Music Saved Her Life. Now She Wants to Save Yours.

After the loss of three loved ones, Jacqui McLoughlin was debilitated from grief. Then one moment at a Flaming Lips concert changed everything.

Header photo by Elizaveta Galitckaia/Alamy Stock Photo | Edited by Estelle Erasmus

The floor of London’s Alexandra Palace concert venue vibrated with the sounds of bass and the pulsating beat of the drums as rock band the Flaming Lips performed on stage. Zoned out to the hypnotic beat of the music, fans danced, sweat dripping from their foreheads. Jacqui McLoughlin, a musician and artist, then in her 20s, was having a different experience. As she listened to the clashing drums, the screech of the guitar, and Wayne Coyne’s singing, she fell into a meditative state.

“I felt the singer was giving me permission to feel my grief and dark feelings,” McLoughlin recalls. “Everything I’d been running away from.”

It was 2011 — the year McLoughlin’s world had shattered. “My college roommate was killed in a freak train accident, my cousin died in a car accident, and my best friend passed away. I wasn’t sure how I could go on living when people were dying all around me,” she recounts.

While the thousands of concertgoers who filled the auditorium that night were there for rock music, for McLoughlin, it was also a form of therapy.

Using music to lift anxiety, lessen stress, or soothe physical pain is a type of medicine that’s been used for centuries. In Biblical times, music was used to evict “bad spirits” from people’s bodies. Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that music could purify emotions, and Plato thought that it could align one’s spirit with the cosmos. Throughout history, music has been used to cure headaches, lessen despair, and treat dementia. And modern science is backing up these beliefs.

According to neuroscientists, the human brain is wired to respond to sound. It’s why screeching noises make us cover our ears, and the sound of breaking glass elicits fear. When it comes to soothing sounds, studies suggest that melodies played at lower sound frequencies and in specific time signatures can foster relaxation and physical healing. More recently, researchers have found that music may help lessen symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) brought on by witnessing violence, fighting in a war, or surviving childhood abuse.