December 12, 2007
A song for healing: music therapists bring harmony to the hearts of the people they help
If music is the universal language, then music therapist Julie Guy can speak to the whole world.
Guy, 32, owns The Music Therapy Center of California, which specializes in bringing music therapy services to special-needs children, teens, and older adults in the San Diego area. Music therapy helps people with emotional, cognitive, physical, and social problems as they interact with, make, and respond to music. Career World caught up with Guy between therapy sessions to discuss the ins and outs of this lyrical career.
Career World: What does a music therapist do?
Julie Guy: We use music to do nonmusic things. For instance, we help disabled children with academic skills or help adults cope with pain or memory loss. Think of music therapy as another medical treatment or communication tool. Therapists determine a goal–such as learning to count or brushing teeth–and use singing, songwriting, movement, and/or listening to music to meet that goal. Each [therapist] has her own specialty. Some may work with teens; others, with seniors. My company specializes in children with autism.
CW: Why did you decide to become a music therapist?
JG: I loved music and volunteering…. One day [in high school] I found a description of music therapy in a career booklet. There were only four sentences, but I knew this is what I wanted to do: combine music with helping people.
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CW: Do you play an instrument?
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Cheza CD Release Video
Masaru Emoto’s wonderful world of water: it can read, listen to music, look at pictures, hear your thoughts, heal you, and create world peace
The folks in my community have been arguing about fluoride again. A nutritionist wrote in the local newspaper that fluoride is a deadly poison and that it doesn’t reduce tooth decay. She recommended avoiding it entirely, even to the extent of buying nonfluoride toothpaste. I responded with a calmly reasoned guest column trying to separate the scientific facts from policies and opinions. The scientific facts are not open to debate: fluoride in optimum amounts reduces tooth decay; too much fluoride can be harmful. The public policy question is open to opinion and debate: should we add fluoride to the water or protect our children from tooth decay by other means?
I know that at least one person read my guest column, because there was a letter to the editor in the following issue of the paper. It was written by a very confused woman who signed herself “Reverend.” She disregarded my arguments about the effectiveness of fluoride and the advisability of separating facts from opinions, and she fixated on one thing: her opinion that adding anything to our water is wrong. She’s certainly welcome to her opinion, but she based that opinion on pseudoscientific nonsense that she confused with scientific truth. She wrote:
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I am saddened that Harriet Hall is not aware of the latest
scientific research by Dr. Masaru Emoto. In his two books, The True
Power of Water and The Hidden Power of Water he describes the
healing capabilities of non-toxic water (chemical free). Our
country is too toxic from pollution, food, thoughts and water we
drink…. I suggest people go to Dr. Emoto’s lecture … and see
the slides of microscope samples of the toxic, repulsive water
crystals compared to those of pure untainted water. Or, see the
movie What the Bleep Do We Know now on DVD, which shows slides of
the difference in their molecular structure. Which would you want
to drink?
I wrote back that she was wrong that I wasn’t aware of Dr. Emoto’s “research.”
His newest book, Hidden Messages in Water holds a place of honor on
my bookshelves as the worst book I have ever read. It is about as
scientific as Alice in Wonderland. Emoto took pictures of
snowflakes and “observed” that clean water made prettier crystals.
A [real] scientist would have checked to see if he got the same
results if he didn’t know beforehand which water was clean. Emoto
never bothered with even this most elementary double-check. He
didn’t consult real scientists. Had he done so, they could have
told him that these snowflake crystals, just like raindrops, form
around a core of dust, so actually the cleaner water is less likely
to form them. Their beauty varies with the temperature and
conditions of formation, not with the purity of the water. The idea
that snowflakes could show anything about differences in the
“molecular structure” of water is incompatible with basic physics.
Emoto’s popularity is a sad commentary on the scientific illiteracy
of our society. His work is a morass of factual errors,
misconceptions, misinterpretations, metaphors, and meaningless
assertions. He writes in the language of magical thinking and
superstition, not of science. Most serious scientists find Emoto’s
delusions too silly to even acknowledge, but one retired chemistry
professor has taken the time to debunk water cluster pseudoscience
and Emoto’s “research” on his Web site:
www.cheml.com/CQ/clusqk.html.
I didn’t mention that I saw the What the Bleep movie and didn’t find it particularly convincing as a scientific document. Its credits list the 35,000-year-old warrior Ramtha “as channeled by J.Z. Knight.”
ike turner
Daily Downloads (Kindercore Christmas Songs and more)
Here Come The 123s, New Kids Album by They Might Be Giants
Where do I go with music?
TEACHING TURNPIKE
Music Instructor Music instructors have a love of music and a knack for getting other people excited about musical instruments, choir music, and music history. Music instructors can teach elementary school students how to play the recorder or work with college students on their music history thesis. [B, M, D]
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