music, therapy, and me

A couple of weeks ago, one of my clients challenged me during a session. The challenge was not a behavioral one but was a musical one. The client said, "Why do you always sing the same songs? Why don't you make up some new ones?" So I did. The fact of the matter is that I make up songs all the time. I often improvise music shaped around my clients. I asked the client who challenged me to improvise if he recognized when the song was completely new. He couldn't. I have a basic rule when it comes to improvising - make the music match what is going on around you. Seems simple enough, but it took me a long time to be comfortable with the idea. Nowadays, I improvise music as a matter of course. My students and staff members are often not aware that I am making music in the moment when I am doing it. I think that's a good thing. They must find the music itself engaging and appropriate for the moment itself. For someone who struggled with horrible anxiety every time...

In our clinical services team meeting this week, our Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) presented a sensory inventory checklist. As I took the test (thinking about myself), I found nothing really surprising. I have Sensory Processing Disorder, especially in the areas of vestibular, tactile, and interoceptive senses. This is not a big reveal moment for me - I was unofficially diagnosed when I did my internship and my mother had diagnosed me many years before while she was watching me interact with the world. She was watching me through her Occupational Therapist glasses and knew that I had something sensory going on. During my internship, I was the target of all experiments. As a music therapist, I was not allowed to do the diagnostic tests for official documentation, but I was allowed to learn how to look for specific responses. Since I was the only one who wasn't allowed to diagnose sensory processing difficulties (it wasn't an official disorder back in those da...

It is the end of my therapy week. I only have large group treatment on four days of the work week, so my Fridays are reserved for planning and preparation and a few individual and/or push-in sessions. This is because we move from a five day workweek during the school year to a four day workweek during the extended school year/summer sessions. It is too difficult to compress a five day group schedule into four days, so we just establish a four day group schedule and reserve Fridays for the required planning time that we are entitled to under our Master Contracts. It's complicated, but it works for us and that's what matters. ANYWAY... This week was not as full of creative ideas as I would have liked, but my students didn't really seem to miss the creativity. I have lots of ideas to develop, but it will take me some dedicated time to get the visual aids and the games together, so I'm not stressing about having everything absolutely perfect. What did we do this week?...

Thursday is always my most difficult day. This is somewhat determined by my schedule - I work a 15 hour day on Wednesdays between my full-time job and my first part-time job - but it also seems to be wear and tear on my aging body. Three days of work in a row seems to be enough, but most folks want you to work ALL the days that you are needed, so I shuffle my aching body back to work on day four ( extreme sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek comments here!). My dad didn't win the lottery last night, so off I go. I am tired when I wake up. I am tired when I start singing my first opening therapeutic music experience to my first group of students. I am tired when I leave the music therapy room, and I am tired when I get myself back to my home. These days, add in a wonky sprained knee, and I am moving more slowly than I was two weeks ago, I just plain old stagger around everywhere.  My tendency is to be somewhat negative on Thursdays, so I started making Thursdays a bit more thoughtful t...

I hate using the word "normal" in writing, speaking, or other forms of communication. I don't think that word does a good job of expressing anything. Having said that, I am using it today because it seems to describe my life situation pretty well at the moment. Monday was the solar eclipse. Not a usual happening in my life, but one that was special. It interrupted some of what we did at work, but that was about it. We didn't have any issues with glasses or an uptick in behavior concerns at work. The sun came out for most of the eclipse, and then it clouded over. The thunderstorms started about 6pm that evening. Apparently, it rained hard and heavy all night Monday and all morning on Tuesday, because when I drove to work, I noticed that all of the tributaries and creeks were full. I made it to work okay, but I apparently was lucky and missed the cresting water because many of my co-workers had significant difficulties getting to work due to flooding over many of th...

Did you know that I write books of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for music therapists to use with their clients? I call them sing about songs . You can find more information about the editions I have available on the website . (There's even one available for free!) This idea of writing specific, themed TME collections came out of my first idea for my master's thesis. I wanted to write music to enhance education. I've always loved the fact that music is something that people remember without thinking too much about it (music for incidental learning), and I wanted to develop a standards-based collection of music for use by teachers and music therapists. I ended up not doing that concept as my thesis, but the idea lingered. Over the years, I've continued to think about this idea, but it has changed. I now am more excited about offering new TMEs to music therapists. I have relaxed a bit on the standards basis for each TME (though, that is a way to think about thi...

It's happening here. The eclipse is coming! The eclipse is coming! We are in the 98-99% range of obscuration, so we will have most of the sun blocked out. I was not only alive in 1979 for the last total solar eclipse, I was excited about seeing the event. We made our pinhole projectors and were ready to go. My parents took my baby brother on a house-hunting trip, and my sister and I went to my grandparents' house. I had to leave my pinhole projector behind. I was a bit upset about that, but my grandparents knew that it was important to me (and my granddad was a bit of a science nerd) so they were prepared to help me view the eclipse. The morning of the eclipse, I awoke to find rain and cloud cover. It stretched over the Eastern Seaboard, and no one was able to see the eclipse. I watched the event on the black and white television in my grandmother's kitchen. Today's forecast is for "mostly cloudy" weather in my area. I am wondering if we will get a cha...