You want to crush your next presentation or talk. Here are some practical tips to make sure you do that.
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Improvements on guitar, like many things, occur in baby steps. We get better little by little. Big leaps are rare, although they do sometimes happen. But we can’t expect them to. We have to get better each day, even if progress is barely noticeable. Image is in the Public Domain. A key skill is being able to recognize: where you want to go, what the steps are leading up to it, and acknowledging when progress has been made. Having a strict timeline can help, but it can also hurt as it…
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Greetings and salutations, friends! Autumn has officially begun. Personally, I'm ready to start wearing some flannel again. This is week two of my Friday Five experiment. It's basically just cool things/resources I'm enjoying each week. Want future posts delivered directly to your inbox? "Yes I do!" 1.) BOOK Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman I recently finished this autobiographical collection of tales by an American physicist, Richard Feynman. You might be wondering - how would this apply to me? Well, I loved this book. I laughed out loud at least one…
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We’re music therapists and music therapy students. For many of us, a guitar is in our hands for much of the day. Most of the working world is limited to practicing guitar before and after work, so we are really part of a lucky few. If we set our minds to it, we can start making small improvements throughout the week, every week. We can get past “functional” guitar and into a more interesting, more pleasing, more musical realm of therapeutic effectiveness. Sounds pretty good, yeah? So read on to…
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My good friend and fellow music therapist Tim Ringgold sent me this link and it was, well, mind-blowing. Had to share it here. Enjoy!
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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".…
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I thought I had shared this video on here before, but it must have just been on the MTS Facebook page. What I love about this video from Robert Gupta is his description of the transformation he saw in his "student", a former Juliard pupil with paranoid schizophrenia. It reminds me of a variety of clinical situations I've encountered in almost all of the settings I have served. Music can change an environment, in can change a person's state, and it can open pathways to positive interaction and expression. Enjoy…
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This is a great TED talk from Michael Tilson Thomas, a conductor and community music educator. If you have 20 spare minutes and want to remember some of the reasons you love music so much, watch this. There are certainly many tie-ins to music therapy. A few quotes from the video: “The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.” “If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know .” “Even the most ambitious masterpiece can…
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As part of an effort to include multiple perspectives on Music Therapy Source, I have invited a few individuals to write guest articles. This is the first. You may see more of these soon! And, in other site news, we will be announcing an exciting new program for students and interns which will launch in mid-March. I can't wait to tell you all about it! Erin Breedlove is a music therapy student who also hosts a successful blog, Empower People Change Lives. She has quite an interesting bio, but I…
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