music, therapy, and me

I woke up this morning with a couple of people on my mind. This happens to me pretty much every day, but today's people were music therapists, so I naturally went into "I should use this as my blog topic for this morning" thought mode. Here goes. Who are your music therapy heroes? Why do you look up to them? What do they do that makes them heroic to you? My heroes have changed many times over the years. When I was a high school student, my first music therapy heroes were Carol Merle-Fishman and Shelly Katsh. They wrote a book entitled The Music Within You , and it was the only thing that I had (other than a mimeographed brochure from the National Association for Music Therapy) that had anything to do with music therapy. For two years before I finished high school, the book was the only thing I could find that was related to what I thought I wanted to do with my life. I devoured that book, over and over again, in an effort to understand what I was called to do with my ...

I spent the day at work wearing my sunglasses due to a light sensitivity caused by a recent migraine. It was interesting to watch responses of clients to the fact that my face was half hidden by the glasses. One young man stood and stared at me, refusing to sit down until I showed him my eyes. Once I looked over the glasses so he could see my eyes, it seemed like he thought, "there you are," and sat down without further difficulty. There were a couple of interactions like that, often with my kids who don't verbalize much. A bit of suspicion shared with me until I could verify my identity; what I call the body-snatcher check - "Are you really you, MJ? Prove it by doing something only you would do!" I also realized several things about myself - I use my eyes to communicate...often! Also, my behavior management techniques feel weaker when I cannot use my eyes to direct looks of approval (or not) towards specific clients at specific times in the behavior cycle. It...

Everyday, I see posts on social media that go a bit like this... I want to learn some more songs to sing with my [fill-in population details here]. My song repertoire is getting a bit stale. Thanks in advance (most often "TIA").  - Many different music therapists I often roll my eyes, rant and rave a bit, and then move on. I don't respond when folks post things like that, mainly because I think that there are no songs that are specific to only one population and that ANY song can be adapted to work with any person sitting in front of you in a therapy session. I also think that there are so many different sources available that asking someone else to do a google search for you is just plain old silly. Take the 15 seconds and do your own search! Rant over. In my years of being a music therapy clinician, I have found that the song really doesn't matter. By shifting my focus from "song" to "music," I was able to find a deeper understanding of ...

I am in the midst of a self-care dilemma. Yesterday, the second day of this new school year, I started a migraine headache. I can always tell when my migraines are coming on because I get a visual aura (mine is a crescent-shaped series of sparkles - very pretty, but very difficult to see past) before the headache starts. After my third session, I wasn't able to see the entire right side of anything. I waited until my partial blindness subsided, and then I went home. I ended up sleeping all afternoon, waking up to talk to a friend and family members on the phone, and then went to sleep for the night. I woke up this morning, shivering and unable to get warm. I am now sitting in front of the computer, wearing my heaviest sweater coat, trying to get my body to feel warmth. I am struggling with feelings of guilt and responsibility as I am deciding whether to stay home another day or attempt to do my job. (By the way, I am leaning towards staying home, so I probably will do so.) ...

I am the self-declared queen of half-formed therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). Having given myself this crown, I now present to you... An Unfinished Idea I use 4X6 inch index cards to jot down notes, song snippets, ideas, and lyrics as they occur to me. This is a habit I started as an undergraduate, way back in the pre-home computer days (We had to use typewriters or go down to the computer lab for an hour of computer time back in those days) as part of an assignment. It's a habit that has stuck with me even though, these days, I use my computer to organize and publish TMEs - the cards are still here. Anyway, I was looking around for a TME for today, and saw my card boxes sitting on my desk. I randomly chose a letter - L - and browsed through the cards. In that stack, I found this idea. I've had this idea, in this stage, for a long time. I've never really fleshed it out. Maybe it's time now. This is my stream of consciousness when I go through TME develop...

Ah. Music Therapy Advocacy. One of those things that every music therapist has to do as a regular part of his/her job on an almost daily basis. It is an important part of our profession, but that doesn't keep me from wanting to make things a bit easier for us all. I wish that other people knew some facts (and my opinions) about music therapy to make the job of all music therapists just a bit easier. Music therapy is more than just listening to music. Anyone can make music. Anyone can turn on an iPod for someone to listen to. Anyone can sing or dance or play a drum, but simply doing these things does not mean that just anyone is doing music therapy. Music therapy requires more than just listening to music. Music therapists have education and training in how to apply music and elements of music to support and assist clients in making progress towards specific, targeted personal goals. How we do this is centered in our education in psychology, physiology, anatomy, sociology, peda...

After a long, LONG weekend without a computer, I am now back online with a functioning machine again. Whew. It is amazing how much you depend on electronic devices that you don't really think about until you cannot use those devices. What did I do when I had some "lack of computer" time? I made things. That's what I tend to do. I look around at the house that needs to be vacuumed and think, "I want to make something." The vacuuming goes undone, but I have some pretty cool visual aids to use in therapy over the next several months. Next week is notation week in my music therapy clinic. The second week of the month always has a focus on something related to notation. (Just so you know, the first week of the month is focused on instruments/instrument families/ensembles. The third week is our Musician of the Month week, and the last week is music creating week. There you go.) I struggle with teaching notation to my clients. Many of the foundations to ...