Emotions linked to India ragas for therapy

Assessing emotions elicited by Indian ragas, can aid in meditation and therapy, says Dhrupad singer and music therapist Prakriti Dutta.

Dutta is developing a software that can quantitatively assess moods associated with various Indian ragas, as an application of music therapy.

"Some ragas are happy ones while some can be linked to sadness. So far, we have formed a loop with 10 to 12 ragas and we are now planning to extend it to form an entire series to be used as a meditative tool," Dutta said here at a seminar on science behind yoga and meditation.

Each raga will be 20 to 25 minutes long and depending on the case history of the person, a particular raga or set of raga will be used for meditation, she said.

The endeavour is an extension of the work done by the Deepa Ghosh Research Foundation (DGRF) which had focused on four ragas-Bahar, Miyan-ki-malhar, Chhaya-nat, Darbari-kanada.

"If you do an electroencephalogram (EEG) before and after playing a particular raga, you can see which one co-relates to more stimuli. Depending on the pattern, one can use a raga for therapy. For example, raga Bahar is happy while raga Miyan-ki-Malhar is linked with sadness and you could use them suitably for therapy," said researcher Susmita Bhaduri citing a recent paper published in Current Science.

--IANS

sgh/ssp/sku/