music, therapy, and me

Wow. Today's look back into my thoughts and blog posts has hit me hard. Check out this post from July 14, 2011 to see what I was thinking and writing about back then. It is definitely a concept that I am still living, thinking about, and trying to figure out - 12 years later... The past week was a difficult week - seems like the same sort of week that I had back in July 2011. This time around, I don't think that I did anything wrong. The students that had a bad time in music therapy came in that way - they had decided that they were going to hate every single thing that they were provided before they even knew what was g oing on. There isn't much that I can do when students are bound and determined to hate what we do - I believe that music therapy is most effective when the client is interested and invested in the process - when clients are unwilling to participate, then are the things that happen in a session actually therapy? My intern is going through this situation wit...

I am currently in the throes of my summer situation - asthma. For some reason, during the summer months, my breathing gets all screwed up. It's a combination of the heat, the humidity (oh, the humidity), the pollen, and it knocks me out! Add in a tendency to avoid the sunshine and WHAM! It all adds up to my summer slump. I'm having to lug my nebulizer and my additional breathing medications to work with me. It is difficult to do much singing at the moment with my tight lungs and increasingly sore throat. I am on so many medications, at the moment, that I probably cure asthma of bystanders just by walking past them. This is no fun. So, what does a busy music therapist do when in the throes of a long-lasting asthma attack? Change things a bit. Sing as long as I can sing (when the coughing starts, it's time to stop singing and focus on breathing). Use the coping skills that we are teaching our students (especially the deep breathing - by focusing, I can usually calm ...

I love talking to interns about various topics in music therapy that I think are important. I run an intern seminar series on an occasional basis that allows us to talk about things like their rights and responsibilities. I offer this series for free to interns and take advantage of the two month schedule to put in two topics that I think are important to talk about and to discuss, but that are completely based on my own opinion. Those two topics are Understanding Music as Our Tool and The Therapeutic Triad . During these topic presentations, I spend lots of time talking about some of the things I write about in my blog - for example, we talk about the idea of changing musical elements to support client skill development - using the same song to accommodate client preferences, needs, and concerns. Then, I start the discussion about the therapeutic triad. That discussion is the one that elicits the most challenges from music therapy interns (which I LOVE, by the way!). Comments ...

I've always been someone who was interested in how music therapists do their sessions with clients. I am less interested in doing experimental research as I am in doing phenomenological or maybe epistemological research. I have always been so much more interested in how and why music therapists and clients engage in the act of music therapy than I have been about which type of song produces which effect. I figure that this means that I am very interested in the nuts and bolts of music therapy - the reasons we choose the music and musical elements that we choose during our sessions. For me, these basic elements require more than just learning how to run a music therapy intervention or to complete a music therapy sessions. These nuts and bolts of music therapy require deeper thinking and purposeful decision-making during the experience. This is not something easily taught in 4 years of undergraduate training, and is also not something that would be easily taught in 6 years of book ...

Last night was webinar night, and I shared information about the core of my music therapy philosophy. This is one of my favorite topics to natter on about, and I did. It's interesting to share bits and pieces of my thoughts about music therapy (what is and what isn't), and how I have traveled to my current ideas and opinions about music therapy. (Please note the word "opinions" in that last statement - my philosophy is my opinion about music therapy - not fact, just opinion, but my opinion is important to me nonetheless! Rant over? I hope so!!) Even more interesting to me is how other people challenge and defend my opinions about music as a therapeutic modality. So, part of my philosophy statement in brief... There are three parts of the therapeutic triad that must be present in order for music therapy to occur. Those parts are the therapist, the client, and the music. For music therapy to happen, all three members of the triad must be engaged in a purposeful in...

So, I make my interns read chapters from different textbooks of mine to illustrate specific ideas. These books are not always the most up-to-date, but they do exemplify specific ideas of music therapy. One of my favorites is Bruscia's Defining Music Therapy . I was sitting in the only consistently air-conditioned spot in the other part of our school (my office doesn't have a vent, so no A/C there) reading the second edition of this textbook. I was sitting there, waiting for kids to leave for the day, reading this text and marveling at the fact that I get so much more from this text now that I've been a therapist for a long time than when I was in my undergraduate training. We read the first edition (yep, that's how old I am) way back in the olden days. It was interesting, gave me lots of things to think about, and formed the major part of our senior year discussions. Since then, I've read it about every five years. Each time gives me more insight into my life as a...

Yesterday, I didn't do a very good job of holding up my end of the therapeutic triad. I wasn't really participating in the therapeutic process as much as I could have or should have. As I was watching my clients interact with music throughout the day, I kept thinking, "I could be doing so much more." Truly, not one of my better days as a therapist... Now, please don't think that I usually sit and watch my clients cavort around the music room without any type of intervention from me - that is certainly NOT the case at all! Unfortunately, yesterday was a day of pain for me, and I was trying hard not to telegraph my pain and fever to my students. It was more prudent for me to take a more passive role in the session than try to engage in the middle of pain. Today, I opted to remain at home rather than head to my summer school sessions and try to keep the increasing pain to myself. I should be able to return to my normal routine and the task of being a therapist to...

What is the best thing about music therapy? For me, one of the best things about music therapy is that moment when one of my kids looks at me and asks, "Do I have music with you today??" I love that moment. I love that my students look forward to music therapy during the week. They want to be in music therapy. They want to see what we are going to do. They want to work on their therapeutic goals using music. They want to make music. The best thing about music therapy, bar none, is the client. I often talk to my interns about "the therapeutic triad." The triad is made up of a client, a therapist, and music. Of all of these things, the client is always most important. Without a client, there cannot be music therapy. Simple thought, right? Right. I have been trying to figure out a good visual for this therapeutic triad concept. All I can really think of at this time is a Venn Diagram - three overlapping circles that overlap in several places. This picture h...