Music

Music as a suggestive, relaxing medium. Lozanov researched a wide variety of means for presenting material to be learned, which would facilitate the mentally relaxed, receptive state of mind he had found to be optimal for learning.

Yoga exercises, breathing techniques, special speech intonations were all tried with varying degrees of success. None of them, however, was found acceptable by nearly all cultural norms and belief systems.

Music proved to be the ideal medium, both for the purpose of creating a mentally relaxed state and for providing a vehicle for carrying the material to be learned into the open, receptive mind.

Music can become a powerful facilitator of holistic full-brain learning. After conducting numerous controlled experiments using a wide variety of music, Lozanov concluded that music of the Classical and Early Romantic periods was most effective for the first presentation of material to be learned. The music of Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven is dramatic, emotionally engaging, ordered and harmoniously structured. It stimulates, invites alertness and its harmony and order evoke ease and relaxation. For the second concert presentation of material,  Lozanov found that Baroque music was especially suited. The music of  Bach, Händel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Corelli (among others) have a less personal, more rigorously structured quality, providing a background of order and regularity which supports the more straight-forward presentation of material during the second concert very well. 

Intonation is strongly connected with the rest of the suggestive elements. The intonation in music and speech is one of the basic expressive means, along with formidable form-creating influence and potential in many psycho-physiological directions.  “Learning is, state of mind dependent”. When varying your voice you “reach” different “states of mind”.

Concert pseudo-passivity (concentrative psycho-relaxation)”

An important moment in suggestopedia. The artistic organisation of the suggestopedic educational process creates conditions for concert pseudo-passivity in the student. In this state the reserve capabilities of the personality are shown most fully. The concert pseudo-passivity (concentrative psycho-relaxation) overcomes the anti-suggestive barriers, creating a condition of trust and infantilization in the student, who in a naturally calm state accompanied by a state of meditation, without special auto-genic training, can absorb and work with a huge quantity of information. In this state both brain hemispheres are activated”. (Creating Wholeness through Art; by Evelina Gateva p.28)