Supplemental Sunday: Beyond the Visual Aid

Sundays are the days that I write about visual aids; things that I have made to supplement my music therapy experiences for my clients. I got into this habit because there really isn't anyone else talking about visual aids and music therapy, and I like making things for my clients. It occurs to me that my writing about these things may indicate a skewed view of what I do with my clients.

NOTE: I do not believe that every music therapy experience has to have a visual aid or a prop. In fact, I believe just the opposite!! I think a good therapeutic music experience has to be sound without a fancy picture in order for it to be considered "good." There HAS to be some logical and music-based reasoning behind the idea first and foremost. A pretty visual aid will not make a crap TME a great TME. Please don't think that everything I do with my clients has visual aids. Most are done without visual stimulation... I just write about these things on Sundays...
 
I often write about making visual aids for use with my clients, but there are so many things that I use that aren't just for the visual sense but that have tactile, auditory, proprioceptive, and vestibular sensory elements as well. Today, we are going to go beyond the visual aid into a world of other types of supplements to music therapy treatment.

Early in my career, I was trained as a sensory integrative therapist - one who attempts to provide opportunities to engage as many senses as possible to assist clients in interpreting and managing sensory information. As a result of that early training, I look at all parts of the sensory system when I am looking for things to supplement my music therapy treatment.

Consider the lowly bean bag.

• Visual: you can see the bean bag, you can see its color, you can see its location, you can see its shape.
• Auditory: you can hear the sound of the beans as they collide with one another, you can hear its landing, you can often hear it as it moves through the air or on the ground during movement
• Gustatory: I guess you COULD lick the bean bag to see how it tastes, but that's not often encouraged. If it does happen (and, in my environment, it often does), there is benefit to gaining this sense as well
• Olfactory: you can smell the bean bag to see what odors it has collected
• Tactile: you can feel the covering of the bag, you can feel the weight of the beans, you can feel the individual beans or peas or beads or pieces of rice
• Proprioceptive: you can feel the weight of the bag in relation to different body parts, you can place the bag on arms/legs/etc. to develop body awareness, you can feel the impact when the bag lands on body parts
• Vestibular: you can feel the movement and force required to throw the bean bag, you can feel the motions to engage with the bean bag, you can feel the air displacement as the bean bag moves past you

As I think about using bean bags in my Therapeutic Music Experiences (TMEs), I have many options and areas of focus to justify their use. The list above only considers the sensory benefits for using bean bags - there are many more social, cognitive, academic, behavioral, motor, and musical benefits available as well. I haven't even started to think about those things.

If I have written a passing song (which I have - check out the post from last Tuesday here), it needs to be an engaging type of song to catch the attention of my clients. It also needs to be something that I can do with just about any object. It is highly enriched in a sensory manner if I add bean bags or shaker eggs or another multi-sensory object for clients to pass.

People may ask (and they do) things like, "How is passing a bean bag something to do in music therapy? We can do that in our class." When I have started the process of thinking through all of the things that I can do with a simple bean bag, I am able to link the use of a bean bag in a passing song with client goals and objectives. For example, "we are working on coordinating our grasp and release rhythms to improve fine motor skills" or "we are using music as an entrainment figure to assist us in making our movements in a time based pattern." By this time, they realize that I have therapeutic reasons for just about anything and don't often challenge my TME choices again.

(Did you notice that each of the examples given were rooted in a musical element? That's the key, folks!! We HAVE to show how music plays a part in every thing we do with our clients. Oops, gonna get off my soapbox now...)

I have lots of visual aids in my files, but I also have balls, scarves, bean bags, squishes, feather boas, brushes, soap mitts, stuffed animals, card games, boxes, bags, dice, Musini, round bells, and many more things that have served to supplement my TMEs over the years. Each one has been carefully considered before being included in music therapy treatment, and each one enhances TMEs in ways that allows clients to move towards their therapeutic goals.

Have a good Sunday, all.