#346 Come Sing a Song with Me by Carolyn McDade  

The physiological benefits of singing, and music more generally, have long been explored. Music making exercises the brain as well as the body, but singing is particularly beneficial for improving breathing, posture, and muscle tension. Listening to and participating in music has been shown to be effective in pain relief, too, probably due to the release of neurochemicals such as endorphin (a natural painkiller responsible for the "high" experienced after intense exercise).  There's also some evidence to suggest that music can play a role in sustaining a healthy immune system, by reducing the stress hormone cortisol and boosting the Immunoglobulin A antibody.

Music has been used in different cultures throughout history in many healing rituals, and is already used as a therapy in our own culture (for the relief of mental illness, breathing conditions, and language impairment, for example). Everyone can sing-however much we might protest-meaning it is one of the most accessible forms of music making, too. Song is a powerful therapy indeed.

A lot of work is left to be done in the study of how the body and brain respond to music and singing in groups. In the meantime, as science works to explain what every singer already knows, no matter where you fall on the voice suckage scale-sing. I know of no other activity that gives so much and is this eminently affordable and accessible.  Singing might be our most perfect drug; the ultimate mood regulator, lowering rates of anxiety, depression and loneliness, while at the same time amplifying happiness and joy, with no discernible, unpleasant side effects.

#307 The Human Touch Can Light the Flame by Lee Hastings Bristol, poem by John Andrew Storey

Extensive research by the University of Miami's Touch Research Institute has revealed that human touch has wide-ranging physical and emotional benefits for people of all age groups. In the Institute's experiments, touch lessened pain, improved pulmonary function, increased growth in infants, lowered blood glucose and improved immune function. Human touch is important for all ages, but by the time children reach their teen years, they receive only half as much touching as they did in the early part of their lives. Adults touch each other even less.

#311 Let It Be A Dance by Ric Masten wrote this song for Barbara Brussell, a friend of one of his daughters. Barbara was a high school dance student who was seriously injured in a car accident involving a drunk driver that killed her teacher and two of her classmates. Her knee was so badly damaged that it was doubtful that she would ever walk again, let alone dance. He visited her in the hospital and bet her that within a year she would come dancing up the road to his home in Big Sur to a song that he would write. The song he wrote within a few days was Let It Be A Dance. A year later, she came dancing, limping, but dancing up the road as he played his guitar and sang, "Let it be a dance we do./ May I have this dance with you?/ Through the good times/ And the bad times, too,/ Let it be a dance." 

It was included in our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, which was published in 1993. Masten was pleased to have this song included, but he did not appreciate the poetic license that someone took in changing one of the words in the song. In the third verse he wrote, "share the laughter, bare the pain," as in reveal the pain. This was changed to "bear the pain," as in carry the pain. When Ric Masten performed in a Pittsburgh church, he asked everyone to pencil in the correct word in the brand new hymnals, writing "b-a-r-e" in place of "b-e-a-r."