• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2020

The internship is essential for the music therapy curriculum and affords interns the opportunity to apply their classroom-based knowledge and skills to real-world clinical settings. However, challenges associated with the internship can result in interns undergoing trial-and-error learning, interpersonal conflicts, and intrapersonal difficulties. An experiential music therapy group may be useful in helping interns process these incidents and develop their personal and professional skills. We explored the experiences of music therapy interns participating in therapeutic song writing. In this study, five music interns completed two 4-hour sessions of therapeutic song writing. Following the second session, a group interview was conducted with participants to gather data on their experiences. The interview was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Six themes and 18 sub-themes were derived from the data. The six themes were preconceptions of therapeutic song writing, meaningful lyric creation, challenges in song composition, structured experiences during song writing process, development of self-awareness through music, and relational experiences resulting from the group process. Participants were able to incorporate their individual internship experiences into a single song by communicating with group members during the step-by-step process. Participation in therapeutic song writing was found to help music therapy interns identify and process challenges encountered during their internship and further their personal and professional development.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.93-114
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• 2018

This study aimed to investigate the use of music and imagery (MI) as a method for promoting mindfulness. A total of 11 music therapy interns participated in an MI group over 8 weeks. Statements from participants during the program were transcribed and analyzed using the method of modified grounded theory. The results showed that the participants' statements fell into three categories: awareness, acceptance, and distancing. For each category, subcategories were identified. For the category of awareness, the subcategories were emotion, sensation, and thoughts. For the acceptance category, the subcategories were facing and broadening viewpoints. For the distancing category, the subcategories were dissociation from emotions. Each subcategory was further analyzed. The results showed that the participants' experiences were similar to one another in terms of type but differed in terms of dimension varied. These results support the use of MI for increasing mindfulness and reducing burnout in music therapy interns. Further studies are recommended to investigate the factors for the experience of mindfulness induced by MI processes.