mind body planet

Today I want to move away from the super weighty issues and away from the political rants as I am want to to do. I was talking recently with one of my good friends who is a music therapist and we were discussing various ways in which she uses her methods to help people with the problems that they are facing in their daily lives from various outside influences. We were discussing the various issues that she has dealt with both physical and emotional. She has personally had over two hundred clients that have met her more than ten times to complete a regimen that she personally created for them. She works in a private clinic and so she gets all of her business through private inquiry as opposed to others who will get their base from whatever program they are a part of. Other practitioners of this form of therapy may deal specifically with one type of population and then specialize in treatment of those types of maladies. Her clients have a great range of variability. They  are people that come in with children who have mental disabilities, couples having marriage problems, or people looking to relieve some kind of mental dissonance that they believe music can cure in some way. 

My friend was a graduate of the Berklee college of music up in Boston and she has told me a good deal about the program that she went through. Basically she was given an amazing education in how to not only play and write music, but she was also taught how to interact with people through the medium of music in order to overcome, at the deepest level, some kind of mental blockage that music alone can release. She got to spend many years do exactly what she loved and at the same time she picked up an amazing set of skills and an interesting perspective on disease and mental illness They also taught her how to run a successful business through this medium of therapy but she has chosen, with the poor job market and all, to become a part of something already created and then move on after a time. 

At this point she has been telling me that most of her client base has been coming from sort of similar populations of people. On the one hand she has lots of people who have relationship problems and are seeking marriage counseling that is more intimate than simply talking with a counselor. She is also getting plenty of people who simply wish to learn how to play. That is another big part of what she does is that she teaches every single one of her clients how to apply themselves to something as revealing as a musical instrument and they can take that away and do with their gifts as they will. I think that that is the real magic of what she does for a living. 

The FLO

A few years ago I was making my decision about school and which college I was going to attend. I considered just about everything I had to look at and it came down to two schools; Berklee College of Music in Boston and Penn State. I finally decided to come here because of the fact that I couldn’t afford to live in Boston for a day let alone four years. So now I am here making the best of what I can get out of my education. But I have found a way to keep myself in both worlds as best as possible.

I had been considering Berklee College of music because they offer a great degree in Music Therapy for guitar players like myself. One of my favorite family friends from back home was actually a music therapist who had been working at the job for longer than most people had known about the practice. He had given me a bunch of free treatments when I was a kid in the midst of the troubles of puberty. Ever since then I have wondered how I can best make money out of my love of music. Music therapy just stuck out as something I would have liked to have done. Now I have managed to find myself a way in to the field without ever leaving my major.

Last fall, right after I had started school here, I was asked by one of my professors if I wanted to help out with some music therapy research. She knew about my interest and so she got me involved in this project. The whole research centers around this machine called The FLO which is basically a distressing music therapy machine. It is very similar in effect to doing things like extended meditation, massage, sensory deprivation, and other distressing machines. What I love about it most is how it incorporates the bathing of a person in a room full of very peaceful music. All of the music is chosen specifically because it plays around the super learning tempo of what I believe is sixty beats per minutes.

Each session of this distressing machine is very similar and it is just the individual experience that differs. I can’t say too much about people’s experiences because of confidentiality but I can say that of the nearly fifty people I have personally put through a session, only one reported no effects while inside of after the experience. All of them range from mild drowsiness all the way to an extreme feeling of relaxation and well being. Personally I have experienced the entire range of experiences and so I can say that it really does work.

Though I don’t get to do what I thought I would be for a degree, I am obviously doing my best to make it work for my life right now. Hopefully all of you can get a hold of me and try the FLO some time.