Music facilitates a multitude of encounters.
Encounters that sound, when words have difficulty finding a place in the person who suffers the silent but profound consequences of a trauma.
Encounters that move, when they encourage the person with dementia to rescue and share a memory in his or her sound biography.
Accompanying encounters, when they facilitate the sharing of space, time and intention with a person with Autism Spectrum Disorder who has difficulty communicating and needs distance from the other.
Encounters that calm, when they tune in and regulate the agitated breathing of an intubated person who needs mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit.
Encounters that mobilise, when they connect with the motivation of the body, mind and being of a person undergoing neurological rehabilitation after an accident.
Encounters that respect, give courage or a voice even in such vulnerable moments as at the end of life.
I am sure that each of you has experienced, is experiencing and will experience many of the goodness that music offers to the human being, in our process of growing up.
So imagine all that it can bring if it is used scientifically, systematically, in the service of the individual and his or her needs, his or her health. Because music, the creative processes, the relationships that evolve through it, offers much more than the possibility to entertain us, to create art or to transmit stories and emotions.
For more than 15 years, I have been a music therapist and psychologist at the Music, Art and Process Institute in Vitoria-Gasteiz, directed by Patxi de Campo, a pioneer and promoter of music therapy in our country. For more than 35 years, we have had a large “laboratory” in our city for the training and study of music therapy as a science. But, above all, with a space and a therapeutic team full of people who meet, sound and express themselves, who are moved and accompanied, who are in tune with calm and motivation, who are listened to even in silence. And here, and this is my work.
Because I am a music therapist.
