According to psychiatrist, Wurmser L (1981) in “The Mask of Shame”, shame in our lives is the feeling that we are unlovable:
“In a sense, love at its peak means being as fully accepted as is humanly possible in the wish for enriching self-expression and in the desire to be gloriously and abidingly fascinating and impressed — and to have reciprocity in this on uncounted levels of communication and attentiveness. Shame is the defeat of such love — the dark side of the night compared with the shinning brilliance of this greatest and most creative powers.”
It came to my understanding, that I feel shame on different occasions and situations. When I am in the situations where I try do something for the first time, I am afraid of being shamed, therefore, instead of allowing myself organically focus on the process I jump into the end result on the possible scenario in my head (usually I imagine the worst one). It is so funny how one mind works, I know that not everyone have such experiences, however, in this blog I am writing about mine. As I discovered reading about this subject from a social worker Euncie Cabanaugh (1989) , there are parallel processes associated and connected with shame. Gult and anger can be a shame’s camouflage as a protective mechanism preventing feeling exposed, worthless and unloveable. Cabaugh argues that anger is more comfortable than shame. In my experience, anger can be served as a weapon and a distraction from self. I know personally, that I react to ones anger and rage that now i see was a mask in some life occasions. It is interesting to see how my own reactions changes from time to time toward this subject. Shame is a learned experience and it can be given as one of those unwanted gifts by a family or friend that is not comfortable to live with but strangely enough hard to get rid off as well. I recall times when I was asked to hold shame for someone, I would say it simply called a «secret» that I felt responsible for keeping no matter what. As I slowly started to grown awareness so as responsibility over my own feelings, I learned to step back, draw the line and detach. It is rather difficult but not an impossible process. The sense of emotional psychic physical professional responsibilities had to be redefined as well. Shame slowly became «a hot potato» for me, if I happen not to pay attention and get it, it was my job to discard it in order to break a the «shame»cycle.
When I was a child, very very little I thought I was happy. My happiness was simple: dancing, singing, hugging my grandmother, having a water-mellon, playing with flowers, sand and water. I created stories about the magic of the wind and sadness of the rain, I drew pictures and enjoyed making clay sculptures.. Those were some vivid memories of my healthy child being that I held tightly to my heart and did not allowed a single living soul to see or to touch. Being a child in my culture is a luxury for most of the children… they expected to be adults from a moment they learn to say the first word. They are expected to measure up with adults values and thoughts rather rapidly than having had an opportunity to discover the world as their own. All I knew when I was a child that one day, I will find a place where it is okay to be a child -self, it is okay to show my way of seeing and feeling the world and to have an excitement of seeing other people’s world view. My journey was a long one, being blinded and deaf I was wondering in the darkness of a desert filled with mountains of mine and others resentments, fears and pain. I felt lost, hungry and lonely. I stumbled and failed many times and gain many wounds and scars as I continued to seek for the light.
It happened so, that one day I crossed the ocean, hopping to find what I was looking for on the other other side of the planet. I felt so starved and wounded that I no longer remember why I started it all on the first place. Most importantly, I have given up hope.. It was four years ago when I saw a man who was convinced that the light I was searching for is an inborn quality and it is within everyone for everyone in any given moment of human existence, one’s life is a constant flow, fueled and channeled through creativity and ongoing discovery. When I heard this man, I looked at him with uncertainty and distrust.. Something that he spoke about with such ease and excitement caused me the greatest suffering.. his knowing that I once felt and was convinced with caused me the greatest fear of being punished for..
I remember how I looked at that man and how I felt an echo of my pain being numbed and in- prisoned with the reason of my adult mind.
The lessons begun… the wisdom was shared by the man and no directions given, all I was asked to do is to show up and to listen, nothing more. So, I did. Man’s eyes were filled with kindness, sadness and piece… I saw these kind of eyes before, my grandmother’s eyes, old man on the street in my hometown given me a book that held me through the teens, eyes of those I chose to call friends in a country of Japan, eyes of two professors I have grown to love and accept in today as my own teachers and spiritual parents…
I saw the whole world in the eyes of a man: great sadness and suffering, loneliness and grief, serenity and piece, love and compassion, hope and a sense of faith.. That moment I felt that I m guided, loved and accepted in all doings and thinkings as I am.
Slowly I started to feel, slowly I started to heal. I have encountered many lessons and many mistakes on my way, walking for the first time again and being as a child.. The greatest lesson was not given to me but once shown: to choose the light over darkness is a continuous choice one makes through his consciousness, it is not the matter of one’s will only but the matter of all matters in one: heart, soul, spirit and a mind that are in harmony within.
What a puzzle, I thought to myself. It is impossible to have a harmony within in all unless I spend 1000 years of solitude travelling by foot in all sanctuaries… How can I possibly achieve the harmony when I fight over my own mind, soul and body, suffering from a reminder of the pain within me and outside of me.. How can I be at piece, will I ever be?
The man looked into my eyes with love and joy in his, he drew me into his world, he took me by the hand as everyone else and pointed into direction where I could rest first and heal before I will continue seek, he did not told me to stay in his world, believing that the journey of each person is unique and precious and that one will learn all the lessons when the time will come. As I rested, my heart filled with hope, my spirit regained some straight and my soul had healed some wounds. I thanked him and decided to continue to seek out the enlightenment as I was intendent to, with the eyes that were healed and could see and the ears that had opened up to hear different sounds.
And every time I get wounded in my journey, I lose hope and I fall deprived, I call onto a man, who have shared with me his heart that is and always be my shelter..
Dedicated to Clive Robbins.
Lately I had more than one conversation on a subject of love. I feel blessed with all women in my life, wise, beautiful, highly bright and interesting. However, subject of love is haunting me as the conversations leading toward pathways across the lands of hope, desperation, optimism, pessimism etc. Ultimately all come down to the one question: Is it ever possible to find someone who I would want to share my life with?
There is no doubt, that love came as a lesson for many by the time they reached late twenties, broken hearts, promises, dreams… on the other hand learning about denial and many other sides of self; its hard to imagine that they were there on the first place, from very beginning, prior love experiences. Love…. what is love? How to define it? How to feel it? Is it different for everyone or there is one or perhaps several universal notions that makes sense to all of us despite the gender and age. In the culture of my origin, I have learned my first lesson of love through russian novels, through “the longing for the feeling that set everything right”. One the other hand I felt loved in my family: being fed, given clothes and shelter, given opportunity to study. At that time, novels seemed a strange guide to the emotional outlet that I was just getting started to understand. In “Idiot”, one of the main characters has naive notion of love toward a young women Anastassiya, blinded with shadows of her own and her male friend existence. The main character is convinced that the love that he has for people can heal their wounds and open people eyes to see the world differently. Well, the novel does not necessary ends with a happy ending… Main character loses his mind, the Anastassiya is murdered, people did not changed and did not see the world through the main character’s eyes; therefore, pure love failed. Well, this is the conclusion I drew when I was a teens, it might partially explains my rebellious and raging attitudes. I was battling with the concept of love and continue to do so… I remember when I was a child, my mother was trying to protect me from what she called “a life mistake” partially copying with her own unhappiness and desperation with the poverty and inconsistent effort of my father to filled in her unrealistic expectations. So the lesson was: Don’t fall in love, if you do your life will be over. I am still puzzled how much childhood experiences influenced me in my adulthood. Yes, it is possible and now I know it, to loose yourself in the feeling of love: creativity usually is the best and most outstanding documentations of such feeling: poems, music, novels, paintings, drawings, finding the best way to say what you feel – it is the best gift of all when the love begins.. I remember myself going through the lines in my head, thinking what could be the smartest and the funniest thing to say to a person I dear the most… The energy, the flow, the life that was in me was so big and so powerful…
I learned that going through transitions is a part of the love experience. Feeling the flow of love is like swimming through the river of life and death. Clarissa Pinkola Estes comes across the subject of love through the journey of discovering it as a part of self, knowledge and spirituality. In her book she speaks about love as a source of transformation of ones self through various stages in life; the cycles of life and death (as being in the world of illusion and letting them go, gaining true perspectives); being in search for love and going over the struggles; being tested and scared for life, wounded and transformed by them; becoming wiser as a result. So yes, love… it is possible when love becomes a quest for life, when it is a journey and not a destination, when it is a daily devotion as a way of living, when it is a daily battle at times and a struggle. Sometimes I feel lost in my hope that love is possible but than again: I see it all around me and I feel it everywhere I go. It might not be the love that is “sold as an only correct idea by hollywood” but it is love. So, I am choosing to believe that love is possible, that love exists in the city in different places and among different people… It is exists in me… All I need to do is be willing to accept it with gratitude.
Today I woke up fairly happy, no particular dreams left an emotional footprint in my mind. As I went by the morning routine, I saw an email from one of my colleagues, he kindly shared the article that was written in “The BIGGIE”. So, I started to read it. Very clearly the journalist has a bad sense of humor bringing up to the light a conflict issue that only will enable the masses to throw their opinions rather than have an awareness of pointy issues that are present in American so and elsewhere cultures. To me, psychotherapy in general is a representative of what the culture, society and most importantly people as the direct representatives facing in today. Yes, the problem of ambiguity in psychotherapy world exists, no doubts, and yes it would be rather convenient if psychotherapists were taking responsibility of their clients thoughts attitudes and actions sending them free with the message that life is a playground for you, dont you worry about the consequences – it is all been taken care of. This type of mentality reminds me Middle Ages for some reason where rich or shall I say wealthy people were “forgiven” for their wrongs for substantial amount of money, we all remember that right?
I guess, there is a misconception regarding the psychotherapy or in my case music psychotherapy process. Clarity is an ethical responsibility for music therapist (speaking for myself and myself only) as well as clear communication. When I begun studying to become a music therapist, I had little to no idea what actually the field do for me. Safe to say, that my life changed 100%. I entered personal therapy on the second year of my master training, most out of professional point of view than for personal reasons. Like many people, I was convinced that the therapy can do very little for me and that my life was my responsibility and I will be the one facing the consequences. As the time went by, my confusion was getting stronger, I understood on a cognitive level the work and the interventions I was taking on and their value, somehow, I could not find the “rock” to hold on to. Emotional pain that I carried within me for years were surfacing and tolerating it was close to impossible. As a client, I went through the entire spectrum of emotions and I became aware of all of them, therefore, I continued to grow. I often questioned myself – how much did I really wanted to change? How much I really wanted to say that I stand for who I am knowing rather than pretending? How much did I really wanted to understand and most importantly accept myself, love myself and to develop capacity to love others?
The journey seemed dark and the passages at times were shadowed with fears self-criticism, self – judgment and the memories of traumatic events that were paralyzing at times. Going through all of this myself, and continue to meet my needs on emotional level that help me to grow and evolve in safe environment (music therapy) had open many avenues for healthier way of living. Some of that came by chance and some of that was the consequences of rediscovering my true self.
When I see someone who come to me for “advice” and I mean friends and not clients, I see how much they want another person make a decision for them, take responsibilities for what they did or enable them to continue unhealthy actions toward themselves or others. I see their wounds and their pain that was never healed, their use of the services through “solution based approach” – fixing a situation not a problem. I know, that the mentality, the culture, the environment where the values were misplaced people are only a reflection of a bigger cultural, economic and spiritual sickness..
The ages of darkness are back – and it does not matter how well it is decorated, the “matter” stays the same.
Yes, perhaps not every professional can be the right person for the client and not every client may benefit from a particular professional but the difference is, unlike in corporate world, psychotherapists have ethical obligations to make the best choice for the client, regardless of any financial or socioeconomic situation.
And…. let’s not put everything in the soup – yes, client and the therapist are both sides of the same coin called “society”; however, it is important to understand and to know the difference.
Like many children I was restless: eager to explore the world, and energized to seek out each new discovery that awaited me. I have an image of myself as a young girl, almost a dreamlike vision. My body is well lit, though surrounded in a darkness that seems infinite. I am running without direction. But when I hear the sound of a piano I stop. I stand still. I listen. I am inspired. I begin to move to the music. I begin to move with the music. I begin to play with the music, bringing my own brand and style to the table, making, something completely new, yet completely familiar to me as well even though I have never heard it before in my life. I am improvising. I am living. I am loving. (more…)
Did you invested your time into improvisation? Following Barbara Hesser steps and guidance, I tried to grasp or even more daring to experience the feeling that comes with improvisation. Coming from the music background: angry classic piano teachers, rigidity and continuous hardship of doing things the right way, I must admit, somewhere I got the feeling of excitement lost… but! Creativity is within each person, it cannot be taken away from him just like love, kindness, hope and other feelings that people chose for themselves as a way to relate to the world within and outside of their existence. So anyway, Here is a testimony of beginning a proces of rediscovery a part of me that is musical and all that came along with it. 8 weeks of observations & thoughts from experiencing music.
Music is a medium of communication; it comes when the words fail to describe feelings. I learned that I am myself; I learned that I feel and I am a creative center at the place and time when I play, listen and sings. My first reaction at the beginning of a practice was fear, fear of breaking the silence. I was afraid I would play the wrong notes while I experienced the aesthetic joy looking at a photograph. Once the silence was broken, the D note took its place; my hands start to move to different places, my soul was singing in joy. The poser of doubt was taking me over, the pause between exercises was unbearable, and I started to question myself. What did I do correctly? Where did I make a mistake? Looking at the same picture again, I realized that I already took a musical journey and sent my thoughts to the universe, I can do more. When I listened to the tape, I found myself pleasantly surprised at what I had done; it only required few more steps of effort in order to start again.
The second week I explored a different exercise, I took a poem by Mikhail Lermontov, “Death of a Poet”. I took the time to read it, to understand the feeling of sorrow, to think about Russia and about my people. I felt heavy in my heart, all those emotions that I experienced throughout the time of reading the poem I put into piano. I was playing without thinking, I was crying after the first time. I experienced emotions from the poem, I experienced the emotions from my improvisation, I felt that I did not release them, I stated the fact of “The Death of a Poet”. Lermontov was killed in a young age, he was called the second Pushkin, although unlike Pushkin, Lermontov did not experience the comfort given by a society. He was truthful in his writing and honest in his thinking. Poetry is another way of improvising, using words to create beats, the context of the words to make a dynamic and the meaning of the sentences to create a feeling. I felt that my improvising process went through similar steps, I was reflecting on the poem as if I wrote it myself. The fact that I was able to experience all these emotions took me to a different level of appreciation for the power of music and the power of improvisation. For the second time, I decided to play music on my poem, my reaction to Death of a Poet, my appreciation to it. I took my feelings and I created the melody that could be my response to the first experience. I took time to reflect on the feelings that I experienced, I had no thoughts while I was playing, only the feeling that music arose in me.
On the third week I experienced emptiness. I was taking steps to understand what is happening within me. It seemed to be more difficult to reflect on yourself rather than to react to somebody’s creation. I took a piece of paper and started to draw. Line by line I found myself drawing bubbles, it made me realize that my feelings were not empty. I had them already, perhaps, I was just afraid to work on them. I started to play, after the drawing my hands were playing major cords, making simple musical interventions, which I found later were accurate to the state of mind I was in. Second week of the third practice I decided to do something else before I played. I drew a small face with curves that looked like flowers on its head. I improvised on the feelings of lightness rather than emptiness. I felt relieved after the practice, this was the first time I was able to sleep soundly after improvisation.
Week four was difficult for me seeing as I was improvising on my dreams. Experiencing fear and running during the sleep makes me tired during the day time. I feel sometimes that my dreams more real than the events of the day. I woke up and went to the piano. I put everything into the improvisation: fear, anxiety, anger, hopelessness. I felt relieved and alert after I finished. The improvisation let me enter my day. The second time, improvisation was interesting but not as tense. I did not have a bad dream, it was a very nice dream, where I was a child and I saw all my friends around me. The music was light, joyful and cheerful.
Fifth Practice was to improvise on a memorable event. I had a difficult time to decide which one I should choose. The feelings of shame and confusion are very common for a child. I remember those feelings and I had a difficult time to cope with them. The music spoke for itself but I was not sure how comfortable I was playing. Later that week I thought about my reaction to the improvisation and I have come to conclusion that it is very difficult to speak about that moment from my childhood as well. Second time I felt more comfortable, I felt that the music was healing me and even if I was the only audience who was listening it, it did not matter.
Week six, I was improvising on issues I would like to work on in therapy. It was always hard for me to experience joy and happiness. I was a very happy child once but in my culture the idea of happiness is utopian while sadness is undeniable. It took me an effort to improvise on this exercise, the music seemed as though it did not sound good nor could I play it well. Every aspect of my personal insecurity came out in front of the instrument. I was not ready to experience happiness yet. After several attempts my music became a channel through which I was able to feel the emotion, a bridge between my mind and my soul, the bridge between my culture and myself. I was overwhelmed by the music, I did experience happiness, I felt it in my heart. The second improvisation that I made was a prayer, an invitation to happiness to enter my life. Everything seemed to be joyful, I was using Lydian mode, vocalizing. I felt like dancing, being a child, being myself.
Week seven was emotional. I was improvising on the issues that I had with my family. I felt sad and misunderstood. First attempt to improvisation made me cry, second attempt helped me to think, and the third attempt released me from the heaviness. At the second practice of the same week I was playing on the feeling of nostalgia. I was thinking about home, I was missing everyone and missing the time when I could have done something for my family. I was playing with gratitude and appreciation to the moment that I had, music helped me to confess: without words I was speaking with such clarity that I could not experienced otherwise.
Week eight was difficult. I was drawing, making sculpture to the song “What does my heart feels so bad” by Moby. After paying the same song for several times, my body became a channel of the singer’s expressions, I felt that I was only a messenger. It was difficult to take myself away from the experience, I intentionally tried to make musical interventions and to resolve them in major; however, it felt wrong. I was taken by the experience and emotions that I that I felt as I listened.
Week nine helped me to think about the musical culture I grew up in. I was listening to different songs and different musical styles that are present in my culture. Some of them brought strong emotions. I was able to make a drawing and to improvise on my experience. Such communication let me reintroduce myself into the culture I felt I lost while being in United States. I was reflecting on the feelings of idealization, pride and glory. The feelings which embody the birth land. I was able to feel those emotions and to reflect upon duality of their meaning; I was introduced to the ideal values while the life experience showed otherwise. I was rejecting my culture without knowing how much I was missing. I felt happy and satisfied at the end of the week.
The last exercise was to take several piece of the music that show specific mood and to choose others to shift the mood into a different level. I made a tape for several times. First, I was surprised by the fact that each three minutes my mood was changing. I was excited on an emotional and physical level. At the end of the tape I felt brave enough to experience the listening again. At that moment it was clear to me that the music does magic; the art of improvisation gives a voice to an emotional experience at a place in time. It cannot get more real than that!
Clayton et al. (2005) define entrainment as a phenomena of two or more rhythmical processes synchronizing with each other. Christian Huygens discovered a phenomenon called entrainment through synchronization tendency among pendulum clocks where two pendulums clocks swung the pendulums at different rates are placed near each other are eventually end up swinging in at the same rate due to their mutual influence on one another. The concept of entrainment id defined through two principles: 1) two have autonomous nature independent of one another, 2) there must be interaction among two in order to influence one another, for example. The concept of entrainment is not narrows down to physiological process only, this is a concept, a maxima that describes a shared tendencies of physical and biological systems, for example, pheromones – odours substances which are released by one animal or human and detected by another, causing some sort of physiological reaction. Among various studies, synergy, from ancient greek means “working together” examines second principle of entrainment, where in a context of organizaitonal behavior, synergy is the ability of the group to outperform even its best individual member. Clayton et al. (2005) state that the concept of entrainment, in the context of the view on the brain functioning, brought to the attention two principles: 1) almost all brain functions can be described as “ cooperative, synchronized activity of a large distributed ensembles of neurons” (p. 4), 2) a significant part of this synchronized activity has cycling nature. These neurons that consist of cooperative, synchronized and cycling properties in the central nervous system as a result of their electrochemical properties and these reconciling and synchronized activities of these neurons can be seen among others, as the “basis for the timing of sensory-motor coordination” (Clayton et al., 2005, p. 4). Thus the new view of the brain functioning allow us to examine the concept of entrainment as a rational (model) for human interaction at the interpersonal and social levels.
The goal of this paper is to examine various physiological, cognitive, sociocultural, musical aspects when one conducting a music therapy group through the concept of entrainment with mentally ill patients and to create a discussion of what aspects a music therapist should look for during the music therapy process, how music should be used and what qualities music consist of.
In order to conduct a music therapy group, a therapist usually defines several goals that hopefully will be addressed within given population. For the high functioning adult clients in psychiatric inpatient setting music therapy goals are: to increase motivation, to increase task investment, to increase relatedness, to improve frustration tolerance, to increase impulse control, to improve self- expression and to improve self-esteem. (Woodhull hospital, CAT group protocol, 2010). For the low functioning adult clients in psychiatric inpatient setting music therapy goals are: to increase awareness of self and others, to express one feelings musically or verbally, to increase socialization skill, to increase coping skills, to increase body awareness through the use of movement combined with vocal sounds, to increase self-esteem through continuous mastering of musical tasks. (Woodhull hospital, CAT group protocol, 2010).
Music therapy group, in a social context, represents a model of society with its own dynamic. Huczynski et al. (2007 ) draw their attention to the number of laboratory based group ranking and predictions task conducted by Jay Hall where he found that effective group was defined thought activities looked for the points in which disagree and the consequences encouraged conflicts among participants in early stages of discussion (pp. 275-280). In contrast, the ineffective group felt a need to establish a common view quickly used simple decision making methods such as averaging, and focused on completing the task rather than on finding solution they could agree on and as a result group cohesion influence group decision and influence group effectiveness (Huczynski et al., 2007, p. 280). This finding is in accord with goals that established for the music therapy group applied for both high functioning and low functioning clients. However, with mentally ill clients, the goals that established needs to be understood and clarified due to mental and developmental stages of each client, for example, following goals can be achieved: increase of self-awareness, coping and socialization skills for high functioning clients through allowing disagreement on personal goals and expectation for each member of the group by addressing them in the group and to allow the group to solve individual issues in healthy and safe way, which will be considered as effective group. The concept of ineffective group can be applied to low functioning clients, where the goal is to provide a common ground, known in music therapy as musical container, where the clients are able to work on increase of body awareness, self -esteem, through mastering musical tasks. Due to mental illnesses, heavy sedations, physical and cognitive state where low functioning clients are, the concept of ineffective group is not applicable due to client’s various limitations. According to entrainment concept, in context of social and interpersonal relationship, one client can affect the group process, therefore, group members cooperation process can be a fist goal for the music therapy group where depending on the mental, cognitive and physical stage of a client, other goals may or may not be addressed.
Clayton et al. (2005) argue that the concept of entrainment, in the context of physiology, appears when two subjects are close “behavior of our endogenous cardiac rhythm ought to be predictable when stimulated by a pacemaker, but if the period of the pacemaker were set outside a certain range, the behavior of the cardiac rhythm would be for practical purposes unpredictable”. Fraisse (1982) states that there is strong link between rhythm perception and production justifying his argument with the fact that people can easy synchronize their movement with the regular sequence of sounds, by tapping their foot to the beat. Clayton et al. (2005) and Fraisse (1982) findings are in accord with music therapy group protocol, where clients are placed in a room, fairly close to one another, and creating a rhythm or a groove results in affecting group’s members to built a cohesion through movement synchronization. For music therapist, based on their intuition and work experience, should come naturally to decide when one should bring in the rhythm and when the group members will initiate their own rhythm, however, it is very difficult to know for sure what group needs and what goals music therapist should have in mind for the group.
Clayton et al. (2005) argue that the concept of entrainment, in the context of the view on the brain functioning, that there is a relationship between external stimuli and brain waves, where external stimuli are rhythmic noises (p. 9 ). Thaut (1999) states that physiological entrainment occurs through the relationship between two elements “ Internal oscillator (internal time keeper) entrains to a more powerful external oscillator (metronome music)” (p. 29). Thaut (1998) examines the use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) to restore physical movement properties with patients traumatic brain injury.
RAS defined as:
A neurologic technique using the physiological effects of auditory rhythm on the motor system to improve the control of movement in rehabilitation and therapy. RAS is mostly used in
gait therapy to aid in the recovery of functional, stable, and adaptive walking patterns in patients with significant gait deficits due to stroke, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, effects of aging, or other causes. (Thaut, 2005, p. 139)
Participant were asked to walk along a 10-meter walkway, and to accelerate after 2-meters and to decelerate after 8- meters. At first, participants were asked to walked in their normal speed, second time participants were asked to walk on the beat of presented RAS, “… a metronome pulse sequence imbedded into rhythmically accented music” (Thaut, 1998, p.82). When participant needed additional guidance, therapist provided additional verbal or tactile cuing. This study shows significant improvement of walking patterns, patients were able to move to the RAS throughout entire ten meter walk .
Clayton et al. (2005) states that not all entrainment involves external stimulus, either environmental or inter-personal. Further they define self-entrainment concept as a process where “ two or more of the body’s oscillatory systems, such as respiration and heart rhythm patterns, become synchronized “ (p. 9). Port et al. (1996) defines self-entrainment as a process when one part of the body tends to entrain gestures by other parts of the body, for example. when a client playing a drum, according to the concept of self-entrainment, his shoulders, will start moving accordingly to the client’s hands actions. Another example of self-entrainment is kinesthetic listening where music listeners experiencing muscle contractions while they watch others playing instruments or singing. This phenomena is significant for the high functioning and low functioning clients, it shows that just by listening and observing others in the group during the music therapy, clients will experience “self-entrainment ” which can be beneficial and significant due to their mental illnesses.
The official protocol describes goals only on social and behavioral context, where due to the clients mental illnesses, music therapist should mediate between social and behavioral goals and music therapy goals that is not discussed in the protocol. Another problem occurs while one define goals for music therapy group is that there is often two levels of cognitive functioning clients are present in the same group, therefore, the goals becomes flexible therefore, it is effects music therapy group effectiveness. As results, music therapist ends up meeting clients where they are, providing strong containment for the group which is more suitable for low functioning clients and individually addresses clients needs. More studies should be done regarding music therapy groups, the common language should be found between music therapy goals and the goals defined in protocol.
References
Clayton, M., Sager, R., & Will U. (2005). In time with music: the concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology, 11, pp. 3-142. Fraisse, P. (1982) Rhythm and tempo. In the psychology of music, edited by D. Deutsch. New
York: Academic Press.
Huczynski, A., Buchanan, D., & Dunham, R., (2007). Organizational Behavior: An Introductory Text. London and New York :Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.
Port, R., Cummins, F., and Gasser, M. (1996). A dynamic approach to rhythm in language: Toward a temporal phonology. In B. Luka and B. Need (Eds.), Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society, 1995 (pp.375-397). Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago.
Thaut, M.H. (1998). Rhythmic auditory stimulation in gait training for patients with traumatic brain injury. Journal of Music Therapy, 35(4), p. 228-240.
Thaut, M.H. (1999). Techniques of neurologic music therapy in neurologic rehabilitation. In M.H. Thaut (Ed.). Training manual for neurologic music therapy. Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State University.
Thaut, M. H. (2005). Rhythm, music, and the brain: scientific foundations and clinical applications.New York: Routledge.
If somebody asked me a hypothetical question, if I find the music of music therapy clients beautiful? Do I use same criterion of aesthetic judgment when I listen to the music that is created by music therapy client In this paper? If the music produced by a person in music therapy can be compared to the music produced by a professional musician? In this paper, I will make an attempt to examine the term aesthetic judgement and how music aesthetics is perceived by different thinkers: philosophers, musicologists and music therapist and what each school of thoughts looks at when they speak about music aesthetics, if there is a common notion that everyone agree upon, what are the similarities and differences among thinkers from different disciplines and how it is translates to music therapy work. (more…)
Really cool video composed of 1 second clips, each shot in a different place. Video was created by 3 guys, who traveled around the world for 44 days. They visited 11 countries, made 18 flights and covered 38 thousand miles.
Enjoy!