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A musical take on things

Tags: whereiwanttowork, relaxing, music, therapy

Campaign: "Where I want to work" Scholarship Campaign

89 Reviews

Added: 1/31/2007 4:37 PM PT
Last Modified: 2/25/2007 8:05 AM PT

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The world today seems to have so many issues. There's world hunger and global warming. Countless wars are waged, diseases ravage populations. We're plagued by the thought of our diminishing resources and overpopulation of Earth. The prospect of nuclear war. Some people lose sleep over possible alien invasions.

Usually, people read my list and they tell me I've pointed out every mad cow in the field. But there's always that one cow that manages to pull the bell of her neck, the one you never find 'till you look behind some bushes. I'm talking about that well-hidden, sneaky issue that most people either don't notice or simply learn to live with: us.

Now before anyone starts to feel insulted, the "us" I'm talking about is not exactly the people we are, but the lifestyles many of us have adopted. "We" are the people in this world who are lucky enough to live in a place where there is enough Internet access to go looking for a scholarship online. "We" are the people who live in the countries were many of the above "big issues" seem distant and unreal. "We" are the people who often find ourselves caught up in the on-the-run lifestyle of a fast-paced country in the 21st century. "We" are also, no matter how well we seem to disprove the fact, human. Which means we all need some rest and relaxation in our busy lives; a way to relieve what is often a life of constant running around and stress. We all need to take a moment and think about ourselves, or things that have nothing to do whatsoever with anything other than the fact that we enjoy it. Think for a moment, about... Mozart.

You may wonder where Mozart comes in and how thinking of him can help you alleviate stress in your life. But it can, and if thinking of the name made you recall some famous melody, it just did help you - because it has been proven that listening to music has a noticeably calming effect on virtually everyone. Using this information, psychologists and therapists got to work with some mixing and matching of careers and - voila! - the outcome: a new group of doctors called music therapists.

Music therapy became an official career only recently, some thirty years ago or so, but already it has huge success. For example, there are 600 professional music therapists in the Association of Music Therapists alone (which is just one of many such associations). Pretty soon, one can expect there to be 601 because I am planning to join them!

As a music therapist I plan to ease the stress of clients with my incredible wit and humor, but this will be only in small amounts, as music therapy is largely a nonverbal exchange. Rather than focusing on talking, like regular therapy, music therapy uses music to calm and comfort, as well as to explore and renew. Here's how it works: a therapist (in this case, yours truly) works with a client through musical interaction. That is, I would expose my clients to different kinds of music, depending on the different needs they may have. Music can be used to calm, to heal, and to discover new things, and my clients would not necessarily have to be musically inclined to benefit from the experience. As quoted by the American Music Therapy Association, music can manage stress, alleviate pain, express feelings, enhance memory and communication, and promote general wellbeing in a person. This many-sided method for relaxation can be ideal for many people, whether they have needs for what is defined as "therapy" or not.

For clients who do know a thing or two about playing an instrument, there could be yet another kind of adventure: improvisation. For instance, I'd play something, and my client would play something back as an improvisation exercise. Taking notes and stringing them together into an original melody can not only teach a person a lot about themselves - it can also help relax by voicing those feelings they simply can't put into words.

In other situations, I could take this a step further and add in discussions and composition of lyrics as well. Creating music or words to go with music is also part of the invaluable experience of music therapy. My clients would listen to music, create music, and in doing so they would explore the endless world of music, relax, and feel out the different paths their feelings can take them down. This thoroughly emotional experience - this quiet time for connection with the inner self - is just what a stressed-out individual living in our times needs. I'm all about giving the hard workers of this world a well-earned break, some stress-relief, and as a side dish, a little peek inside themselves.

♫

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