"NTM" TME Challenge Update

I worked for three days (so far) this week, and I came up with two formal therapeutic music experiences (TME) and one on-the-spot TME this week. I need one more for this week to meet my self-imposed "NTM" TME Challenge (read more about it here). 

Since it is the week closest to May the Fourth, I'm taking advantage of all things Star Wars (and my very large amount of Star Wars stuff) to celebrate my favorite week of the year while at work. I took in my R2-D2 robot and showed my clients how it worked. We also talked about my favorite composer (you guessed it), John Williams, and we did some light saber conducting to the soundtrack for A New Hope (Number IV - if you are unfamiliar with the canon...). At the end of another session, I did an on-the-spot improvisation song for commands to the robot to see if he would be listening to us. He wasn't.

I've written up one of the TMEs already - Light Saber Conducting. I made an instrument playing card game relay (it uses my Rogue One playing cards, but can be used with any type of playing cards, actually). Let me know if you'd like the TME. I'll make it available on my website if anyone would like it...well, after I finish up the formal TME. The idea worked for one of my groups, and it seemed fun for another group as well.

That means that I've created seven new TMEs since I started this entire process. That's not bad. It's not quite the number I "should" have - that number is eight, but it's really good for someone who hasn't written many new TMEs lately. It's been a bit more difficult to use my TME ideas in sessions this week because of my determination to play with R2, but that's okay as well. If I can come up with a TME idea for today, I'll have the eight that I want to have (4 per week because Friday is a non-group session day) for this two-week period.

So, what are the benefits of doing a challenge like this?

So far, I'm finding that I am more interested in session strategizing than I was before all of this. I am also finding more opportunities to practice and to develop new ideas. I also enjoy reviewing the work of other people - music therapists and other composers and resources - and creating TMEs based on their works. There is something quite nice about having boundaries that have quite a bit of leeway. If I have no ideas of my own, I can always look at a book or go through my TME database for something else.

My goal is to do this (at least) for every work day in the month of May. Taking out the three TMEs that I developed in the month of April, that means that I will have 18 total "NTM" TMEs by May 24th. Not all of them will be mine, so I can't publish them all, but that's the start of a pretty good system.

There you go.

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