Vincent James & Keep Music Alive!

Part Art & Part Science: Musical Therapy is Medicine That Works!

By now its a well documented fact that music therapy is a profession whose time to shine has come. Although utilized for many years, helping patients recover and heal by playing various styles and forms of music is finally beginning to get the recognition it deserves. The needs and situations vary but some examples include:

• Helping a pre-mature baby who is not growing fast enough
• Helping a young child with a debilitating disease who needs motivation to help regain or maintain movement
• Helping an elderly patient with advanced dementia or other ailments who can only physically or verbally respond when there is music involved.

The list of patients who may benefit from some form of music therapy is as long as our imagination.

We recently came across an excellent article by professionally licensed Music Therapist Julie Avirett who spends a lot of time at Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida helping babies, young children and teenagers in their healing process. Ms. Avirett puts its best when she says:

"Music therapy may appear simply as a thoughtful service used for entertainment in a clinical setting, but it's actually an evidenced-based form of therapy. As an established health profession, it creates a therapeutic relationship that addresses physical, emotional, cognitive and social needs of patients and their families through music in a fun, interactive way"

I encourage you to check out the full article where she really helps us understand the value of music therapy and how it has become such an important tool in helping children and adults to heal: www.News-Press.com - "Music is an Established Form of Therapy"

I also came across this very interesting 6 minute video by Music Therapist Ryan Judd which shows him actively helping several patients using music as a tool. It's so fascinating and heartwarming to see and hear music therapy in action seeing children respond to the music. For more information on Ryan you can visit him at www.TheRhythmTree.com

In future posts, we'll be covering more about music therapy and the various types of patients that its helping both here in the US and all around the world. Until our next post please have a great week - December and the Holiday Season is now in fullll swing!

Music, Love & Laughter,

~Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com www.facebook.com/KeepMusicAliveMission