Our work stresses, thoughts and worries need a container to live in so that when it's time, we can pick them up. Make a small routine of "setting it aside" as you transition home each and every day. It is as important as checking your email but a small and even non-time consuming ritual can create healthy boundaries for your work in your life that will prove deeply rewarding in time.
Part of why I think that this genre is so polarizing and intimidating is that there is admittedly a “dark” side to metal culture and a lot of musicians got their reputation through shock value, like marylin manson for instance, who capitalized on controversial or violent lyrics and themes, dress and culture. If your clients are listening to music with heavy or dark thematic aspects then there is a talking point. Looking through our clinical lenses, we can use the music as a point of entry to connect with their most raw emotions.
Read MoreGratitude is a beneficial practice that we probably could agree on on an anecdotal basis, so I went to the research to see what evidence there was for the benefits of gratitude. In one recent study, published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity authors Hazlett et al. note that because of the brain-body connection between gratitude and support-giving behavior, gratitude may may reap the same benefits of amygdala deactivation and reduction in threat-responses, thereby reducing inflammation in the body and increasing immune responses……
Read MoreI don’t know about you, but whenever I think about scope of practice for music therapy I see a fuzzy, gray cloud. This is how my brain pictures the “gray area” and this gaseous proverbial space is scary to me because in some ways it’s always changing, hard to define and not always a clearly marked boundary. I like to operate with clarity and I’m always trying to be mindful about stepping outside of what is appropriate in our field and for my individual practice. So today we’re going to talk through what is clear about music therapy scope of practice as well as how to assess yourself as an individual practitioner to ensure that you’re remaining within your own ethical “cloud” of scope of practice.
Read More
