Clinical Insights Archives - Music Therapy Source

Hannah In Clinical Insights, Professional Interviews

3 People Who Changed Careers for Music Therapy: When You Lose the Music

Welcome to the final segment in our three-part series! This week, Angie Biehl has been generous enough to share her very personal journey and her music with us. We are honored to post it here – it is an incredible story worth sharing. *** When asked what was going through her head when she heard about music therapy, Angie Biehl answered, “I was honestly thinking, ‘How have I never heard of this before?!’ “I had gone to school for music education and I was an educator. I always had trouble with the fact…

Hannah In Clinical Insights, Professional Interviews

3 People Who Changed Careers for Music Therapy: I Can Wait

This story is a part of our series “3 People Who Changed Careers for Music Therapy”, where we interviewed music therapists about their unique journeys to music therapy. (Here is the first story if you missed it.) Welcome to the second segment, and enjoy! *** When Rhonda Miller heard about music therapy, she was a junior in high school. She shadowed a music therapist and brought the idea to her parents, who “didn’t know any music therapists and had never heard of music therapy before. It didn’t seem like a…

Hannah In Clinical Insights, Interviews, Professional Interviews

3 People Who Changed Careers for Music Therapy: It’s Never Too Late

3 People Who Changed Careers for Music Therapy People have been using music in healthcare for thousands of years. However, the profession of music therapy as we know it today is much newer. As music therapy comes more and more into the public eye, more people learn about the amazing power it can have. But what if someone learns about music therapy later in life? What if they already have a career in something else? Is it too late? To answer your questions, we talked with three people who made…

Hannah In Clinical Insights

3 Traits You Have to Have to Be a Music Therapist

Not all music therapists are the same – that goes without saying. However, there are definitely some characteristics that lend themselves to being a great music therapist. Here are some we think are really important. And just a note, this is definitely not an exhaustive list! Empathy It seems obvious, but it’s actually not that simple. In being empathetic, we are trying to experience what our clients experience, but remain separate at the same time. To put it another way, we try to inhabit their world for a time, but…

Matt Logan In Clinical Insights, Ideas, Inspiration

The Power of Vulnerability

By now, you may have seen Brené Brown’s wildly popular TED talk from 2010. I remember watching in 2012 and I recently revisited it as she has been promoting a new book, Rising Strong (which I have admittedly not yet read but plan to in the near future). In case you haven’t seen it, feel free to view it here. I recently gave it another watch and thought about how vulnerability (or lack thereof) affects us as students, clinicians, and in our lives in general. In the video, Brené talks about “excruciating vulnerability”….

Matt Logan In Clinical Insights

Flexibility in Music Therapy

If you are a music therapist, you undoubtedly know the importance of flexibility. This can manifest in a number of different ways. In this post, I talk about a few types of flexibility I think are important to our jobs. However, I rarely have all my bases covered, so please tell me what I’ve missed! How do YOU demonstrate flexibility in your job? Flexibility of Time I’ve worked as a music therapist in a variety of settings, and nearly all of them have required some amount of flexibility in timing….