Music ther­a­pist Danielle Jaku­bi­ak: What does music and health mean to you?

My name is Danielle Jaku­bi­ak and I am a coun­sel­ing ther­a­pist and a music ther­a­pist based in Hal­i­fax, Nova Sco­tia. I’m in pri­vate prac­tice, and I believe that’s all I have to say.

For me per­son­al­ly, a lot of the work that I do is work­ing with adult men­tal health.

So I have found in my work, music helps to bring out a sense of ground­ed­ness in peo­ple’s con­nec­tion to their emo­tion­al life, and that’s real­ly real­ly impor­tant for peo­ple who have been through things like trau­ma and who have a lot of anx­i­ety. It can be some­thing that’s like a real­ly ground­ing force. It can also give them a sense of nor­mal­cy and resource­ful­ness when they’re feel­ing real­ly desta­bi­lized in their lives. I see it as a great resource I guess.

Music ther­a­pist Danielle Jaku­bi­ak: On the use of guid­ed imagery and music with trau­ma clients

I’ve been doing work in this method called “Guid­ed Imagery and Music” for quite a num­ber of years now.

Most recent­ly, I did a train­ing in some­thing called “Resource Ori­ent­ed Music and Imagery” which is kind of a depar­ture from “Guid­ed Imagery and Music,” but it’s real­ly focus­ing on that first lev­el of sta­bi­liza­tion when you do trau­ma work. For exam­ple, that which we call resourc­ing — find­ing what is healthy and good when you’ve been through some­thing that’s real­ly dam­ag­ing and find­ing that in con­nec­tion with music that you already know in love.

It’s a real­ly great inter­ven­tion that can be used, par­tic­u­lar­ly with trau­ma clients.

Music Ther­a­pist Danielle Jaku­bi­ak: Con­nect­ing through music

It was some­thing that came out of Guid­ed Imagery Music, so that’s a method that’s been around since the 50’s or 60’s. And it’s a real­ly spe­cif­ic method that uses clas­si­cal music and imagery like the clien­t’s mem­o­ries or things that are com­ing to their mind when they lis­ten to this clas­si­cal music.

So that’s a real­ly spe­cif­ic pro­to­col that’s been around for many years. Then one of the first pro­teges, I would say, of the main train­er for Guid­ed Imagery Music decid­ed that she want­ed to do a sim­i­lar thing, but using the clien­t’s own music. So rather than the spe­cif­ic set of clas­si­cal pieces, instead just ask the client what music that they feel con­nects to a spe­cif­ic resource or feel­ing inside of them. So it’s a lot more per­son­al­ized and also gets past a lot of the inter­cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers. Some­times that can come with using specif­i­cal­ly just clas­si­cal music, which some peo­ple don’t have great rela­tion­ships to, and some peo­ple have com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships to, so it’s just a bit different.