Synthesis Sunday: Diving Back Into Thinking and Writing and Learning

I am not enjoying the current season of my life. My physical therapist has told me to decrease stress and increase my meditation practices to help with my slipped disc and sciatica. I told my physical therapist that the major cause of my stress is my slipped disc and sciatica. I do not really meditate. I find it difficult to empty my mind and not think about other things I could be doing. I do better with journaling and mindfulness practices than meditation. Most of my time is spent trying to figure out how I am going to move from one place to another, and I am anticipating pain each time, so I think I am a bit more tense than I need to be. It's quite a mess right now, but I am trying to find ways to alleviate the physical pain and get the mental processes to work past that pain barrier. Blogging is one of the ways that I try to do this.

At the moment, I am sitting at my computer, watching the western sky lighten as the sun tries to come up on this cold Easter morning. Yesterday, I attended the Music Education and Special Needs group sessions led by Dr. Rhoda Bernard at Berklee. There were at least two other music therapists there - they identified themselves in the chat, and I wondered how many of the rest of the participants are music therapists - if you are one, would you mention it in the comments?

Nothing that we talked about yesterday was new to me. We covered general information about models of treatment and neurodiversity. Most of what we will talk about will be music education based - that's the purpose of the group - but I think I will be able to make transfers to my particular clinical setting without difficulty. I can also complete two projects for the two levels of learning without difficulty as well. There are some non-Saturday assignments to complete during the week - responses and contributions to discussion questions and all that.

At work, I am watching most of the sessions happening. My senior intern is doing her full caseload, and I am staying out of sight for those sessions. My junior intern is going to be starting the process of running sessions - this week the assignment is to run opening TMEs for each of his assigned groups. This will be his first foray into music therapy at the facility, but I know that he is ready. I'm not so sure that he thinks he is ready, but it is time. Since I am stuck in my office for many of my assigned sessions, I am doing some work on idea generation and visual aids and TME design and all that. I have to listen to what is happening in the sessions so I can write feedback, so I cannot immerse myself into things that require me to listen like composition or instrument practice. I can cut out pieces for a file folder activity while listening to what is going on in the music therapy room without being too distracted by what I am doing, so that is what I tend to do more than anything else - especially right now as I am not able to move as quickly as I would like. If this back stuff resolves (and my medical advisors seem to think that it is here to stay), then I will spend more of my office time engaged in my visual aid sorting and cataloging quest for this work year.

The other thing that I have been working on is increasing my communication options for my clients during sessions. I want to make a binder that will have most of the music therapy specific choices and communication elements that we often need in sessions but do not have readily available. By making binders, my clients will have more options to tell me what they want and need from me during sessions. I can fold this project into one of my two projects for my Berklee study group. I know that I do not have to tell anyone here that communication is important. I want my clients to have more opportunities and tools to tell me what they think, want, need, and hate. My rationalization about using binders is that I can make multiple copies pretty easily. For students who I see more frequently, I can add specific elements to personalize it for their use - new words, specific preferences, performers, songs, and other stuff as appropriate. If I work it right, I can use prong folders to store these communication pages - those are less bulky than binders, but I can use either.

The ultimate plan for these communication tools is that clients will access a basic copy as they walk into the music therapy room before they sit down. The books will always be present and will be part of the session every single week. Therapists can add things to the books - choices for specific songs or TMEs or different instruments. Therapists can also remove some things from the books - choices that are no longer relevant - but therapists will not be able to remove most of the communication elements that will be in the book.

There may be a need to personalize these books so that each client has their own copy. That will mean a bit of storage that will need to be made to store 80-120 books, but I can make that out of cardboard, so it would just mean that I would have to make it, but that's a project for future me rather than present me. Present me has to focus on the basic vocabulary that has to be included in order to organize the basic books. This project will finish in a template and 12 copies of that template (that is the largest number of students per class that we had before the pandemic hit). This project will probably never end since personalizing the books will necessitate constant revisions and new communication elements based on the unique individuals that arrive and leave sessions. Students could take their personalized books with them when they leave the facility.

It is nice to feel my creative juices start to bubble again. It has been a long time since I had any sort of new thought or idea. It is time to start putting my energy into things for my clients again.