Episode 03: Music and Social Health (with Heather Mock, MMT, MT-BC)
In this episode, we explore the incredible relationship between music and social health. Today's guest, Heather, shares insights from her thesis on the topic and explains how resource-oriented music therapy can help improve our social connections. We discuss the many ways in which music brings people together and enhances our ability to form relationships. From the role of music in society to the use of music in therapy, we discuss the social benefits of music in depth. Tune in to learn more about the power of music to improve our social lives and overall well-being.
Episode Resources:
Book - “Resource-Oriented Music Therapy in Mental Health Care by Randi Rolvsjord”
Book - “Music & Life in the Field of Play: An Anthology by Carolyn Kenny
Episode Transcript:
Hey everyone and welcome back to Musical Mindspace. Thanks for listening and for following our journey in these last couple of episodes. Music is something, honestly, that I can talk about all the time, and I am really excited to bring in another aspect of music for today’s episode focusing on social health.
As you know, music is a big part of what we do here in the RGV, or the Rio Grande Valley – for those of you listening from afar. From drum circles to individualized treatment goals, social health is always on our mind and it’s something that is very connected to the music we listen to and the music that we make with others.
I’m also very excited to welcome our very first guest, Heather Mock. Heather is a fellow pioneer and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Music Therapy from Texas Woman’s University in 2019 after completing a 6-month long internship, right here, at RGV Music Therapy. Heather also has her very own private practice “New Light Music Therapy” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We’ve been very fortunate to have had Heather here on our telehealth music therapy team since the start of the 2019 pandemic. She also just completed her master’s degree in Music Therapy also from Texas Woman’s University in 2022 and she did her thesis titled, “Supporting Social Well Beings through Resource Orientated Music Therapy: a content analysis of semi-structured interviews.” It’s going to be available on our website through the link in our episode post. When she’s not working as a music therapist, Heather says you can expect her to be spending time with her lovely orange tabby, Martha, and listening to John Mayer - and for those of us who know Heather personally, we can definitely vouch that this is absolutely true.
As someone who focused on the relationship between music and social health throughout her graduate studies, I felt like Heather would offer a very interesting perspective for this episode. So, without any further ado, this is what is on our Mindspace today – this is episode three: Music and Social Health.
Marisa: Hi, Heather!
Heather: Hi, it’s nice to see you – nice to talk to you.
M: Yeah, it is so nice to make some time to be with you today. I just want to start off by thanking you for agreeing to be here, to being a part of the podcast, and for sharing your thoughts with us!
H: Yeah, I’m so excited and honored. It’s been a hot minute since we talked and one exciting way to catch up.
M: Yeah! I think you’ve come and visit us like maybe once or twice since you’ve graduated or did your internship here. So, I think a lot has happened since then on your music therapy journey.
H: Yes, since I’ve left the Valley, I have started and finished my master’s degree at Texas Woman’s University and built up my caseload in the DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) area.
M: Yeah, and so one of the reasons I chose you for this episode is actually because of your master’s degree. I mentioned this a little bit, for those of you listening, in the introduction of this episode, Heather did her masters at Texas Woman’s and focused her thesis specifically on music therapy and social health. So, I felt like because of that she would be such a wonderful addition and just offer a really cool perspective as we talk about all these aspects of music and different elements of music. So, before we jump into all of that and that part, I kind of want to know and, if you’d share with us, just kind of like as you were doing your masters, what led you to specifically focus your research area on social health.
H: I started my masters in January 2020 and a few months later March hit and the pandemic hit everyone, so that was a huge wake up call to “what does social well-being look like for me, as an introvert who usually chooses to stay home, but whenever that option is taken away, what happens then?” So, the COVID pandemic was a huge factor in why I wanted to target social health in my research.
M: You know, that makes a lot of sense now that you say that because I feel like it was something that maybe we even took for granted - just like going places, like going to the store, waving to people at a reasonable distance, not having a mask on - those are things that a lot of us, or even almost all of us, have never experienced that before. It was kind of jarring, in the sense that we lost that connection.
H: Absolutely, and even just as a student, all of my schooling had been optional to do it online, but I learn better in person, so, yeah, it just changed so many different aspects of life and it was very jarring – no body was prepared for that.
M: Yeah, it hit so suddenly, I feel like -
H: Yes.
M: Like overnight. It was just like to nothing, like we were all isolated in our homes.
H: Yes, I remember going out of town for spring break to stay with cousins in south Texas and I never went home until like May. So, it was an extended spring break with everything online.
M: Wow.
H: Overnight, a long spring break.
M: Yeah, that’s true! It was spring break week. So, did you complete a lot of the rest of your degree virtually?
H: Yeah, all of it; after all that, it was virtual. I had half a semester with an experiential class with Dr. Cohen, but that was the highlight of anything in person for the rest of my degree. Kind of sad…
M: Wow, and that was around the time you started doing telehealth with us too. Yeah, because we needed a lot of help. And probably for a similar reason, I think everybody, a lot of people in our community, a lot of our clients that were available to receive music therapy, just really needed that social connection, social support and that was a big factor in why they were referred to music therapy…
So, can you tell us a little bit about your thesis? What is it about? Just give us a little run down here.
H: Yeah! So, I conducted interviews to understand how a certain approach could support social well-being, and that approach was resource orientated music therapy. I will go into that a little more because it is a very pinpoint new look to music therapy, so resource orientated music therapy is both: positive psychology based, and strengths based. There are four main components to the approach, it focuses on:
clients’ strengths and resources
sociocultural context
how to give them power and independence in their therapy process. Instead of them being passive and having that power imbalance of “I’m the professional and they’re receiving the service
music, itself, being a resource in therapy and outside therapy.
M: Wow, that’s actually really interesting. I feel like that’s something new that has been coming lately, like I have been seeing that a little bit, and there’s not as much literature about resource orientated music therapy yet, right?
H: It’s mainly in Europe, that’s why we have a lot of it in the states. So, a lot of it, if it is in the states, is on the east coast where things trinkle down from Europe! Yeah, definitely not as talked about because a lot of things have been very behavioral and/or cognitive based here in the states.
M: I even think, like you said, in this area of the United States that we’re at, like southern central-ish region, we tend to find a lot of neurologic music therapy and developmental based practices found in schools because that’s how the programs are centered and the reimbursements that are available right now in this region. So, that kind of makes sense to me.
H: Yes, kind of more medical and academic based.
M: Yeah, and on the east coast, you have more music centered and Nordoff Robbins practices… Cool! So, while you were doing your study, can you tell us a little bit about how or what you found about music, about how we connect with music, and how music helps us connect with others.
H: I didn’t find anything striking or new, necessarily, it really just added into what I know about music. Like, as a regular person versus me as a therapist – kind of batting to the fact that music is a connection to one human to another human. It’s how we can relate to other people when there is no common ground. That makes me think a lot of how I started my music journey in middle school. You know, fifty 6th graders in a classroom starting band together, not many of us have a lot in common, there’s all the cliques and we’re picking up instruments, but we come together for a common goal of learning music while having to do upcoming concerts well. So that really validated what I thought about music and how powerful it is to bring people together in various settings, but also in a therapeutic setting.
M: You said so many wonderful things just now, and I feel like that connection that we have with ourselves to music is so interesting because a lot of us come from backgrounds of band, orchestra, choir, piano lessons, and something of that brought us together. I actually just reconnected with a friend who was in the orchestra with me since 5th grade all the way up to when we graduated high school and the first things we mentioned were, “do you remember that time in orchestra when we played that one song and how amazing that was?” Like, it meant something so much to us and we go so excited about it. It’s something that stays with you, it really does, throughout the rest of your life you’ll always remember those experiences.
H: Yes, I totally agree on that and to add onto that, I think I am missing the experience of band and I have already started looking at local community bands because I'm out of the ground program and I can't just like Mosey on back to campus and play in the band just for funsies, so I'm missing that social connection so much that I am wanting to join community band again!
M: Yeah, you know I think that brings up a really interesting point, so we're talking in this episode a lot about music and social health and since we're kind of, I feel like, around this area of maybe middle school/adolescents/teenage years, I think it's also kind of important to note that music and social health might be totally different at different parts in our lives like different stages in our lives and it's something that kind of serves different roles even throughout the way.
I'm thinking now, like I know we kind of touched on those school years, but like even thinking about making music with babies, so like lullabies between mother and the baby. I know there's a lot of NICU music therapists out there doing really amazing work in this area, but for those of you listening that are not music therapists, we work in all types of settings with all ages and all abilities and in every type of facility that you can think of, a music therapist could do something amazing there. There are music therapists in NICU neonatal centers of hospitals that specifically work with moms and preemie babies and it's really interesting to think about socially how those forms such a different bond. You know music serves such an interesting role even from the starting point of like singing lullabies and bonding to something that also grows and changes.
So thinking now about that, I have friends that are elementary music teachers and knowing how they run their classrooms and how singing together and playing music together even at that age is so different versus maybe being an adolescent and music kind of serving a role to help our identities (even in our own personal identities with the relationship that we have with ourselves), but then also connecting with people either in band or even just connecting with people that like the same music that we do. You know as teens I think that's such a powerful experience, I don't know if maybe that's something that relates to you in any way.
H: I definitely think that music has played a role in my own social identity development, but also helping me connect to other people outside of myself. For example, whenever I first met you, I think one of the first things we did when we decided to have lunch was that I inevitably talked about my love for John Mayer, and I cannot describe how excited I was to meet another person who was so excited about his music. So, I think it goes a long way to say just how important music or an artist can connect you with yourself but also with other people.
M: Fandoms are a really powerful thing and especially right now that we're seeing it more and more. I vividly remember that conversation with you actually still because I saw him, and we had like a whole conversation about it. Then you were doing ride alongs with me at the time and we would drive for like 2 hours just to get to a center to these rural parts of the valley that we were in, and we would listen to his music the whole time because it's just something we had in common. It was kind of like you said that instant connection with another person.
So, kind of taking that along the lifespan then and moving as adults and even older adults, I think music is something socially that is so powerful and something that we use to maintain a connection with. I know I talked a little bit about being a music therapist in different settings, but another setting that you can find us working in is in memory care centers and skilled nursing facilities. A lot of times social health is a big part in being an older adult because we miss out on all of that. It’s hard for some reason right, like if you've seen that it’s hard to have friends at that age because we all have our own lives and we're all kind of doing our own things, but especially for older adults that maybe mobility becomes an issue or other diagnosis whether physical issues or maybe cognitive - now I'm thinking of some of the clients that I've worked with experiencing dementia and/or Alzheimer's disease. It's harder for them to get out of the house, to go places, and to connect with others, but music is such a powerful way to connect, to build a community, to play music together, and to interact in a totally different way. It's really interesting how that kind of changes throughout our life.
H: I think it's also important for older adults, especially those who might have cognitive impairments or dementia/Alzheimer's, the music that they enjoyed in their 20s - that stays with them even through those diagnosis. I've had several experiences working in assisted living or memory care facilities where a certain song just flips a switch, and you see the person completely change; you see them return to who they used to be and they can carry on a conversation after that, saying every single word. It's absolutely beautiful to see an older adult become young again and to see them come alive again because of a song.
M: I think that it connects back to like those adolescent years, as young adult years, like you said, because those experiences socially are just so important, so meaningful and so significant. They kind of get like ingrained in us; I almost feel like they're getting grained very deeply to who we are and who we become later in life - like to be able to go back to that, it's such a beautiful thing.
H: I think music is very useful when it comes to reminiscing, and this thing can happen at any age. I can reminisce about Taylor swift or the Jonas Brothers from earlier years. However, I think music can be a social artifact at any life stage; you can unlock any memory from childhood all the way up until your older adult years. It's beautiful to just unpack a memory or unpack a relationship - Oh my best friend showed me this in 10th grade and I remember driving down the highway with them while singing this song - it was just such a good time of my life and being teenager! There's just so many different ways that music can make you think of an experience or make you think of a certain someone.
M: Then to share that with another someone in a totally different way, in a totally different time, and a completely different context. Still as a music therapist, you kind of have this sense of where they're coming from because you know that song, you know the social context of that song with this person, but also the context of what's going on in the world too, and how maybe that kind of impacted their world view and how that maybe had changed what their experience was like first listening to it versus coming back to it now.
Ah, what a beautiful thing! So, let me come back because I think all this context ties back into music and connection, and music as a resource. So, in your thesis because of that resource-oriented focus and that framework that you've brought to this study specifically, can you tell us about the resource side of that. And how music can maybe be a resource for either the clients that you have had or other music therapists you interviewed for your study, or even just for anybody that’s listening, how can music be a resource for our social health?
H: I think that music can be a way of just connecting with people whether that’s in a therapy setting, connecting the client with their therapist, sometimes that is just the most basic way to build that therapeutic bond with someone. Like sharing your favorite song or sharing a song you can't get enough of lately. But, also in a non-therapy setting, I think it's really cool to just share musical experience with someone whether that's making a playlist for them, “hey these are some songs that I can think you’d like” or being in some kind of band club based on an artist or going to a concert. Just all of these social connections that would not exist without music because music itself is providing that resource. One of my interview participants said, “music has always been an integral way of how we connect with our communities, and I think we do have to service and if we ignore opportunities for community connections and therapy.” In therapy she gives several examples of how each took music and went outside of therapy with it. So, she did a lot of Hospice work, and a lot of her examples were talking about a legacy project or some kind of composition that the client had worked on. Then they had it performed by community ensemble, whether that was the client's church choir or whether that was the client's local orchestra, they had this connection outside of therapy where the client’s music was the resource. With this, they're connecting beyond therapy, and it was just really beautiful to hear those stories that she had of the legacy living projects that the clients did and how music is living on through their community.
M: Wow, so kind of like music is holding the space for all those experiences whether it's in the therapy itself or outside in the community -
H: Yes, music being the catalyst or just the experience itself.
M: And that's just one music therapist you said, how many did you have total in your in your thesis study?
H: I had 3, in total, music therapists; 2 were from the east coast and the other was actually from Canada.
M: Oh, cool! So, do you have any themes or what are the themes that came out in your research after interviewing these three music therapists?
H: They were three major themes for my paper. The first was music being away from social connection, the second one was the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and client and how that is a social model in a way to gauge on how what a healthy relationship looks like, and the last was the role of resource orientated music therapy philosophy- again those four main tenants that I mentioned earlier about strengths resources, sociocultural contexts, clients having more power, and music being a resource.
M: That's so interesting! Was there one that particularly stood out to you? Or one that you connected with after reflecting? Because it's been a couple months since you've graduated, so now, kind of like looking back, is there one that has stuck with you in your practice?
H: I think the one that stuck out the most for me, as time has passed, is the therapeutic relationship being a model for social well-being. I don't think, at least in school, there was an emphasis on how we can relate to them (the clients) as just humans, how we can model how to be healthy on just the most basic level. I think we get hung up on, “what is the goal?” and “what is the most formal way to approach things?” I think my experience as a therapist and my experience with this research has really shown me how important it is to be relational with people rather than transactional or formal. Really just being present with someone and being present with them through music and this can be therapy or not, but just being with someone else and being really present, just being humans together… I think that is sometimes glazed over and really formal settings like therapy, but just kind of slowing down and appreciating that this is how this person is, this is how I am, and just meeting on the common ground. And that common ground just happens to be music
M: That's really beautiful, actually. That kind of reminds me of my favorite music therapist, Carolyn Kenny, I love reading that book! I read it over and over again and she talked a lot about what she called the field of play, which is this space that we meet, so the space, not so much the physical space, but maybe the emotional space. Just this presence, like you said, that surrounds us as we interact; in this case, as a music therapist and how we musically interact. It’s just really a unique thing. I think music and, a lot of people if you're not a musician or don't happen to own an instrument, I think we all just in general spent a lot of time listening to music. Though, as amazing and wonderful of an experience that can be, there's so much socially that happens. It's just the experience that is so different when you're making music with other people.
So, kind of thinking about when you were here when we did the drum circles, so for a while (for those of you listening) we had community drum circles. This is before the pandemic, and we would do them once a month. We would get people from all over the valley. Do you remember that? Like we would get like sometimes like 30 people that would come from all parts of the valley and be at our little office in Mercedes, TX that’s right in the center, or in the mid valley as we say. It was just really cool because even at the beginning, like thinking now about what you were saying earlier about music and connection, there's like a synchronization that happens when we make music. So, in the beginning of the drum circle we kind of just gave everybody instruments and everybody could pick whatever instrument they want, it was kind of very like a free for all. My dad was playing like a Tom drum, like a floor Tom drum doing his own thing and everybody would kind of join along. Even though we had some cues, we had some like hand signs for improv and some hand signs for playing beats together, like we would do call and response stuff. At the beginning, it felt like - I mean it was great, it was musical - but it felt kind of like very individual, almost like scattered, I guess would be a good word. It was kind of scattered, everybody was like playing their own thing, there wasn't a lot of like unity, and the music -
H: I think in the beginning of the drum circles, people lacked awareness whether that was because they were self-conscious about how they were playing with the instrument, but also like not super worried what other people are doing so -
M: And also, they must have been thinking, “like what's going on? I have never done anything like this before in my life. Should I be playing? Do I just shake my maraca? Like what's happening?” I remember looking at my mom for a while and she was just kind of looking at me like, “do I keep shaking?” I mean, it's kind of like a scary thing, which is true, I think of a lot of this mirrors what social interactions are in general. Like we're just meeting people, it's the same thing you kind of get that feeling of, “Do I talk to it? Or do I wait? Do I talk? Do I wait?” It's the same thing that happens metaphorically and the music, too, I think. Even after like maybe 20-30 minutes of going back and forth playing specific rhythms together, then going off and improvising, or just playing however you wanted to, I felt like there was like a tipping point where all of a sudden everybody kind of like synced up. There was just this group cohesion that would happen with total strangers, and by the way, these people did not know each other, and we didn't know them either, but they were able to kind of connect and be like unified with the rhythm. It was just a really cool experience to see all ages, all abilities, from all parts of the valley, just coming together with the steady beat and being together in this musical moment.
H: I think another extra special thing about that is that not everybody who joined were musicians and –
M: Yeah, most of them were not musicians!
H: - But they were able to come together and make something, not only organized, but expressive. You could see people getting creative with it and getting in during off eats, just doing some fun things. I think it's really cool watching them get involved and get more comfortable in the drum circle together.
M: Yeah… That kind of reminds me of when you said that. It kind of reminds me now of like group songwriting and writing songs with other people because, similar to the drum circle in the sense that you're contributing your own rhythms, beats, and little things to form this collective song and/or rhythm, I think in songwriting it's kind of similar to that too. When you're able to write with other people it's like you're throwing a little bit of your personality and so, if it's a group of people, like often happens in in music therapy, writing together you kind of get a little bit of everybody's personality: maybe somebody picked the chords, maybe somebody wrote some lyrics, and somebody chose the instrumentation. It’s just this collective thing that it's representative of everybody's identities, everybody's life experiences, emotions, and presence too. It's a really beautiful thing that we have in music.
H: Going back to a more resource oriented approach, I think the group songwriting is a great way to highlight people's strengths; someone could be like, “oh I write poetry in my free time, I got the lyrics,” and someone else would like, “oh well I actually drum in a band on the weekends, I got this,” so I think group songwriting is really great example of how our resource oriented approach can really maximize people's strengths and help people feel that they belong and they have a purpose and have an experience together.
M: Yeah, that sense of community and that sense of creativity together. I think that's something that we all need, like you said that earlier too about just being human for a little bit. I think part of being human is being creative and interacting with other people and just being with each other. That is so important in music because music kind of lends itself to all of these wonderful things, which is why we do it! Because it means something, it's significant, and it's really helpful in a lot of ways. Being able to understand all of that as music therapists to then implement and use all of that in a very highly specialized way. It's really interesting and really nice to hear and to think about.
H: Another less formal example, I’m going to share is going to a concert. In my head I imagine going to a John Mayer concert-
M: Of course!
H: - being in a large arena with thousands of other people, not knowing a single one of them, but all of us are chanting the lyrics. It’s this collective experience that you're sharing with thousands of other people all at the same time. All of us are singing the lyrics, for probably different reasons, but it's a way to express yourself and feel united with everybody in the arena. Simply connecting with your music - that's your music - and you're loving it for probably a different reason than Sally Joe next to you, but you're all there and you're just living in the moment and experiencing music together… That’s amazing.
M: Yeah, that reminded me of something! So, there's actually a name for that feeling. It's called “collective effervescence”. It's something that occurs in sociology and psychology, and it started as a way to understand a spiritual phenomenon, but not necessarily religious. More in the sense of singing worship music, singing chants, doing rituals and ceremonies, like things that there is a sense of unison. I was reading about it recently and they said something along the lines of, “an emotional activation that happens when there's a lot of people doing this”. In this case it would be music, but in any context, they describe it as like “moving beyond the self and synchronizing with the group” and that, in a lot of ways, can be empowering. It can provide a lot of support, compassion, and admiration for each other or for the experience of the culture, if this is for a cultural or spiritual ritual. Going to music festivals even, anything like that, like you mentioned-that is what it's called, “collective effervescence”, but it's true…you feel that it's like something that's greater than yourself.
H: you kind of transcend above the normal … you transcend above the fact that you're just this one person in a group of many persons, everyone becomes one person, almost. It's really special and I think it's hard to describe it unless you've experienced it yourself.
M: That's true! I also think a lot of us, at least for everybody listening since this is a musical podcast and you might have an interest in music, have gone to a concert and you've even listened to a song with a couple people altogether. It’s a different connection than what we have just by ourselves, and again a needed one. Since the beginning of time, I think humanity has just always been more collective; I think we're the best when we're doing things together, for each other, and with each other. Doing that with a shared purpose, there's so much that we can accomplish that way. If we can mirror that experience in the music, then we have something that we can take with us, something that we can hold onto, and maybe even something that we can come back to whenever we need it. Because that feeling is in that song or it's in that moment in that video, that artifact. You used that word earlier, artifact, that moment becomes an artifact that we can revisit at any time…Ha-ha, yeah! Heather is doing a little dance over there!
Well, on that note, I guess we'll kind of wrap things up from here, but I cannot thank you enough for coming on here and just sharing your thoughts and your wonderful research, your important research that you're doing, because we all know as music therapists, we're still trying to get ourselves out there, literature wise. So, I think that what you're doing and what you did is just so important. It's just very meaningful and I've learned more from just talking with you today. I hope our listeners too can take something home with them from this episode.
Speaking of that, if you're interested in reading/getting a copy of Heather's thesis, we're going to put a link to that in our episodes. You can go to our website RGVmusictherapy.com/podcast and there'll be a little blog post at the bottom as you scroll down, and it’ll say episode three. You can click on that and there'll be a tab for resources, so feel free to go check it out and read it! We're also going to have some visuals of the things that Heather talked about. This was a lot of information, every podcast feels like that, but this one had a lot of information too, so if you're looking for visuals or just looking for places to get more information, you can find some more there.
So, Heather, once again, thank you so much for being here and sharing your Mindspace with us today -
H: Thank you so much for having me! I can't believe this is happening! For one, it feels very surreal, but thank you for giving me the space to share my paper and talk more about music and music therapy! I feel very special and very honored!
M: Thank you for being our first guest!
H: Ah, the pressure ha-ha!
M: No ha-ha, it was really wonderful to hear your take on this, so I really appreciate it. I know everybody listening will appreciate your thoughts too, so thanks for being here.
Thanks for listening and thanks for being a part of it, hopefully you'll come back and check out some of our other episodes, so until then… I'll talk to you soon! Bye!
