My Path into Music Therapy

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For Academic Bio, please scroll down. 

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Ten years ago, I graduated in a Masters in Singing. My focus at the time was artistic, resulting in a very fruitful and professionally satisfying period of performances and intense collaboration in creative projects of a very varied nature. However, aside from my artistic vocation, I have been curious since an early age about a dimension of music that goes beyond aesthetics.

In fact, music, from the beginning of its earliest manifestations, has been a means for members of human communities to connect, to meet at the most intimate and profound level: lullabies, for example, are one of the fundamental love expressions at hand for caregivers to connect with newborns. In this context, at the beginning of life, music is not only a palpable expression of care and love, but it can also have a calming and soothing effect. Also, towards the end of life, music is widely recognised as an extremely valuable bridge to the eldest in our communities. Many of our elderly are afflicted by dementia, Alzheimer or other neurological degenerative disorders, so that they eventually lose their verbal functions, often well before the appearance of other cognitive constraints and the final dilution of the very conscience of the self.

I have witnessed this sort of degenerative processes in my family, when, as adolescent, I used to sing to my grandfather during his last stages of dementia. It struck me how he could follow melodies and even mumble parts of lyrics despite having lost his speech long ago. Furthermore, my singing would have an influence over his facial expression and breathing patterns. Although I did not grasp the underlying workings of this phenomenon, this experience moved me profoundly.

That is why, when years later, as a teacher, I observed the impact that voice lessons could have on emotion regulation and stress relief, I resolved to further explore the potential health benefits of music. The opportunity to realise it arose in 2016, when I enrolled in a Master in Music Therapy at CODARTS, Rotterdam.

The subsequent three and a half years of training as music therapist were very intense, transformative and enriching, not only from a knowledge acquisition perspective, but also at a deeper, introspective level. Through that period, I got to acquire fundamental knowledge across many different disciplines ranging from physiology, through neurology to psychology. Additionally, I had the chance to further develop artistic skills such as improvisation and composition, as well as getting familiar with other musical instruments. I also got the opportunity to integrate all that knowledge in a patient-centered way, responsively and adaptively interacting with each patient, in a unique, context-specific way.

Towards the end of the Masters, my activities focused on the specific needs of patients being at the beginning or at the end of life and of those accompanying them:

On the one hand, the theme of my thesis was the role of music therapy in NICUs (Neonatal Intensive Care Units). This research was supported to a substantial extent by the Sant Joan de Déu hospital, in Barcelona in collaboration with Associació Ressò, led by Núria Bonet. My main interest was the clinical use of music therapy in the framework of pregnancy and premature newborns (see abstract of the master thesis here), for whom the impact of music therapy has been proven as key in the reinforcement of attachment between caregiver(s) and the baby. Newborns spending the first weeks or even months of their lives in a NICU are subject to necessary but unfortunately painful treatments while being deprived of skin-to-skin contact. These circumstances may have detrimental consequences on said attachment. In this clinical setting, interactive live music therapy is a powerful tool to mitigate the traumatic effects that premature birth could originate. Furthermore, the benefit of an early intervention of that kind spans beyond said psychological aspect of attachment: consistent evidence hints at the supportive role of music therapy towards neurological development of the infant, as well as at its impact on the speed and extent of maturation at a cognitive, behavioural and motor level.

On the other, a nine-months internship within a multi-disciplinary team at a nursing home in Den Haag under the supervision of Harry van den Berghe, was a very positive and inspiring experience that has defined my current trajectory as music therapist. Since March 2020, I am a proud member of said team, where curiosity for the most recent developments in research often leads us to apply novel ideas on treatment strategies during the sessions with our patients.