Hi, I’m Kasthuri Rengan and uh this is my colleague Sneha Kumaraguru.

We both are music therapists from Chennai School of Music Therapy where we did our one year diploma course.

In Chennai School of Music Therapy we have one uh year of diploma training course and there’s also six-month certification course.

The difference between the courses are that, in the one year course they have an on-site internship training, where they are given scope to work in the field with various populations and gain experiences in music therapy.

We are trained to work with children uh with different kinds of disabilities uh and not just that, uh we also receive training to work in different other setups like uh, you know, uh working with cancer patients or uh working with uh pregnant women, working with geriatric population or in different clinical setups like neurological rehabilitation, pain management and different uh, you know, clinical setups, like that.

So, I have been uh working primarily with children with special needs, like children who have ASD or ADHD or uh children with global developmental delay or cerebral palsy.

So I’ve been working with them for the past 1 and a half years or so.

Music can work wonders for children who uh have ASD or ADHD because they, they’ll have an internal uh innate ability to have a musical uh, you know, liking and their musical abilities are good, right?

So uh they tend to easily uh bind to that and their responses will also be good, according to that.

So, through all these things, through music therapy we are just going to uh focus on the non-musical goals, like whether it’s going to be development of their uh gross motor or fine motor skills or to improve their attention span, to improve their behavioral issues.

So, in all these things music is uh, you know, going to be used as the main motivation through which we are going to make the children uh achieve the non-musical goals that we have set.

When we talk about whether it is working or not, uh yes, we cannot tell that it works universally in the same way for all the children.

So, it’s different for each and every child.

There is no one particular mode uh that we use.

We use different modalities, like, you now, singing, uh playing instruments, uh using musical puppetry, musical storytelling, all these different kinds of uh things are used.

Uh it dep…and also the, the technique or the method that the therapist use, uh has chosen for the particular session depends on the child’s musical preferences, what the child is liking or on that particular day what the mood of the child is.

According to that the uh therapy sessions would be, you know, designed and it will be changing.

There is no one particular uh mode that will… we will be using.

We feel that weekly two to three sessions are required, a minimum of two sessions would be required, uh three sessions per week would be ideal, yeah, because uh if we don’t have that regularity then it’ll be very difficult for the children.

I would say in my opinion that working with children is really uh it’s, you know, it’s really gifting, it’s really, you know, there’s a lot of reward, feel that you get while working with children.

But I mostly work, have worked with adults and I see that the responses to the music therapy is, there is a lot of stigmas, there is a lot of, you know, issue that is present around music therapy wherein people do think and assume that ‘why do I need music or why do I need music therapy wherein I can just put on the headphones and listen to any music I want?’ but we use more music notes and music notations on a very purposeful and a very objective oriented note.

And I would, I wouldn’t want to compare between how it works for adults and children but it has equal benefits for everyone and anyone looking out for wellness, anyone looking out for using music to achieve certain wellness goals, music will definitely help.

Music has a very strong impact.

When it comes to working with adults, I think the number of sessions that we, you know, assess and we derive it depends on the objectives that we need to work.

And if it is a very intense or a very severe objective or an issue that we need to work on which requires more emergency basis, then we’ll have, even have sessions on a daily basis for them which has a more strong impact.

And if the objective is more relaxed that they can work on their own where we give them the space to work on their own in their home.

So it’s more of where they come for a session, they get equipped with certain skills and certain in which they can handle music for themselves, they practice it in their home.

They use it for relaxation, they use it for sleep and that’s, that again depends on how effectively they are doing it in their home.

So, it can vary somewhere between having sessions even on a daily note and also weekly once or you know, two weeks once.

When I was working in the uh in the in the cancer department, when I was working for patients who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment, I’ve had experience with clients who have, who have had changes in their objective parameters which includes their BP, which includes their blood pressure, which includes their heart rate.

So all these have had significant impact and through the use of music, through the uh, you know, set methods and techniques that we use, which is more targeted and which is more client oriented and client centered, the music therapy techniques has contributed in helping them achieve that objective.

I’ve had experiences where I was working with a client who felt so comfortable, who felt so relaxed, who felt so calm in a hospital environment which obviously is very stressed and very noisy, very loud and he felt really comfortable and he used to ask the nurses for uh, you know, he used to ask the nurses for the music therapist to walk in and he would always prefer for the music therapist to have a talk.

Because the chemotherapy procedure takes, like, two to three hours and once the initial, you know, formalities are done, the nurses walk away and there’s not…nothing much for them to do and that’s when we go in, that’s when we keep them engaged for certain period of time.

And we talk with them, we can give them the space to emote, express themselves because cancer is definitely not a very simple disease and there’s a lot of complication that comes.

They can undergo a lot of pain, they undergo a lot of stress and their families, the families goes through a lot of stress and it’s equally important for us to handle the patient, also handle the caretaker in helping them, you know, be well and you know, achieve that wellness.

So, yeah, it’s been really good working for patients.

In our uh, you know, country, there is a very uh, you know, prevalent confusion between music therapy and music education.

So, uh we have to understand that music therapy is different from music education.

In music education uh it is more of uh working on their musical abilities, they focus on improving their musical skills and the goals are only going to be musical.

Whereas in music therapy, we are not going to focus on any musical goals.

It is, uh, you know, uh, attaining the…achieving the non-musical goal through the use of music.

Different kinds of musical modalities through which we attain either uh improving their attention span or improving their ability to uh like improving their fine motor skills or um improving their sitting span, improving their memory functions, uh reducing their pain perception or uh improving their breathing rate, reducing their uh, regulating their blood pressure.

So all these things are non-musical goals which will be attained by the use of any musical uh experience.

So, that is one of the main uh misconception that is related to it.

Also, there is a very strong belief that if I take music therapy, will it cure my disease?

Will I get cured of the disease that I’m going through or will I get cured of the issue that I’m going through?

Will I be cured completely of stress?

And we do not claim that at any point of time music therapy can cure anything.

So music therapy, what we call in music therapy is, it’s a complementary medicine, it’s a complementary way of, uh you know, helping people go through their issues, helping the people come up and cope up with their issues that they’re going through in accordance or in complementing to the main treatment that they’ll be taking in.

If, for example, if a client is undertaking in a hospital, a major treatment or a major issue that the client is going through, they’ll be getting the main treatment, they’ll be getting the main medical treatment from the hospital.

They’ll also be getting other uh treatments like going through the diet plans and all the physiotherapy modalities and everything.

Likewise, music therapy is also a complementary way in helping them ease through the process and cope up with their daily specific thing they’re going through.

So, that is one very major misconception that people think, you know, can get cured of.

And one more thing is that uh uh when we say music therapy, it is not just listening to some music, some uh pre-recorded music over headphones.

So, as we discussed before, we use different methods like, you know, we uh engage the clients in listening to the music that the therapist sings or we engage them in participative singing or playing of musical uh uh instruments.

So, there are different uh modalities that are, that will be used and it’s not just listening to some pre-recorded music.

And also, when we say music therapy, it is a holistic approach.

So, it’s not just going to focus on your um, you know, uh biological health.

We also look at the psychological and social health as well.

So, all these different facets are looked upon and they’re given uh focus on when we work with the clients.

Some people, they might have uh another misconception that if they want to receive music therapy, they should be musically trained.

That is definitely not there.

Uh the clients need not be musically trained uh to receive music therapy.

So, and also one more thing is that uh for becoming a music therapist you should have uh formal training in music but you don’t require any uh musical degree as a compulsory requirement.

So, I for example, I did my M.Sc in Biotechnology, uh and then but I’ve been training, uh I’ve been trained in Carnatic music from my childhood and because of the passion that I had towards the field, I took up the course and now I’m working as a music therapist.

I’ve been training in music since I was the age of 5, 6, and uh I have been having a very, you know, crazy passion towards music.

Uh I I trained in, I know, I, I had my degrees in B.Com and I found that not to be my cup of tea and I went into Masters of social work where I was working for, you know, patients undergoing major psychiatric illnesses.

So, I specialize in medical and psychiatric social work and that’s where I found using music for patients in a therapeutic form has a very strong context.

That’s why I wanted to have a proper training to learn and understand the scientific nuances of working for, you know, people in terms of using music in a therapeutic context.

That landed me in music therapy and I’m glad that I, you know, took this opportunity to work for children to work for adults.

If I have to talk about my personal uh experience or development, yes it, it has made…I am a patient person, but it has, it has made me even more patient.

And uh I’ve started believing in uh, you know, the small things in life, like, there are a lot of difficulties that uh people go through and it, it has made me a more resilient person i would say.

And uh yeah the passion has become more.

I had the passion and that’s why I got into this field, but working and practicing music therapy has, you know, uh added more fuel to that passion.

To me, I think it’s very more intricate to talk about how I grew with music and when I, when I took, when I take music to people and when I, when I tell people that I’m a music therapist, I’ve been working, so and so, often the question that I get often asked is, ‘What does music therapy, what does music therapy do, how does it work?’

It’s a very unique field and you know, kudos to you for taking such a new field and it has been helping me in terms of how I can use music for myself in my daily life to improve my well-being, to use, to use it as a meditation practice.

Now I can implement it in the people around me, for the people around me and it has been really, you know, contributing largely, and of course, the passion towards music therapy is something that keeps on going for a very long time.