Jen Hastings, Neurologic Music Therapist

Here’s a great article on how music therapy can help with Parkinson’s disease, compiled from Connie Tomaino’s 2018 presentation for the Parkinson’s Foundation. She worked for many years with Oliver Sacks and is a great resource. https://www.parkinson.org/blog/research/Music-Therapy-Parkinsons-Disease-Feel-Rhythm

I just wrote a new article on the use of music to teach emotional intelligence. We know that EQ is a tough thing to teach, and some people think you either have it or you don’t. It’s difficult to teach this in a classroom, because learning must be experiential, rather than cerebral, to truly learn and incorporate emotional intelligence.

View at Medium.com

I am pleased to announce that I moved to Manhattan a few months ago and have a few openings for new clients! Because my time is limited, I am focusing on working with the populations I am most passionate about serving, using Neurologic Music Therapy techniques with people who have:

• Parkinson’s disease
• Survivors of stroke
• Traumatic Brain Injury &
• Autism 

Goals can be physical ( such as working on fine/gross motor through drumming), emotional (ex: processing from grief through making music), social (such as practicing skills for everyday life such as ordering coffee after a Traumatic Brain Injury) and communicative (ex: recovery of speech through Melodic Intonation Therapy post-stroke).

Additionally, music therapy is a means to recover through joy and fun, which can be a goal in itself. If you or someone you know might benefit from music therapy, please email me at the link provided above, using the “Contact” button.  I would be happy to speak with you.

Originally, my aim in music therapy was not so much altruistic as to experience engaging musically in a safe space with another person. I was petrified of my peers hearing me play, due less to my lack of musicianship as my fear of being “heard”, exposed. Music therapy was a new way to engage with another person that felt safe. I was inspired to improvise with my clients, who would not judge my music and had a great time no matter how I played.

Thankfully, once I worked as a music therapist for some time, I realized that connecting through music was not actually about me at all. It wasn’t even about the client. It was about the space between us, the connection we felt that could not be quantified or even be described. And yet, there it was: tangible, almost solid.

I write this knowing that it can be controversial in the music therapy community to talk about the abstract concepts of connection and relationship. I am grateful that some aspects of music therapy can be described scientifically, and I know that I benefit from the tireless hours music therapists have conducting valuable research (often on their own dime). But I must confess that I find it equally exciting and frustrating that we can’t explain so much that happens during music therapy sessions, and that often the treatment does not affect groups of people consistently.

I think my relief in lack of total explanation is that this leaves room for the spiritual. My most profound experiences have been in the music therapy treatment room. I learned there to trust my gut, even when it made absolutely no sense, and it was usually right. Further, there is power in music to bring us to our most vulnerable and then build us back up, and doing this with another person can be a rare gift. My last thought: if this experience could be fully explained, would it actually lose any of its power?