For many years, I have been reading various articles and research papers about the benefits of 
playing piano that were made public. Even before reading these articles, I knew that playing the piano would greatly enhance one’s health, as my health clearly benefitted from it. As a result, I began telling my family and friends about taking piano lessons, particularly if they wanted to reduce their level of stress and lower their blood pressure. I have been promoting this for several decades and I continue to do so.
Academic research has provided conclusive evidence of the major advantages that musical instruments, especially pianos provide people. It has proven to help children gain their level of confidence, develop cognitive skills, and improve their social networks and skills. In addition, playing the piano has proven to enhance a child’s academic achievement. Adults (from all age groups), through taking piano lessons, have been able to reduce their level of stress and keep their minds exercised and healthy. In this blog post, I have listed a number of advantages that one receives when playing the piano regularly:
Brain Activity
Research studies have shown that when a child or an adult play the piano, it helped them improve their overall brain activity. Therefore, playing the piano can certainly stimulate one’s mind.
Confidence Level
A majority of my customers has told me in the past that their level of confidence has amplified since they started playing the piano. This reminds me of a friend who lost her confidence after a tragic accident. Family and friends suggested that she took piano lessons, and a few months later, she regained the confidence that she had lost.
Creativity
Learning how to play piano helps individuals to increase their sense of creativity. It has been confirmed through studies that piano players were far more creative than those who did not play the piano.
Depression and Associated Conditions
Playing the piano helps a large number of people to effectively control their depression and associated conditions.
Memory Loss
Piano lessons can help people deal with conditions related to memory loss, especially if they play the piano on a regular basis.
Playing this musical instrument can add a lot more to a person’s lifestyle and it can certainly promote a healthy body and mind permanently. I have been a piano dealer for many years and I dealt with numerous piano teachers. They have shared plenty of benefits of playing the piano, but some of them I did not mention here. Dr. Gordon Shaw (University of California) and Dr. Frances Rauscher (University of Wisconsin) are only two of the many other researchers who have confirmed these incredible benefits.
Their research studies show the significance of music in a child’s early developmental stages and these studies have garnered numerous supporters from all over the world. They surveyed the link between intelligence and music, and found that music training, particularly piano lessons, is far greater compared to computer instruction in improving children’s conceptual reasoning skills. This clearly means that playing this musical instrument is more advantageous to a child’s comprehension of mathematics and science.
Through their research, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Rauscher compared the influences of non-musical and musical training for cerebral improvement. Their objective was to prove that music could improve a person’s spatial-reasoning capability. Through their experiments, they gathered four groups of children:
Group A – received private piano lessons
Group B – obtained singing lessons
Group C – took private computer studies
Group D – received no additional training
Children who obtained piano or keyboard lessons performed 34% better than the other groups in the exams measuring their spatial-temporal skill, which clearly showed that music could uniquely improve higher brain functions needed for engineering, science, and mathematics. Personally, I believe playing the piano habitually can definitely enhance a person’s life – mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Would you consider taking piano lessons to improve your health?