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CNY Music therapy contracts with a local hospital and in healthcare settings. This includes focused music-making with a variety of populations including music therapy groups in settings for mental health; music support including a volunteer ‘Music & Memory’ program for adults with dementia; music therapy for long term patients as motivation and emotional expression; support for patients and families at end of life; etc.

 

Music therapy within healthcare settings reaches a broad range of needs. We run individual and group settings where patients are invited to participate in active interaction through music-making in many forms such as singing, playing, listening, creating. Across this range of needs the music sessions offer opportunities for:

  • Emotional expression

  • Remission of pain and anxieties

  • Processing past experiences

  • Facing present challenges

  • Supporting a medical procedure

  • Musical breathwork and mindfulness supporting wellbeing

  • Normalizing the hospital experience

Therapist and client singing and playing the metallophone

““Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

- Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist)

Music therapists work in behavioral health with the interdisciplinary team to assess emotional well being, physical health, social functioning, communication abilities, and cognitive skills through musical responses. When individualized music experiences are designed by the music therapist to fit functional abilities and needs, responses may be immediate and readily apparent. Clients need not have a music background to benefit from music therapy. Music therapy intervention provides opportunities to:                                              

  • Explore personal feelings and therapeutic issues such as self-esteem or personal insight        

  • Make positive changes in mood and emotional states

  • Have a sense of control over life through successful experiences

  • Enhance awareness of self and environment

  • Express oneself both verbally and non-verbally

  • Develop coping and relaxation skills

  • Support healthy feelings and thoughts

  • Improve reality testing and problem solving skills

  • Interact socially with others

  • Develop independence and decision making skills

  • Improve concentration and attention span

  • Adopt positive forms of behavior

  • Resolve conflicts leading to stronger family and peer relationships 

We are also passionate about music and the breath and are introducing our singing program 'Singing Solutions', which supports both pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation, with local providers in the community.

Music therapy has many benefits in other areas of healthcare, such as pre- and post-natal care for baby and parents, and at CNY Music Therapy we are eager to develop these services in the community.

“Music Therapy invites the art, science and craft of music and healing. Illness, disease and disablement are not simply scientifically significant conditions needing ‘treatment’ or ‘cure’. They are conditions that allow richness and meaning into our lives, demanding to be heard, expressed, re-created and given inspiration.”

‘Intimate Notes’ by Mercedes Pavlicevic, PhD

“Modern meds are really great to say the very least,

But music is the very best to soothe the savage beast. Thank you!”

- A poem left by a grateful patient after a hospital stay supported by music

“I love it! The music helped me 'leave the room' (if that makes sense!) and it took me back many many years! It also helped my breathing a lot, because it kept me calm. And I have not been taking as many pills for anxiety.”

- Jane, a hospital patient on an extended stay

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