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Perspectives & Insights from a Local Music Therapist

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Hooooooold on…….

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Emotionally Disturbed,General,Grief,Mental Health,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Apr.18,2013

This week began like any other week (or any other week in North Dakota, at least):  Sunday took us into what looked like it might be a snow day, but we forged ahead safely into programming at the School for the Blind with a group of 7 to 10 year olds whose parents managed the drive from their home towns across the state to stay with us for the week and work on goals like strengthening their literacy and social skills.  The energy of those little bodies and minds was quite a contrast to the mood my psych groups have had lately – they’ve been rather somber in general (I’m certain the weather has something to do with it).  In fact, it was actually my original intent to write about that population this week, and the sensitivity it often requires to address their needs musically.  When the news from the Boston Marathon and then the West Texas plant came trickling down through social media and word of mouth at my sessions, I thought for sure the week would take on an additional air of “somber-ness” in the wake of what had happened, and that writing such a post might be too unpleasant and heavy, and in some respects it has become that way (particularly after the West story broke, two tragedies back to back seemed enough to make you want to never check the news again), but not with so much weight as I anticipated. Part of this was due to “let’s not bring it up unless it’s brought to us” becoming the unspoken rule of the week at most of my placements (and with many of my clients not having access to TVs, it did take some time before these events found their way to our sessions), but ultimately the theme that seemed to carry from the events in Boston and from West were those little acts of heroism and solidarity across the country: Boston runners continuing on from the race track to donate blood, groups across the country uniting to help in any way that they can, even if its just to pause for a moment and pray.  My psych clients seem inspired by it all.  And I’ve felt inspired too – inspired to still write about the needs of those clients I see in psychiatric facilities, inspired by seeing that little bit of light return to their faces, despite all the terror, when so often this time of year, and in light of such events, everything may seem to be dark and cold.

Now, none of this diminishes the tragedy of what has happened – the deaths and injuries of these two events are going to be on the minds of many for many a day to come, and right that they should be – they were immense and terrible.  But one of the biggest things I work on with my psych clients is expanding their perspective: the importance of looking beyond how you feel in the immediate moment outward to how others around you might be feeling, and ultimately, how all those feelings can work together to bring about peace and productivity.  And rarely is that kind of empathetic perspective more of a necessity than in a tragedy.  Perspective that is clear and open helps us to see what we need, not just what we want, and it helps us move forward rather than stay frozen in place. It’s how we survive, how we move on, stronger, and more united than before.

So how do you use music to help someone who is frozen and locked in a limited perspective? One of my favorite tools as a Music Therapist is lyric analysis. With this tool I can look at a song with my clients, any song, and use it as a catalyst for talking about specific scenarios, without necessarily having to reference the scenario itself. For example, the song “Hold On” by the Alabama Shakes came up this week, and in talking about the title phrase in which the singer sustains one note over the beat of the music (“Hooooooold on…….”) one client mentioned how that rhythmic choice seemed to intentionally mirror the definition of the words in the phrase, seeing as the singer literally “held on” to that one note for so long. We then discussed how that musical phrasing could become a mantra, or “catch phrase” for our own stressful or difficult times, to take a deep breath in and exhale for the same amount of time as that phrase. Hooooooold on……. This sort of concept may seem so simple, and yet it’s easy to forget in times of stress. Having a mantra or phrase that comes out of a calm mindset that you can practice recalling with minimal effort can invoke near instant calm when you need it, and with calmness comes clarity, and with clarity, openness…perspective… if you can tell yourself to just “hold on,” and keep breathing, you can tell someone else to hold on, and keep breathing, and so we all keep breathing together.  We all hold on.

So, all that said, I hope you’re holding on, wherever you are!  In my kids sessions this week we’ve been singing the song “Green Grass Grows All Around.”  The song isn’t true for us in North Dakota just yet (plenty of snow on the ground still!), but we’re positive it will be soon, both emotionally and physically.  Rain or shine I’ll be running in my second 5k soon, this time for Autism Awareness at UND’s Autism Speaks fundraiser, then it’s off to the Hands On Learning Fair to share a table with some of my fabulous Music Therapy colleagues.  Soon after I hope to release Loopy Stanley 2013 to share with you all too! Brighter days are around the bend, to be sure.  Until then…Hooooooold on…

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Loopy Stanley 2013 – we want YOU!

Filed Under : Advocacy,Education,Social Networking,Songwriting,Studio Music,Technology,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Feb.11,2013

Hello and welcome February!

It is a blustery one here in North Dakota.  As  I type I am enjoying an impromptu Snow Day after we got a healthy dumping of snow and wind, enough to close down two major interstates (which in ND, is a pretty big deal).  Looking out my window everything is clear now, just lots of work to do if I should get the urge to attempt vacating my driveway anytime today!

This month is also showing up to be a blustery one for health too – lots of colds and flu bugs whirling around.  I myself caught one such bug that rendered me unable to get my last two posts of MT Advocacy Month out  in time for the end of January (as did, sadly the little client whose mother was going to write a guest post too – we may have to wait on that recovery a little longer).  But, weather and illness aside, I am excited to present to you all at least one of those posts: announcing the return of Loopy Stanley this year!

What is Loopy Stanley?

Last year, I began a project based on Flat Stanley, like you see in elementary schools around the world.  Children color in a little paper doll named Stanley, and send him via snail mail on “adventures” to their friends and family, all of whom photograph Stanley in their environments so that when he returns to his creators, they all have a photo collection of where he’s been.  Combine that idea with this great series of videos called “Song around the World,” and you have the basis of the concept for Loopy Stanley: have one group of people create a musical loop, and then send it out into the world to have recorded “adventures” with other people, so that eventually you can have a musical collection of where the loop has been.  Last year’s Loopy Stanley was an original loop created in the Ipad app Loopseque, and two MT-BCs contributed a total of 3 video and audio recordings that transformed the song from a simple series of beats and chords to an awesome melodic jam between my Ipad, a tambourine, a saxaphone, and an oboe – very cool stuff!  This year’s Loopy Stanley is based on a song you may find familiar, recorded by the students of the North Dakota School for the Deaf on Garage Band.  We’re hoping that using an already established song, and giving folks more time to contribute (last year I think we only gave folks a month, this year you’ve got two extra weeks!) will make Loopy Stanley a little more accessible this year.

So… check it out! And let us know what you think

This was my first time using iMovie on my Ipad to create the video, and I will admit to using some Quantization in Garageband, so you may notice some patches of video & audio are out of sync – no need to adjust your screen resolution or anything :-)

Promo Video for Loopy Stanley 2013 – link will open in new tab

If you think you’d like to contribute to Loopy Stanley, here’s all you’d have to do:

1. Like what you hear :-)

2. Email natasha.mtbc@gmail.com for me to send you audio or Garage band versions of the loops used in this video.

3. Record yourself or a client (audio & video) playing or singing along to one or all of the loops (wear headphones so we don’t hear the loops in the background)

4. Send your loops back to me by March 31st to compile with any others we receive to make one master track and video to be released in April of this year!

5. Check back in April of 2013 and like what you hear (again :-)

*Remember, please have recording permission for any client material you plan to submit as the final video will be made public!”

My kids at NDSD were very excited about sharing this song with the world this year!  They had a blast seeing and listening to the contributions from last year, and we look forward to hearing from folks again this time around – maybe one of those folks could be YOU!!

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New Year, Old Habits

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Advocacy,Family,Mental Health,Social Networking by Natasha Thomas
Jan.6,2013

Hello and Happy New Year!

I hope that you and yours had a wonderful holiday.  I myself enjoyed a very busy lead-in to mine, as evidenced by my infrequent posts here of late, but now that I’ve solidly got my feet back on the ground in Grand Forks (my husband and I spent Christmas with family in the Atlanta area), I am proud to be able to say that I now have a Masters Degree in Special Education with an emphasis in Visual Impairment, and as a result my schedule has opened up considerably. Well, maybe not considerably, but comfortably enough!  The horizon is wide open with new possibilities, but strangely enough, midst all the New Year’s resolutions and changes people around me are seeking to make in their lives, I find myself drawn to the things I’ve already been doing, old habits I’ve picked up over the years that I’ve been learning to see with new eyes just since I started my Masters Degree two years ago.  In fact, this recycling of old ideas in fresh ways apparently has shown in my Blog posts as late, with five of the most read Music Moves posts in 2012 having actually been written in 2011.  These were posts I linked to frequently throughout the year, and as a result they actually got more traffic than the posts that referred to them.  I choose to look at this as a further sign that I’ve always known more than I ever thought I did, my thoughts just needed time and educated guidance to be fully realized and developed.  This may sound a little lofty of me, but I can assure you it’s far from it!  I find it humbling, actually, to discover my own potential and experience the reward from hard work and dedicated study that so many of my colleagues have done and continue to do above and beyond the one degree that I earned.  Seeing all the doctoral candidates ahead of my getting their hoods at Graduation this last month I found myself inspired to discover the next level of thinking that they themselves had come to experience.  But, all in good time – I think I’ll enjoy this level of thinking for a while! So then, instead of New Year’s “Resolutions,” here I present to you my New Year’s “Affirmations.”

1.  Data is good. Very good.  Not just for my clients but for me.

Clear and concise documentation has taken on all new importance in my clinical work.  Maybe it’s the addition of the Ipad to my device collection.  It has truly changed how I document and allowed me to do what I’ve always wanted to, but didn’t have the time or means to do previously.  Having automated digital graphs fed by a single tap of my finger whenever a client does something I want them to do has enabled me to produce detailed reports so I can see what’s working and what isn’t working.  Add that to additional tools acquired in some of the classes I’ve taken to learn what steps to take when something isn’t working, and I now have objective means to be able to assess and adjust my services at a moment’s notice.  And that, in a schedule as packed as mine is, is priceless, both for my time being used more efficiently, and my clients receiving more specialized services.

2. Honesty is always the best policy, but a little bonus package of timing and discretion never hurts to add.

Growing up in a family of three girls, I developed a practice early on of answering questions quickly, otherwise you might not be heard or someone else would get what you wanted.  The phrase “last one there is a rotten egg” used to stress me to no end as a child, and this has translated into my adulthood as a desire to answer questions as quickly as effectively possible, so countless hours each day used to be lost in me trying to respond to emails the minute I got them, rather than waiting until the end of the day or selected office hours to answer them all at once if I happened to be in the middle of something at that time.  In fact, people who know me well may still see the occasional email from me opening with an apology if  more than 24 hours has passed before my response (if I had any resolutions, it’d be that: to apologize less for doing what I need to do to take care of myself and my clients). Waiting to respond to emails not only helps my stress level but it helps preserve the integrity of my responses – when the whole of my attentions can be dedicated to something, the more accurately and tactfully it will be executed.  So, once again, this preservation of my own efficiency serves both me and my clients as well.  Better time management from me = Better services for my clients.

3. Human Connections are valuable and worthy of validation.

It’s important for me when I’m working with my clients that I recognize their emotional needs in addition to their physical, cognitive, and sensory ones.  Sometimes I also need to be aware of the needs of those around them – their parents, caregivers, teachers, and peers.  And I need to be aware of my own feelings, and how they connect to everyone I work with.  Because we all have feelings, and we all have needs, and those needs have to be met from time to time, or at least recognized and acknowledged.  And many of those needs have to do with each other, and our connection to those around us. So my husband and I have the occasional date night, my clients and I always have emotional check-ins at the start and finish of every session, all so that we can take the time necessary to seek out any emotions or connections we might have been suppressing all day and resolve them as best we can (if we can).  No matter what, at the very least, laying them out for processing can have value in and of itself.  You might find negative feelings relieve slightly just by acknowledging their existence.  And as little as that relief might be, it’s always worth the shot!

This month I’m proud to once again be participating in Music Therapy Social Media Advocacy Month, sponsored by the Music Therapy Maven.  This year’s theme has to do with Connections, so over the next few weeks, you’ll be seeing posts from me about my own experiences and connections to my job as a music therapist, and hopefully stories from other MT’s and maybe even clients, about their experiences.  This theme really has me excited this year, and I look forward to being part of sharing the wonderful stories that my job helps me to write and retell every day!

And that’s it.  Those are the things I’ve been doing over the last year (and look forward to doing in the years to come) that I’ve come to realize meant more than I could have possibly imagined when I started to do them.  My mother in law told me at one point during my Masters Studies that she felt the greatest benefit Grad School gives is teaching you to think differently. So it isn’t so much what you learn about as it is how you learn to think. And I think I agree!

Here’s to an affirming 2013!

 

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Surviving Power Struggles

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,Mental Health,Social Skills,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Nov.28,2012

“It’s the most _________ time of the year!”

Many of us think of the song containing the above phrase and insert the word “wonderful” in the blanks.  But the holidays are so much more than that – and not always in a good way!  This time of year can be busy, tiring, and downright stressful for some, if not all of us, and with stress for many of the clients I work with, comes misbehavior.  Refusing to follow directions and all out tantrums abound.  Some of these misbehaviors are within my clients’ control, some of them are due to overstimulation and may be beyond the clients’ ability to self regulate.  No matter what the situation, how I react is key.  Any one misbehavior has the potential to turn into an all out battle of wills depending on how I choose to respond to it.

During my internship I was encouraged to take a course on something called “Conscious Discipline,” a self-regulation program for parents and educators created by early childhood specialist Dr. Becky Bailey.  When I describe Conscious Discipline to others, I call it “part common sense, mixed with a lot of patience, a great deal of listening, and a little intuition.”  Educators and parents can take classes from Dr. Bailey herself (in persion or via video) or from instructors that have been certified under her.  I’ve applied strategies found in Conscious Discipline to everything from my preK clients to colleagues and parents – the tools Dr. Bailey provides are worth checking out! What I love most about Conscious Discipline is that it’s evidence based, but easy for the average layperson to understand.  There are all kinds of books and materials put out there by Dr. Bailey (check out her resources page here for tidbit tips to use on the go), but one of my favorites is an audio recording I have of a presentation she did on power struggles.  In it she makes 3 main suggestions I keep with me at all times, and find particularly useful to remember during the holidays:

1. Recognize the signs of a power struggle early, and pick your battles.  Is the behavior harmfully disruptive to the client or others around them or is it just irritating?  If it’s just irritating, let it go by practicing “extinction:” just ignore it, no matter how the student might push you to respond to it.

2. If you can’t avoid a powerstruggle, remember to keep breathing and monitor your own feelings – accept them for what they are and then choose your actions carefully, keeping in mind that your counterpoint in the power struggle may not be able to do the same.  It may even be necessary for you to say “I think we both may need to take a break right now, let’s talk about this later” and then do just that.  Walk away or ask some nearby staff (or another parent) to escort your client/child to another location while you both cool down.

3. Another positive tool to use in power struggles is to offer choices.  When you tell someone “You can do this or that, you choose,” they are more likely to cooperate with you than if you just tell them “you can’t do that” without making any suggestions as to what they can do instead.  Power struggles gain their strength from the polarization of the two partieis involved.  If you take that polarization away, then you weaken the struggle.  Note that I said you weaken the struggle, and not the other party.  Offer them real suggestions, not just those designed to get you what you want.  For example, if a client is refusing to give up an instrument they’re supposed to be passing to their neighbor, you can offer them the choice of who it goes to (“you can hand it to that person or this person”), rather than stating that they just “hand it over.”

At the heart of every power struggle is the need for validation.  Clients and therapists, parents and children, colleagues, friends, and children, all need to feel like their feelings have value and are taken seriously.  When you can present choices, a general respect for space, and recognize when the battle is not worth fighting, what you’r really saying to your client or child is “I hear you, and while I may not understand now, I respect your right to feel what you feel and ask only that you do so in a way that respects my right as well.”  Note that you ask them to act in a way that respects your right to your feelings, you don’t ask them to respect your feelings themselves.  That’s not within your control.  We all come to the table with unique experiences that shape who we are and how we react to certain things.  I, for instance in the last month have attended 2 funerals and narrowly avoided having to attend a third, so there are topics that are touchy for me that coworkers of mine may have noticed, and I may never tell them why.  I have clients for whom I avoided asking about the recent Thanksgiving holiday because I knew that spending time with their family may not have been a positive experience for them.  We all come to the table with things we may never share but that influence how we react to and interact with the world around us.  All that any of us can ever do in such emotionally charged times is be patient and respectful of each others’ space and need to feel valued in this world.

So, go forth and be patient! How’s that for a holiday message? Wishing you and yours a very patient holiday season :-)

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The Power of Silence

Filed Under : Early Childhood,Hearing Impairment,Other Special Populations,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Nov.1,2012

It’s a quiet day here at home – I’ve officially caught the annual Fall bug going around and am sitting on my couch with tea on one side of me and oatmeal on the other.  Luckily I had a “mental health day” scheduled for tomorrow anyway, just appears my body couldn’t wait to get in on the action and stay home a day earlier!

I make a habit of scheduling the occasional “mental health day” or a day just for M.E. (remember that post? click here for details on those initials!) because time has shown me, along with various physical ailments, that my body and mind need recharge time in between the hectic hours I spend on the road or working with clients, as so many others in my field do.  We’re “helpers” by nature, we want to be there for the individuals we serve, and sometimes that means running ourselves ragged to do it.  But I was reminded in a session last week how important just taking a break can be, not just in my day to day schedule, and not just for myself, but for my clients, and in my very sessions too.

Many of my students at the North Dakota School for the Deaf have Cochlear Implants.  For those of you who don’t know how Cochlear Implants work, they are made up of two parts: one is an internal metal piece that’s surgically implanted in the recipient’s skull, the other is a transmitter that connects magnetically to the plate from the outside of the head behind the ear.  Without that external transmitter, the individual is totally deaf.  I have preschool students with implants who will take them off during tantrums and put their hands up over their heads to cover their eyes and where the magnetic piece would attach so they can’t hear or see my instructions, which can make a person feel pretty powerless (and tantrums are all about power!), but alas, I digress…

Some of my students with Cochlear Implants have other disabilities as well, which can make the process of receiving and living with an implant, and the auditory stimulation it brings with it, very difficult.  One such preschool student last Thursday came into their group session with me very upset – crying in a way that I knew was beyond a tantrum.  They were legitimately upset, and scaring themselves – you could see the fear in this student’s eyes, and it broke my heart.  Their teacher said to me that the student had recently gone in for an appointment to have the volume of what they were hearing through their implant turned up, and the stimulation since returning to school, it seemed, was too much.  So much in fact, that mid-Hello song (even without my guitar, I had opted just to sing to reduce the auditory stimulation) this teacher and student had to leave the room and take a walk, which I should add has never had to happen before with this student.  They loved music time, and even on the worst days, I had always found a way to turn their tears around with music.  Strumming the guitar in particular was this student’s favorite activity, so I told the teacher that I would come down to the classroom for some one-on-one time with this student after group, that maybe this would help.  The teacher told me that she was going to take the student’s implant off for a while to calm them down and that she didn’t think music would be of any use then.  I reminded her that music was multisensory, and that the tactile experience of strumming the guitar was at least worth a try.  We agreed, and I finished the group music session with the rest of this student’s class in my room, then packed up my guitar and headed downstairs to the student’s actual classroom to try some one on one strumming.  And the result was amazing…

When I entered the room, the student was lying on the floor crying softly, without their implant, hands over their ears  to block anyone trying to put them back on (which they had long given up doing, but again, when you’re in one of those “point of no return” tantrums, everything seems to be an imminent threat).  I sat down in front of them and took my guitar out of its case, and the hands came down from the ears within a second.  The student sat upright, and, still crying, reached for the guitar and began to strum.  I let the fingers of my left hand form a little chord progression, even though I knew the student couldn’t hear it, but I could see them recognizing when my hand would move, and making little glances away from what they were doing to recognize me, and that was a valuable sign they was aware enough of their environment in the midst of all they were feeling to maybe start to come out of it.  The student alternated between strumming themselves and grabbing my hand to strum, crying softly all the while, until a little smile crept across their face and the student lay back on the floor, pulling the guitar onto their lap as they did so, so that when I strummed they could feel the vibration against their stomach.  This is a pretty vulnerable position, so I knew we were on to something once the student led me there! I played for a few more minutes until the student turned over onto their stomach so the guitar was against their back.  Then they pulled out from under the guitar and grabbed a nearby book and opened it.  Across the room the teacher made eye contact with me and just shook her head.  Both of us were near tears.  As this student engaged themselves in the bookshelf in front of us, I slowly stopped playing and stood with my guitar.  The student looked at me as I did this, but continued to look at their book and smile, even starting to make little babbling noises, a sign that I knew the day was returning to normal.  I slowly, and again in full view of the student, walked over to my guitar case, put my guitar away, and then left the room silently.  When I got to my car, I turned off the radio and drove in silence for a good chunk of the 90 mile drive back to Grand Forks.  It just felt right.

Sometimes the world is more overwhelming than we might realize.  We are surrounded by sights and sounds that our ancestors might cringe at the sheer volume of stimulation we face every waking moment.  What my student reminded me of that day was that even though my job title has the word “music” in it, and even though music might be defined as “organized sound,” that silence is a sound too – and a necessary one at that! It is through silence that we even know what sound is – it’s part of what defines it, what shapes it, and part of what what makes the right sound beautiful and meaningful when it comes through.  So, I challenge you in your day to day life to make time for silence – both in your sessions and in your overall schedule.  Your body – and your soul – will thank you!

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Transitioning through Music

Filed Under : General,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Oct.9,2012

Another busy month is underway for this Music Therapist, culminating (already! Seems so early this year) in the American Music Therapy Association’s National Conference in Chicago Oct 11-14.  I’ll be presenting this year on the topic of defining the role Music Therapy can play in the State School model of serving students who are Blind or Deaf (if you’re someone attending that concurrent session and are looking for the handout, click here – make sure you have the password handy!)

Also making this month busy are the transitions I’ve been making, resuming elements of my old routine after my vocal rest, and building new routines to better manage my time and vocal health.  Transitions are a natural part of our everyday life, moving from one environment or state of being to the next, so as I prepare myself for the transitions I myself am making, I also look towards the changes coming to my students as I do this (less live singing from me, for example) and work to prepare them for all that’s in store – i.e., the new instruments and activities I’m bringing to replace those activities I used to lead primarily by singing.

So, how do I do all this without seeing major meltdowns from my students? Here are some little things I like to keep in mind whenever I’m transitioning clients from one thing to another – you might find these little tips are helpful to you in general as well!

1. Remember that transitions are all around you, and recognize each moment as a teaching opportunity.  This is something I’ve especially learned working with students who have sensory disorders.  You never know what someone may not be realizing is happening, or what the value might be in them knowing that.  Little things like taking the time to let students really touch or look at an instrument before you start playing it can be so valuable.

2. Transitions can be complicated, but keep your explanations simple.  As many opportunities as there are to teach, you don’t want to lose yourself in every one of them.  Take advantage of the most valuable times to teach, but do it as efficiently as possible, so you can still manage a few core activities in between those transitions!

3. Lastly, meet your students where they are - in Music Therapy we call this the iso-principle.  For example, if what you want is for your students to sit down on the floor and wait quietly for your directions, but what they’re doing is jumping up and down and yelling loudly, you will see more success in getting them to comply with your wishes by joining them jumping up and down to gradually bring their energy down to the floor with a song or a chant that slowly decreases in volume and speed, rather than insisting they join you on the floor without transition time.

So, with that, it’s time for me to transition from this blog post into the rest of my workweek – sadly, part of this week for me involves attending the funeral of my husband’s grandfather, who I am proud to have had the honor to know, but will greatly miss seeing at family gatherings and holidays. After the funeral, I’ll be flying out to Chicago for the AMTA conference, and I look forward to sharing with the many amazing individuals who come to present and learn from their peers, as I do.  From there, who knows what will come next! Conference is always an amazing time of year for me, with so much to learn and share with my clients – there will be much transitioning to be had, for sure, so check back soon for a recap of all the amazing things to come!

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Music for Academic Enrichment

Filed Under : Braille Music,Early Childhood,Education,Family,General,Hearing Impairment,K-12,Visual Impairment by Natasha Thomas
Sep.18,2012

One, two, buckle my shoe…

Sound familiar?  This little nursery rhyme has been the center of a new unit of mine at both the School for the Deaf in North Dakota and our upcoming programming week at the School for the Blind here in Grand Forks.  Why? A few reasons:

1. the Counting concepts involved: this song is great for young children to practice counting from 1 to 10 (and I have a fun verse that goes backwards from 10 to 1 too!) not just for reciting the numbers in order, but remembering that order with interruptions (like the phrase “buckle my shoe” between the numbers 2 and 3).

2. the Rhythm and Rhymes: my students at NDSD find this song a good one for practicing their signing fluency, and I am able to address the issue of rhymes with my older and more aural students.  I can show them a variety of cards with pictures of objects like shoes, doors, and sticks on them and say “5, 6, pick up…” and then wait for them to point to the picture of the sticks.  Seems obvious to us who know the rhyme, but if you don’t, this can be a tricky concept! My students enjoy playing matching games to songs that rhyme.  At the School for the Blind we’ll be practicing playing the rhythm of the song with Braille Music notation, to focus more on the steady “Ta-Ta, Ti-ti-Ta” of the chant, and how that can be expressed on paper.

3. And lastly, impulse control.  This can be a fun song to start with singing or signing really slowly, and then speeding up each time you repeat it, but learning to control those giggles after each repeat is a skill we spend our whole lives developing, if you think about it – when something is fun, how do you transition to what’s next without too much disappointment or craziness?  This week I’ll be presenting for an early childhood class on using Music for transitions – may be another blog post here on the subject then too!

Until then, however, I have my grandparents in town this week and am enjoying spending some quality family time before Fall really kicks into high gear with the return of my travel rotation with the School for the Blind, resuming of the LISTEN Drop-In kids groups (hopefully the first Wednesday in October – yay!) and the American Music Therapy Conference, which will be coming up sooner than usual this year, and at which I’ll be presenting for my first ever National Conference! Lots to enjoy, be thankful for, and look forward to – much to learn as well!

Speaking of learning, one last AWESOME announcement: this week a new continuing education course by yours truly will be released on Music Therapy Ed.com on the subject of Music Therapy with the Blind and Deaf.  Some of the concepts I just discussed above will be included, as well as tons of info on the assessments I use in my work with NDSD and NDSB, and general information on using Music with individuals who are Visually Impaired or Hard of Hearing.  I could not be more excited about this or grateful to the amazing Kat Fulton for this opportunity, and I hope if this is a population or area of Music Therapy that is even remotely interesting to you that you’ll consider signing up for the course! It’s all online, available to you 24/7, and worth 5 CMTE credits.  It’s been an awesome experience creating the course and I look forward to hearing from students as they take it and seeing what they have to say about it – as much as I teach and advise in my profession, my clients and students teach and advise me every day!

So go out there and learn a little something new today – even better if you do it with music!

 

 

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Lessons in Vocal Care (from an MT on Vocal Rest)

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Vocal Care by Natasha Thomas
Aug.1,2012

As promised last post, we’re going to take a look this week at an experience I’ve embarked on many a time before due to my personal intuition, but never before been medically mandated to do until 3 weeks ago: vocal rest.

There are two main kinds of vocal rest – partial and complete.  I’m dealing with the former, under which I am required to abstain from singing and limit the use of my speaking voice, though when I do speak I’ve been instructed to speak in my normal tone (whispering actually strains your vocal chords more than just speaking).  If I were on total vocal rest I would have to be completely silent, and believe me, partial rest is hard enough, thank you very much!  My prescription (yes, I actually have a prescription from my doctor with “partial vocal rest” and a list of restrictions on it) lasts for 8 weeks, which puts us into mid-September – a long time for this singer to go without singing!

Now, I mentioned that in the past I’ve put myself on vocal rest just intuitively – as a voice student in college, I was trained to know my limits vocally,  so if I felt my throat was sore, or my voice wasn’t performing the way I was used to, I would stop and cancel a few sessions (or modify what I was doing or eating – alcohol and caffeine can dry your throat out) to try and let things work themselves out.  Usually that would help – but in the case of my issues this summer, no matter what I did, the soreness and difficulty singing that I experienced on and off after a cold in May just seemed to come back no  matter how long I tried.  I actually had myself on vocal rest for 6 weeks before my regular doctor referred me to an Ear Nose & Throat specialist who stuck a camera up my nose (and ultimately, down my throat) to figure out what was going on.

Below is an image of what your vocal chords (which are located in your larynx, a part of your throat) do when you’re breathing vs. when you’re projecting sound, like speech or singing.

A simple graphic of what your vocal chords look like while breathing or making sound.

As you can see, your chords remain open for receiving air and then come together for projection of sound.  Sustained sounds (like singing) will actually cause the chords to vibrate against each other.  Now picture a gardener shoveling dirt – if they do a lot of shoveling in one day, they might get some irritated skin or blisters from where their hands make contact with the shovel, and if they continue working hard over time those blisters may turn into callouses.  The same thing can happen to your vocal chords – the folds that make them up can become irritated and swell, as mine have, and over time, if untreated, they can harden into callouses called nodules. Remember the singer Adele, and the surgery she had to have to fix her voice? She was out of commission for over 6 months – those were vocal nodules.  And she was one of the lucky ones to recover so well after surgery – ever wonder why Julie Andrews doesn’t sing anymore? She had surgery for vocal nodules and her chords ended up damaged in the process.  She’ll never sing like she used to again.

Now, like I said, what I have is swelling on my vocal chords that can be a precursor to vocal nodules, so they’re not nodules yet, I just have to make some major modifications to ensure they don’t become them!  In addition to 8 weeks of vocal rest, I’ve also been prescribed medication for acid reflux (Surprise! Stomach acid can erode your vocal chords!) and made some lifestyle adjustments, like cutting out caffeine and dairy products (caffeine I figured, but I used to drink milk when I had a sore throat because it coated my throat and felt good going down, who knew it could actually exacerbate acid reflux symptoms!). I’m also experimenting with raising the head of my bed a few inches so acid doesn’t creep up while I sleep.  That adjustment I actually like! Been pretty good for my back, actually… after my 8 weeks are up, I’ll see my ENT and his little camera again, and hopefully then he’ll give me the go-ahead to start seeing my voice teacher again and gradually progress back into singing once more.

Here’s how my weeks of vocal rest of gone so far:

 

WEEK 1: I had already scheduled the week off after my Braille Music Institute at the ND School for the Blind, so there was one week where it was really easy to be quiet – I didn’t even listen to music, the temptation to hum along (or just feel depressed that I couldn’t) was too great. When speaking to my husband or close friends, I cut out unnecessary words like “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Yes,”  “No,”  “Maybe,” and sounds like “Mm-hmm” where my meaning could just as easily be construed with a gesture.  For those friends that knew a little Sign Language I used that as well, and used whistling to announce my entrance into rooms of crowded people, like the birthday party we had one night that week for a friend.

WEEk 2: After one week of vocal rest my throat was finally starting to lose it’s constant ache, so I returned to working just at my office at School for the Blind, but even that I’ll admit was an adjustment.  I emailed everyone in advance of my return that I would be limiting my speaking and preferring email over phone correspondence, but I ended up additionally having to shut the office door I usually leave open so folks knew I was in, just because I found it made it less awkward to have people greeting me from the hallway and expecting a reply when I couldn’t project loudly enough.  That way if anyone needed to find me, they had to come in or send me an email.  Phone conversations have been difficult because in trying to limit my speech output, it can be easy to misunderstand me or assume meanings that I haven’t meant to imply with my silence, so that’s been an adjustment as well (especially with my parents, who don’t text, out of town for two weeks and calling every so often to check in!) I even wrote up a note that reads “I have a vocal chord injury and canny talk.” for particularly loud environments, like the rock concert a friend and I went to my second week of vocal rest.  We’d purchased the tickets a month ago, so I didn’t want to pass them up, but I have to admit I was worried about being in such a noisy setting and not being able to speak for myself. I ended up having a wonderful time, albeit feeling a little sad whenever the lead singer would say “I wanna hear you scream” and all I could do was clap more loudly and do a little dance in my chair!

WEEK 3: I’m now starting to return to some of the sessions I’d struggled to lead or dropped back in May after my cold.  I’m finding new ways to conduct my sessions and make music that don’t involve my voice.  That may seem like a “no duh!” moment to the average individual, perhaps even to most other Music Therapists, but my voice has always been such a central part of my sessions – I even have clients that greet me by yelling “singing!” It’s going to be a major adjustment for me to operate full sessions without doing so.  My free children’s group is one that I don’t think I can manage without being able to sing, so that group will remain on hiatus until I get the go ahead in September, though I’m welcome to suggestions on non-singing activities any of you readers use out there! I’m finding great comfort in reaching out to my musical community during this time – we have lots to share and lots to give! I hope to share more of what I’ve learned over the next few weeks, hopefully culminating in a Week 8 post that reads “Huzzah, I can sing again!”

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Music as a Third Language

Filed Under : Adolescents,Bellydance,Education,General,Movement,Social Skills,Songwriting,Studio Music,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Jul.9,2012

Hello and Happy July!  Hard to believe our last post was all the way at the end of MAY – quite the schedule I’ve been under lately, but so much fun information to share!  As I type this, we’re preparing for our first ever Braille Music Institute at the North Dakota School for the Blind, which I’ll be sharing more about as we get further into the week, but over the last month, my attention has been dedicated to something completely different: English Language Learners, also known as individuals learning English as a Second Language, or ESL Learners.  My work with this population came out of an experiment started last year by the popular Summer Performing Arts Company (SPA), which engages young students in the Grand Forks community from kindergarten through their highschool years in the performing arts (theatre, music, and dance).  Last year, the program pioneered their first ever sections of SPA specialized for ESL students (called ELL SPA) and students with Special Needs (which was called MY SPA).  I was fortunate enough to be asked to facilitate some drumming activities for ELL SPA at that time, and it was enough of a hit that they wanted me back this summer, this time to coordinate the whole of the ELL SPA program – quite an undertaking to be sure, but it’s been a tremendous learning and growing experience for me and one I hope to embark on again and again with these wonderful students as often as they’ll let me in future years!

The students in my two sections of ELL SPA (we met from 8am to 10:15, and 10:30 to 12:30) totaled 34 in number, with 30 of them from Nepal.  Our community has seen a huge influx in the number of refugees coming from Nepal, and some of the students I worked with had been in the country less than 2 months before starting our program, which ran from May 29th through the 3rd of July.  During the 2 hours I had each group for over the course of the month, we worked on everything from learning to play rhythms on the drums and chords on the guitar to writing a play, creating costumes and designing a set, and putting together a video presentation of their final performance to show everyone in the last week.  Our goals were to help students develop an understanding of the English Language and American culture through the performing arts, as well as provide them with opportunities for social interaction through sharing their own cultures with us and participating in activities that took them out of their own comfort zone and forced them to work together to achieve success.  One favorite game of our students for achieving this last goal was “The Blob.”  In this version of tag, one person is deemed “The Blob,” and tasked with chasing everyone else in the group.  When “The Blob” manages to reach someone and touch them, that person has to connect to them (either by linking arms or holding hands) and then together they have to tag the next person, who connects to them, and so on, and so on, until you have a giant “Blob” in which all members of the group are eventually “assimilated.”  We played this game in a large library (amazingly, without any major injuries – there were times when I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea!) but the game can also be played in small circles, with the movement of the group limited to small shuffling steps, or by blindfolding the members of the “Blob.”  Adaptations abound and the game is great fun to work on team work, while addressing issues of personal boundaries and freedom of movement.

This group was also the first one where my expertise in Bellydance was really able to combine with my job as a Music Therapist.  Many of my Nepali students were very interested in Bollywood, or East Indian Dance, which many Bellydancers study, so we had several “dance days” where I would bring in my hipscarves and props, and we would teach each other all the moves we knew, boys and girls alike, taking turns plugging our phones and other music-playing-devices into the speakers we were provided, and just enjoying the community of sharing with each other in music.  Those are days I’m going to miss for sure!

At the end of the summer, students shared that some of their favorite activities were the same as mine: playing games like the “Blob,” dancing in the library, and learning rhythms and chords to songs like Greenday’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams.  Many of them stated that they were proud of the work they had done, and I would have to agree with them as well: I was tremendously proud of all we were able to do in one short month, but above all it was my honor to be part of such an amazing group of international students, share in learning about their culture’s customs and traditions (and FOOD! Never again will I assume that salads can’t be spicy!)  All in all, this was a very new experience for me, but one I can’t imagine having a summer without!

I know I’ll be able to say the same about our Braille Music Institute coming up this week – students are just arriving now, and our special guest Bill McCann of Dancing Dots is hard at work preparing a demonstration of some of the software they’ll be learning to use to create music in both Print and Braille this week.  Already, I love the sound of sweet music coming from every corner of the building, from the Technology room to the Commons area – it may be a little hectic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

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Defining Music Therapy…in Community Centers

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Family,General,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
May.30,2012

Wow, did the month of May fly!  It’s been a long silent month here on the blog itself, but as those of you who follow me on Twitter I’m sure have noticed, it hasn’t been so long or silent in the life of this Music Therapist (well maybe lately, I seem to be going through a “no voice” spell of late that hasn’t been very fun)!  My bellydance sisters and I celebrated our first stage show at the Firehall Theatre May 11th, the May Drum Circle at 12 Houses was great fun (with us possibly planning TWO circles for June!) and I’ve been hard at work formatting a possible CMTE course on working with students who are Blind and Deaf for Kat Fulton over at Music Therapy Ed, not to mention our local Summer Performing Arts Company’s English Language Learners (ELL) Group that I just started with this week!  So, Deadlines and Meetings abound, but it’s all very exciting to be part of planning for more and more Music Therapy in our little North Dakota Community!

There are two main places where I provide Music Therapy services in a free capacity for my community: the LISTEN Drop-In Center and 12 Houses.  The latter hosts my monthly drum circles, the former houses my weekly family music group.  The arrangement I have with LISTEN, as they are a non-profit organization, is that I am an outside contractor.  This means that I invoice them and they pay me for my time there, so that my sessions can be offered free of charge to their guests, who complete a sign in process when they come for sessions so that the center can have evidence of the attendance to their events for presenting to grants or other entities who fund their physical buildings and staff.  This is both a wonderful and a challenging sort of arrangement  – It bears saying that it’s more wonderful than it is challenging, but the challenges are worth noting at least, the greatest of which is the importance that attendance factors into the survival of my programs – if we didn’t have regular attendance from a predetermined number of families, that group would not be maintained, because the money the center spends paying me to come there could justifiably be spent elsewhere if there are other events gaining better attendance.  So, if attendance gets low, no matter how religiously those attendees come to sessions, those programs can be cut.  Luckily, attendance at my groups has been fairly consistent and decently sized, albeit with a slight dip from Memorial Day and my voice issues, but their existence at least remains secure – I know many other Music Therapists and sessions out there that can’t say the same.

That’s where groups like the drum circle at 12 Houses come in.  Those sessions are offered free of charge, and through a rent agreement with the owners of the store, I don’t have to pay to use the space so long as they attend the circle, which they do every time! Instruments are purchased for the group through funds donated by those who attend it, so essentially the group funds its own equipment.  The only thing not covered is my time, which, since I love to drum and don’t do it anywhere else (plus the fact that those sessions are monthly and not weekly like my LISTEN ones are) I don’t mind donating that one hour every month.  There it doesn’t matter how many people come, or how consistently they do it – I drum with whoever is there, and essentially the drums are paid for in accordance with the demand for them, so if there’s a shortage of drums to meet a large number of people one month, should those people all donate, there will be plenty of drums for them the next time they come!

Many other music therapists choose to donate one hour per month, as I do, to one organization or another – (I actually donate the one hour a month to 12 Houses, then one hour per quarter to organizations like Infant Development for events like their Early Childhood learning fairs and the like) – it’s an individual call each professional makes uniquely from their peers and colleagues.  I view it as part of the way we spread the word about what we do, by providing opportunities for people to experience it free of charge from time to time. When my husband teaches percussion lessons, his studio has a policy that your first lesson is always free so the family and student can see for themselves if something is going to work or not, before committing to services.  I couldn’t imagine doing things that way, but that’s me – my schedule fills so quickly I need to know right away if someone is going to commit to a time with me before I commit to clearing my schedule for it.  Someone else might do things still differently, but I encourage you wherever you are to find those free opportunities for making music with a qualified Music Therapist (Board Certified) and take advantage of them when you can – many MT-BCs won’t have that sort of time available often, so sometimes you have to really look, but they’re worth it!

So, you might ask, how does someone establish, let alone track, goals for a group like the ones at LISTEN and 12 Houses that meet so sporadically? The answer is very openly – I phrase my goals with simple “they did it” or “they didn’t do it” measurements, as in: “attendees will participate” in such-and-such an activity, or “participants will attempt to play at least two instruments in the course of the session” and just keep mental track if one person only plays one instrument all session without trading, or if someone comes to a session and then leaves without actually participating in a single activity (which has happened! We’ve had folks come to family music group with children who just sit outside the the circle crying for the first session, until they get more used to things, so I measure those occurrences).  Those types of things to me indicate insecurity, and I want my guests at these kinds of sessions to feel secure in leaving their seat during music making to find new instruments and along the way, and to maybe interact with another person to find an instrument they enjoy playing even more than the last.  I also regard tracking basic goals like this as check-in’s for me and the services I provide, for instance, if I’m noticing a lot of people coming into the circle and only choosing one instrument to play the whole time, there may be something I could be doing differently to encourage more interaction.  I’m constantly seeking new and different ways to structure my activities and make session activities more enticing for my attendees to participate in, so free sessions provide the very open environment for me to do that in, as well as providing great opportunities for people who aren’t sure what Music Therapy is or aren’t sure if it’s for them, so that they can see what it is and what it can do for their lives.

So, this look at community centers wraps up our month long series on defining what I do as a Music Therapist in each of the placements I serve. From working with my Visually Impaired students, to my Deaf and Hard of Hearing Classrooms and the Residential Facilities I serve, there’s never a dull moment in Natasha’s world, but nowhere else is this more true than in my donated Community sessions! They’re free opportunities for the community to experience what I do, as well as for me to look at what I do from new angles and through fresh eyes based on whoever attends on that given day – and ultimately that’s valuable for everyone I serve!

Coming up this month, 12 Houses Bellydancers will be at the Altru Health Sponsored Art Fest events in Grand Forks, I’ll be dancing with some of my bellydance sisters in Duluth Minnesota, and 12 Houses will hold 2 drum circles in June – one of them outdoors!  Hopefully LISTEN sessions can resume once I get my voice back on track after this cold.  Summertime can be a busy time, and a hectic time, but ultimately it’s one of my favorite times of the year to make music – I hope you get to enjoy some music in your summer as well!

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