The Need for Caregiver Self-Care Caregivers providing long-term care for others have a great need for effective self-care practices. Last week I wrote about some of the difficult feelings caregivers can experience when providing long-term care to someone. Today I’m going to talk a bit more about the importance of caregiver self-care. Specifically, I want […]
Category Archives: Counseling
The Benefits of Silence: Reflections on Well-Being
We live in a sensory-dense world. Almost everywhere we go, there is sound. It can be overwhelming at times. As humans, we and our nervous systems need moments of silence in order to ground, center, and self-regulate. This helps us to come back to ourselves and our “here-and-now” experience. Yet, for those of us who […]
Hearing Yourself as Music
Listen Deeply to Yourself. You Are Music. Your Life is Music I am MUSIC? My LIFE is MUSIC? Have you ever thought about yourself as a musical composition? What comes to mind when you think of yourself from this point of view? It can be a strange thing if you haven’t considered it before. You […]
Music Therapy and Trauma
Everyone experiences challenges in life because life isn’t easy. Sometimes these challenges benefit us because they can provide us with great opportunities for personal growth. Yet sometimes these challenges can prove to be traumatic. If left untreated or unacknowledged, these experiences can lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD can be challenging to treat. This […]
Personal Means of Evidence in End-of-Life Care
As I addressed previously in this blog post, there are a variety of ways that music can be used to enhance a person’s sense of health and well-being. Likewise, the practice of music therapy itself is incredibly diverse, with music therapists working from different orientations including: humanistic, psychodynamic, and music-centered, in addition to behavioral, medical, […]
The Magic of Being In the Present Moment
Many times we find ourselves stuck in the past or anticipating the future. Living life in this way can result in our feeling ungrounded or distracted. It takes us away from the magic that is being in the present moment. Our ability to be in the “here and now” can help us to experience life […]
Basic Goodness: A Mindful Approach to Life & Helping Others
More than anything else, I have found that my belief system and worldview about people are of greatest value to me as a therapist. My clinical training at Naropa University introduced me to mindfulness practice and Shambhala. Having trust in human dignity forms the basis of Shambhala, and one of the components to this is […]
Using Music for Complicated Family Grief
Recently I wrote about grief and complicated family dynamics. In it I suggested that the death of a family member with whom you have a strained relationship can bring up conflicting feelings, while also presenting you with the opportunity to more clearly define what kinds of relationships you want to experience and to examine how […]
Hospice & Palliative Care Music Therapy
Recently I was asked by the hospice company where I work to write an article about what I do as a music therapist. I’m sharing it here with you so that you may also get a clearer sense of what music therapy is and the role it can play within the realms of hospice and […]
Saying Goodbye Through Music
“Goodbye.” What feelings, thoughts, images, or experiences come to mind when you see that word? Depending on the context, “goodbye” can take on a lot of different meanings. “Goodbye” can signal a temporary parting, or it can represent something more permanent. And when it represents a more permanent situation, saying goodbye can carry bittersweet feelings. […]