Music against bullying

"People who make music together cannot be enemies at least while the music lasts" 
Paul Hindemith

With this quotation, Freenotes.com proposes some music therapy activities to prevent bullying at schools. They are simple musical activities which can be carried out in the music classroom and involve singing and playing musical instruments.

http://www.freenotes.eu/cms/blog/people-who-make-music-together-cannot-be-enemies.html

Music therapy for performance anxiety

Since music is the raw material used in music therapy, it's quite natural to wonder if music therapy could play a role in performance anxiety treatment for musicians. We can name Montello, from Performance Wellness Inc., New York, among the authors of specific publications in this field. She proposes the integration of cognitive-behavioural techniques, body consciousness and active music therapy and improvisation.

 

In her article on Medical Problems of Performing Artists she states that group music therapy benefits musicians suffering from performance anxiety. She nuances that in case of coexistent narcissistic problems , the intervention won't be effective if the narcissistic defences are not treated previously.

http://www.sciandmed.com/mppa/journalviewer.aspx?issue=1137&article=1384&action=1 

http://www.performancewellness.org/index.html 

Music therapy and asthma

 

I want to post about an article on the Spanish newspaper 20 minutos. es http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/393962/0/tuba/asma/curacion commenting on the recovery of a nine year-old asthma patient who suffered the illness since he was a baby, thanks to his tuba practice.

Yoshiko Fukuda, Japanese music therapist, has done research in this area.

In her work  ¹, we read that as early as in 1729 Dr. Richard Brown wrote in his book Medical Music that when an asthma patient is told to sing between crises, he performs a regular respiratory exercise, which becomes effective over time to smoothen the suffering during the asthmatic crisis and to prevent new attacks.

In the chapter written by Fukuda we find ten music therapy strategies to treat asthma, one approach for asthmatic crisis management and the results of her research with children and adults.

1Musicoterapia en medicina. Aplicaciones prácticas. P. Martí-Augé y M. Mercadal-Brotons, capítulo siete, Musicoterapia y Asma.

Music therapy and depression

A randomized case-control trial of a Finnish university shows that music therapy benefits depressive patients when added to standard treatment. The reason would be that it promotes the expression of feeling and emotions.

In this case, music therapy did not replace conventional treatment, but contributed to it as an added value.

The music therapy intervention consisted of musical improvisation in an individual session with the music therapist.

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/2/132.full?sid=8f693384-6aa4-45df-bded-a7ea3a95bb2d

Receptive music therapy

Music therapeutic interventions consisting on listening to fragments of any music genre with a therapeutic goal fall under receptive music therapy. Relaxing while listening to music is a very healthy habit, but it's not considered music therapy because in this case there's no therapeutic process. We speak of a music therapy intervention when a music therapist uses musical means (in this case listening to music) to reach a therapeutic goal, e.g., a depressed patient's stimulation or group cohesion.

Listening to music is a different process than listening to words or environmental sounds. Henk Smeijsters ¹ defines four different listening processes: determinant listening, technical listening, qualifying listening and associative listening.

• Determinant listening is the one we use when we want to identify a sound source, e.g. when we hear a noise in the middle of the night and listen to find out if we're dealing with a mouse or a thief in house.
• Technical listening is the one we adopt when we analyze the music that we are listening to: e.g., its structure or the instruments involved.
• Qualifying listening is the one that allows us to state if we like the music we are listening to or not.
• Associative listening is the one that permits us to evoke emotions or remembrances in response to the listened music fragment.

Which kind of music is the most suitable for music therapy? We can use any kind of music in music therapy, as long as the client and the music therapist feel comfortable working with it. There's no music which is “good for depression” or “music to get relaxed”. There is a certain music which can help one individual in one specific situation to get over a depression or to get relaxed. It is the task of client (and eventually his or her family as well) and music therapist together to discover the most suitable music for every therapeutic process. 

 

1Henk Smeijsters, Handboek muziektherapie, Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Musical meditation

 

Meditation and music are a good combination. You can practice meditation with music. It helps a great deal if you have problems with keeping focused.

 

Do you remember the last time you went on a trip, and you were a tourist in a new city? How did you discover that place? Were you wandering around the streets, discovering what you came across in your path? Or you were looking for the most famous monuments and observing the streets you already knew from a travel guide or from pictures?

Let's do something like that with music now. Find a quiet place and take care of not being interrupted during your meditation. If you are an adventurous explorer, choose some music that you've never heard before and from which you have no references. Close your eyes and focus your attention on the musical landscape displayed in front of you. Get surprised by every detail that you discover and enjoy. Enjoy the feeling of surprise and curiosity that you will come across during the listening, without judging whether if you like that kind of music or not.

If you like to see the cities with your travel guide, choose some music that you like but you barely listen to. Since you already know the music, its melody and structure won't be a surprise to you. In the same way that going to Santiago de Compostela and seeing the cathedral is something that you would expect. Let the music amaze you when you listen to details that you've probably never heard. If it's a song, listen carefully to the musical accompaniment. If there are several instruments, try to identify how many there are and which ones they are, (it's not always easy). Listen to the music you like with the greatest care, trying to absorb every detail and enjoy the surprise and admiration that brings rediscovering the beauty of the things we love.

Have a good musical journey!