Integrative Health through Music Therapy

Recent music therapy advances and evidence-based practices have earned respect within the medical sciences and garnered popularity amongst users and practitioners.  While integrative medicine treats the whole patient with ayurvedic and allopathic medicine, music therapy provides a safe and effective way of managing stress, pain, unpleasant symptoms, response to illness, and treatment side effects, and has been proven to enhance patients' quality of life and general wellbeing.

Exploring the ways in which these methods have been practised throughout history, the author takes readers on a journey from illness to wellness, and shows how this can be guided through music. The book instructs music therapists and other practitioners in the use of specific techniques, providing examples of clinical applications. It includes activities that prepare a music therapist physically, emotionally and musically for this journey with another, and provides case studies to explore the difficulties that might arise.

Suzanne Hanser chairs the Music Therapy Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA. She is past president of the American Music Therapy Association and World Federation of Music Therapy, and has authored three other books on the subject. She also established the music therapy service at the Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.