European Music Therapy Day will take place in Luxembourg on Saturday 15 November 2014.
The 1st European Music Therapy Day on the theme of The Rhythm of Life will take place on 15 November 2014. The EMTC is a Confederation of professional music therapy associations, working actively to promote the further development of professional practice in Europe, and to foster exchange and collaboration between member countries.
The overall purpose of the EMTC is to nurture mutual respect, understanding and exchange between music therapists in Europe. The European Music Therapy Confederation (EMTC) was founded on 15 November 1990, as a forum for exchange between music therapists in Europe, and almost 30 European countries have joined the EMTC. Starting this year, the European Music Therapy Day will be held on 15 November.
On European Music Therapy Day musical activities will be organised at different venues in Europe. Music therapists, the specialists in the field of music and health, will hold open house events and organise workshops. Special, heart-warming performances will take place and service users will talk about how music therapy has supported them. On European Music Therapy Day we will let music speak. Music can be described as ‘the rhythm of life’, and it is this theme we will use for the inaugural European Music Therapy Day.
More information can be found on www.europeanmusictherapyday.com. Music Is Good For Your Health!
Music plays an important role in our everyday lives. It can be exciting or calming, joyful or poignant, can stir memories and powerfully resonate with our feelings, helping us to express them and to communicate with others. Often we are not aware of how we are influenced by music. And here’s some good news: music is good for your health! Research shows: music is good for your brain, it makes you smarter, it is wonderful for you body, it makes you move, music evokes emotions and puts you in a good mood. We also know this: everyone is musical, and you can use the power of music by choosing music, playing a musical instrument or singing.
Music therapy consists in using music to further, to develop and to re-establish people’s physical and mental balance.
It mobilises resources and its aim is to optimise the quality of life through dealing with problems on a different level or through supporting a healing process.
As a non-verbal means of expression and communication, music appeals to people’s emotions; it stimulates cognitive as well as social and creative abilities, which will in turn allow the person to deal with the conflicts and challenges in life.
Due to the different parameters of music, music therapy, whether active and/or receptive, generates intra-psychic and relational processes. According to the respective need, a qualified music therapist approaches these processes in verbal or non-verbal, in individual or group therapy sessions.
Music therapy is a form of creative and expressive therapy. Depending on the various schools and on the music therapist’s own training, the methods used will be based on psychodynamic, behavioural, systemic, holistic-humanist and integrative concepts.
The Gesellschaft fir Musiktherapie zu Lëtzebuerg (GML) was founded in 2004 and has 80 members, 20 music therapists and 3 music therapy students. It has 7 officially registered GMLR music therapists and 2 candidates for registration. Music therapy is not regulated in Luxembourg.
Details of the Luxembourg event will be published in due course.
