what the right music at the right time can do.

    This recording (click play below) was made last week at a very special event, described below.

    I brought my healing music to a gathering of about 50 people to support them through the painful emotions of grief due to having experienced tragic pregnancy or infant loss. The music at the moment of this recording was gently guiding them back to a safe, grounded place so they could connect with each other and move forward safely into the night.

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  • Returning to The Source of Healing Music

    This is a live recording of healing music I played at a very special event that I have had the honor to bring my music to every year since 2019:

    The event is arranged by the nurses at a local hospital to provide a gathering space for families who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss to come together to remember and grieve.

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  • Healing Versus Curing

    Curing is the absence of symptoms. Looking for curing usually unfolds as a search for something or someone that we give our power to. And if we’re lucky, we feel better. If you’re reading this now, this path may not have worked out for you, and you’re on a deeper quest. 

    Healing (root meaning: wholeness), on the other hand, is a result, available to us right now, that involves bringing our own power back to ourselves. The beautiful thing is that it’s always available, even if the symptoms we want to escape don’t go away. We can seek healing within our whole experience, the good and the bad. 

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  • How Does Music Heal?

    There are as many answers to this question as there are people who have experienced the power of music to heal.

    This is my answer: music isn’t doing the healing. Music is reminding us, on the level of vibration, not words, of our own capacity to heal.

    I’ve worked with this concept intuitively, without thinking about how to put it into words, for most of my life. Thinking about it now, it makes a lot more sense to me now why most of my music is instrumental. I pretty only much add singing to music as another vehicle for melody. I’ve never focused so much on the words themselves, so there’s less to get in the way of the healing energy I want to share.

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  • What Is The Best Healing Music For You?

    I wanted to share a few words to remind you that you already know the answer to this question.

    But first, I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a collection of healing songs for people in a place that could be described as “hitting bottom”. This is the music that will be there for you when you’re looking for the strength to answer the question of “what next?”

    Here’s a rough mix of a song that will be on the album:

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  • Every Day a Birth Day

    This time of year seems to have a disproportionate amount of birthdays on my calendar. I was reflecting on my own experiences of being in pain, that sometimes when we can’t yet see the light at the other side of the tunnel, it can be helpful to treat each day like a birthday, a new beginning. It’s in that spirit that I created the music that became “Alone But Feeling a Helping Hand”. May it bring you peace.

    Listen on Spotify

    Listen on Apple Music

    Listen on YouTube

    If you are interested, you can check out and follow my Spotify artist page, which includes all my released music, as well as my curated playlists.

  • Gone, But Here Always

    It’s amazing how music can connect us to things and people from the past, and bring them right into our present. Saturday was the anniversary of the death of someone who was a friend, a mentor, and my first guitar teacher when I was 15. This weekend I listened to a bunch of recordings I made a few years ago, while playing her guitar. I’ll be turning some of them into new songs that will be published soon.

    If you are interested, you can check out and follow my Spotify artist page, which includes all my released music, as well as my curated playlists.

  • When Making People Fall Asleep is a Good Thing

    What makes music healing? In my experience and per my training in therapeutic music, the right music for the right person, at the right time is healing. In my days as a hospital musician, there were moments where what I was bringing was helpful, and other times not so much. My training was also to not question why music might not work for someone at a particular time, but to say “thanks” and move on to someone else. I always enjoyed when I was able to write down on the visit note in the medical chart: “Patient fell asleep. Moved on to next room”. In the hospital environment, rest is healing. So music that put someone to sleep was “just what the doctor ordered”.

    If you are interested, you can check out and follow my Spotify artist page, which includes all my released music, as well as my curated playlists.