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Why Music?
Music has always been a powerful tool for expression and has the capacity to touch us deeply. Music is an integral part of our life from the earliest stages of development. Pulse and rhythm are experienced in the heartbeat, breathing and movement. Melody is created in our first vocal sounds through our crying, screaming, laughing or singing. In our early dialogue with mother and father we experience contact and communication through vocal sounds covering a whole range of emotions.
Music therapy is based on the belief that the ability to respond to and express oneself through music is an inborn quality in human beings unaffected by disability, illness and injury and not dependent on musical training.
Music Therapists use the unique qualities of music as a means of establishing a therapeutic relationship with their clients in order to support positive change and enable people to reach their full potential.
What happens in a session?
In music therapy both client and therapist actively engage in creative music making. The instruments available can be played intuitively and include tuned and untuned percussion, stringed and wind instruments and usually a piano. The sessions are non-directive enabling the client to use the space in their unique way and allowing the music therapist to get to know a client's individuality through their music. During the process of creating music together a relationship develops which enables therapeutic processes to take place and emotional and developmental themes to be explored. These are understood and interpreted using developmental, behavioural or psychodynamic approaches. This may include looking into the underlying feelings and motives within the shared music making.
Music therapy sessions include musical improvisation and at times songs specifically composed for the client in order to link with the situation, the emotional atmosphere and their needs. Music therapy sessions may also include a reflective verbal dialogue during which emotional themes can be explored verbally.
Who can benefit from Music Therapy?
Music Therapists work with people of all ages who have psychological, behavioural, learning or physical difficulties. Clients need no previous musical experience.
Music therapy can reach people who experience the world as confusing, who are isolated or withdrawn and are finding personal contact and communication difficult. It can enable clients to express feelings, which can not be put into words.
Some of the reasons and conditions for which people have found music therapy to be beneficial include: - Developmental delay
- Emotional / behavioural problems
- Autistic spectrum disorders
- Learning disability
- Communication disorders
- Terminal illness (cancer and others)
- Neurological conditions
- Mental health problems
- Stress, trauma, bereavement
- Personal growth and self discovery
The Music Therapist
A music therapist is a skilled musician who has undergone a professional training in music therapy. All music therapists have to be state registered under the Health Professions Council (HPC) www.hpc-uk.org. Our professional organisation is the Association of Professional Music Therapists www.apmt.org, which has a code of conduct by which all music therapists must abide. The British Society for Music therapy, www.bsmt.org is also a useful information source. All music therapists working for Richmond Music Trust are checked through the Criminal Records Bureau.
If you would like to find out more please email Andreas Rosenboom the music therapist at RMT.
You can support our work in Music Therapy by going to www.givenow.org where you can search for Richmond Music Trust and make an online donation.
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