I recently had the privilege of seeing two living legends of Australasian music, Paul Kelly and Neil Finn, performing together in Melbourne. They have been travelling across Australia in a hugely successful tour that I am sure will inspire further collaborations in future. And if seeing them on stage wasn’t enough, their final concert was streamed live from Sydney on YouTube, so I was able to watch the whole thing all over again.

Two very talented musicians coming together and offering new perspectives on each other’s music would be a good reason to write something about collaboration, but the connection these concerts really made for me was around the role of music in the building and strengthening of emotional health.

Music has played a powerful part in strengthening my emotional health over the years. It can be a particularly strong connector to the ‘heart centre’, one of the areas we work on with leaders when we are helping them to recognise and build their emotional health. Music can be quite powerful in lifting someone ‘above the line’ and away from feelings that might otherwise force them ‘below’.

Those of you who know me will know the significance that music has to my life, especially in the appreciation of the amazing creativity and innovation involved in bringing a song or a piece of music to others. Music has inspired and challenged me, surfacing myriad emotions from the heights of joyousness to the depths of sadness and everything in between. It can calm me down and take me to a place of stillness.

Music often provides me with a language that is much richer in its expression and context than I can find in my spoken vocabulary. It stimulates and expands my imagination, creating rich ‘pictures’ for me to explore.

There is something about the experience of music that can put us ‘in the moment’. For instance, on hearing a piece of music that I previously heard while being with another person, I can use the music as a prompt to recreate the whole experience: the time and location, images and memories of the person themselves and even the feelings that were present.

Try this yourself. Recall a piece of music that was associated with a significant time in your life, then track down that piece so that you can listen to it again. (If you don’t own the piece of music, searching YouTube is one way to find a version of virtually any song or tune you can imagine.) I sometimes suggest people go back to their adolescence with this exercise – there is normally something there can comes to mind.

As you listen to your chosen music again, take note of what you experience. There may be a little or a lot – it doesn’t really matter. The aim is simply to notice what thoughts, feelings and/or emotions do arise.

The idea is to use this music association as a simple recall process that can be built on. With the music starting you on your journey back, try to remember what the day was like when you heard this song. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? And so on.

As you start to build a more intricate picture of this time, you will find that you connect with more than just the images of it. You will also connect with the feelings and the significance of the moment. The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to recreate the experience without the music playing, and when this happens you are connecting into your heart centre, or your heart intelligence.

One of the things we all need to learn in order to build our emotional health are strategies for making these connections to each of our centres – the head, the heart and the gut. Music can play a particularly powerful role here, particularly with the heart. It certainly did for me as Neil Finn and Paul Kelly shared their amazing songs. Thanks to YouTube, I’ll be able to reconnect with this particular experience any time I like!

Gayle