Music Therapy

My name is Ashley Tait and I am an Accredited Music Therapist.

My "calling" has developed as I have travelled a long educational and spiritual path.

As a child, I had never heard of the work I have come to do.

Rather than pursuing a specific career, I always strove to develop an open, playful, alert soul, a soul open to discerning its calling. I have found it, and it is a rich blessing.

The Canadian Association of Music Therapy (CAMT) defines Music Therapy as "The skilful use of music and musical elements by an accredited music therapist to promote, maintain, and restore mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Music has non-verbal, creative, structural, and emotional qualities. These are used in the therapeutic relationship to facilitate contact, interaction, self-awareness, learning, self-expression, communication, and personal development."

I work primarily in two specializations of my field, Guided Imagery & Music, and Sound Healing. During high school, music was my life. I was in concert choir, vocal jazz ensemble, concert band, jazz band, and outside of school I also played in my own band. After high school, I studied jazz saxophone at Vancouver Community College for 2 years before enrolling at the University of British Columbia to study classical saxophone. Psychology was the elective area I studied, and in the last semester of my Bachelor of Music Degree at UBC I also took an elective in Creative Art Therapies.

Then I looked into the Music Therapy program and I was hooked. Music Therapy is a helping profession which synthesises the transformative and healing properties of music, with psychology and counseling training. This was for me! The instructor, Dr. Carolyn Kenny, was the type of individual filled with such beauty and grace that everyone who knew her, loved her. She and Nancy McMaster were the bright souls who brought Music Therapy to Canada, founding the first Music Therapy program at Capilano College. After finishing my Bachelor of Music Degree I pursued a Bachelor of Music Therapy (BMT) degree.

I worked with teens with communication and behavioural problems in a high school, people with HIV & Aids at the Dr. Peter's Centre, and people with Alzheimer's disease in an extended care ward of a local hospital. For me, there was only one snag. Our teachers would ask us which population were we interested in: geriatric? pediatric? palliative? rehab? psycho-educational? My interest was mostly with regular every-day people wanting to experience growth and healing. There was no practicum for that.

Then in the last semester of the BMT degree, one of the instructors introduced us to a powerful psychotherapeutic application of Music Therapy known as "Guided Imagery & Music." While running the Music Therapy program at George Pearson Centre (part of Vancouver Hospital), I pursued and completed the lengthy task of becoming an Accredited Music Therapist with the CAMT (this is the professional designation that ensures all MT's in Canada meet certain standards of practice). At the same time, I began the three year post-baccalaureate program in Guided Imagery & Music through a facility in the US called Archedigm.

Guided Imagery & Music is a deep psychotherapeutic 1:1 method of Music Therapy. In a session, the client lays comfortably on a couch and undergoes a hypnotherapy induction, then the therapist plays a recorded selection of classical music lasting about 45 minutes. As the music plays, the client images, and describes their imagery to the therapist, who in turn helps the client interact with their imagery while taking a typed transcript of the session which the client can read and contemplate post-session. The imagery involves all of the senses and the client becomes truly immersed in the experience. After the session, the client and therapist discuss the imagery, and how it may relate to the client's life. It is through this interaction between a person's own imagery and their life experiences that transformative change occurs. Internal conflicts and unanswered questions are represented and addressed metaphorically through archetypal imagery

The second area of specialization I work with involves skills that have come not from a school or training program, but from within. Over the past 3 years, I have worked with Sound Healing, using the Australian instrument the didgeridoo as my tool, and discovering my own gifts in the process. My first noticings occurred when, prompted by my clients, I began to play the didgeridoo directly on the bodies of those with pain, at the site of pain, with remarkable and almost unbelievable results. As significant as the experiences of my clients were, my own experiences using the didgeridoo as a healing tool were absolutely amazing. I began to sense people's specific pain before they mentioned its location, and to feel blocks of energy in the client's body, that would shift or release as I played. I also began to know where in the body I should direct my efforts.

Eventually, I moved into private practice and started my own company, "Sound Mind, Sound Body." I have recently completed the final advanced training in Guided Imagery and Music, and am now a Fellow of the International Association of Music and Imagery. My life and my work are richly satisfying.

By Ashley Tait