The brain is this plastic organ right, it can change, and music kind of sets up these new pathways. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good Wolfe thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dean Quick, the program director and board certified music therapist for transcend E d, a treatment center for eating disorders. He also provides broader
music therapy through his personal practice. Dean is a member of the Music Therapy Association of North Carolina. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to one you feed dot net slash Support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to five of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the five percent that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out
these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again, that's one you feed dot net slash Support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Dean Quick. Hi, Dean, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to have you on because we are going to talk about one of my very favorite things, which is music and the role of music as a therapeutic device and how we can all use music deeper in
our lives and we use it today. But let's start like we normally do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always
at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and the grandson stops, he thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you. To me, life is really about finding a balance, right, And so when I hear that parable, I think it does a really good job of honoring balance, right. So the energy you put in is the energy you get out. So my mind first goes to the word balance, right, because sometimes feeding the good wolf all the time you can get us into trouble, just as maybe even feeding the bad wolf a little bit can get us into trouble. I first go to balance.
I like that balance has been on my mind a lot lately. I've been thinking a lot about the Buddhist teaching of the Middle Way, and and just how many times in my life that is a very valuable thing is to just try and find somewhere that's in the middle of the two extremes I tend to go to. So that's an interesting way to look at the parable.
Let's start off from here by maybe you just telling us a little bit about the work that you do, and we referenced it a little bit in the introduction, but maybe you can give us just a bit more insight into what you do. Yeah. So, I'm a board sort of music therapist, and primarily with the mental health population,
specifically with folks with eating disorders. But in private practice, I see individuals with all sorts of mental health issues and I used music to move them towards their non musical goals, be at playing music, singing, music assisted relaxation and imagery techniques, songwriting. I use a lot of improvisation in my work. When I was thirteen, I cut my cut my jazz teeth and found jazz and you know, from there found improvisation and like to incorporate that into
my clinical work as much as possible. So making music is really important to me in my personal life in addition to the clinical work that I do. So help me understand how do you work with someone in therapy who maybe is not a musician. How can music therapy work for people who don't actually play. Yeah, so that's a great question. So that's a lot of our training as music therapists determining how to best support a client musically.
So you know, people meet music a lot of times with hesitation, especially if I'm handing my drum, like, okay, you play this and how do you do that? Right? So a lot of times I will start with something like a drum that doesn't require a lot of fine motor activity. But that doesn't mean I can't use something like a piano or a guitar. So I might adapt the tuning of a guitar so they only have to
use one finger like an open tuning. Or I may label strings if they really want to get into like if they really want to play the guitar and it looked like they're playing the guitar, I might label the strings and show them simple chord progressions. Um label the keys of a piano is another way to do it. And if someone's really hesitant about it, then maybe that's
not the best thing to do. Maybe they won't make music with me, and maybe we'll just talk about the music they love, where I'll play and sing the music.
Maybe they will just sing along. So talk to me about how what are some of the ways that you can use music to help people with mental illness, and just real quickly to frame this up, I'd like to talk about it in the strict therapeutic setting, which is kind of what you do for a few minutes here, and then I'd like to turn to a broader discussion about what you know about how the rest of us
can use music in our own lives. So let's talk about it from a therapeutic sense right now, like how does this work, what's the theory behind it, and then what are some of the approaches you take with people to help them heal through music? Okay, great. From day one in training as a music therapist, you learned that live music is most effective, most research based, so live
music and the client's preferred music. Let's say someone comes into someone who might benefit from music therapy and they're suffering from just crippling anxiety or like some really tough depression and great depression in their lives. So I'll start with finding out what kind of music they love, and then I'll do research into some music that really sticks
out to them. And this has taken a really kind of receptive music therapy approach in the beginning, you know, just connecting with the person initially to build rapport and giving them kind of a foundation to stand on. Like, Okay, I understand the music that you're listening to, and here's how I kind of see it fold into your life.
So we might from that point, once we have rapport established, rewrite some of that music about their specific situation, Like, um, if let's say a lot of their anxiety derives from the relationship with their mother, right, so we might adapt the song and rewrite it together about that situation, about their reactions to their mother or family or whoever it is.
And then taking into step further, we might then take that same thinking and apply it to active music making, where they will explore some different sounds, and they'll choose instruments that represent the feeling that family member gives them, that represents a relationship, that represents h and the anxiety itself separated from everything else. And then I'll choose a musical instrument to support their music, or to challenge their music, or to hold the space so that they can fully
express and work through that feeling. Is there also therapeutic conversation that's happening along with this, and you're you're you're combining sort of a traditional therapeutic approach and using music maybe as a way to reach parts of the brain
in a different way than our normal language does. Absolutely because the same music therepies kind of have a foot in the door when it comes to those things, because people clam up sometimes when you asked them to talk about things that are difficult for them, right, maybe trauma related or otherwise. And I absolutely wouldn't just jump right into trauma with someone. But music kind of bypasses those kinding of processes that we need to just kind of
speak about emotions. Right. So we've all experienced if you love music, that feeling of like you don't really know why, but the hairs are kind of standing up on your arms and and you're just really into it, right, Or maybe you don't realize how much time has gone by and you just kind of feel transported. Right, So we don't have to think about that. That's just a response that we as humans are lucky enough to have, right.
So I might use music to evoke that response. I might use music once I really have a report established with the client to evoke that anxiety, to evoke that depression, and then afterwards talk about the experience and why so using those verbal therapy techniques, traditional techniques after the fact,
after we've used music to get them to that place. Yeah, I was fascinated by some of the articles that you sent me, And the couple of things that really fascinated me was the one about the man who had dementia so dementia could not remember who he was for more than five minutes, completely clueless, and yet when he would start singing with his family, he would sing perfectly, he would interact with them, he would harmonize. It was like it went to a completely different part of his brain.
And along the same lines, there was an article about Gabby Gifford's, the Arizona senator who was shot, and how she has used music to retrain her language. Can you talk a little bit about those two examples. Yeah, So I think Oliver Sachs really talks about music just igniting the brain in ways unlike anything else. Right, So, when you have someone who has dementia, there are parts of the brain that can be damaged by you know, this illness, so much like in the work that happened with Gabby
Gifford's neural pathways are essentially recreated. You know, the brain is this plastic organ, right like it can change over time, and music kind of you know, sets up these new pathways, right, So the brain learns through music to achieve a similar goal. Now that that's more so with the Gabby Gifford's situation with someone with dementia, you know, they can't access parts of the brain because of the illness. But music, because
you essentially use your whole brain. Yeah, not the whole brain, but most of the brain when you're singing or or listening to music sometimes, but more so when you're singing and engaged in your preferred music, you can do those things. It's like a different you know, it's not memory as much as it's the brain re experiencing. Yeah, it's fascinating. I have one of the worst memories of anybody I've ever known, not like a single bad memory. I mean,
I don't remember things well. I have almost no childhood memories, and yet I can sing songs from that time that come on. I can't play it, but I can remember how a guitar solo is going from that. It's just bizarre to me that that's all right there, and yet everything else it just doesn't seem accessible to me. You think about how many senses are engaged when you're just listening, right, like, I mean, you're hearing it, but then what happens after
you listen to the music? Right, what's going on internally? Like fireworks are going off? You know. Yeah, let's pivot now a little bit. Where would somebody go to explore this a little further if they wanted to do it in a in a strictly therapeutic sense, in a professional setting, like if someone wanted to become a music therapist, or
somebody wanted to get musical therapy. If someone wanted to get music therapy and they're not local to me, I would really suggest reaching out to the American Music Therapy Association and the Certification Board for Music Therapists and they'll kind of pinpoint where you can find someone whose board
certified to do music therapy and in your area. Um. Yeah, And aside from that, you know, one of the reasons I'm so excited to have this conversation with you is that music can be used on its own to clinically.
There are reasons why a board certified music therapists should implement music therapy, right, you know, in these really serious situations where children with developmental and intellectual disabilities, uh, folks with memory imparamids, folks with neurological disorders who could benefit like Gabby Gifford's well just brain injury, those instances where
board sort of music therapist is absolutely necessary. One of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you about it's cause I think everybody should be using music more. I think music is one of these underrated healers that if people just paid a little bit more attention to their listening habits, that'd be really reflective of their process of life. I really think to being that awareness too. Okay, well, I've been listening to this music a lot lately. Is it just the music or is it what the music
speaking to me? Or is it how the music is making me feel? And why do I need that? Yeah? You know why? Why is it that this music is really doing it for me? Now? Yeah? So that's I think what I'd like to spend the rest of the time on is exploring, you know what, what those of us who listen to and play music in life, how we can use it in a deeper way than we already do. The show is about the parable of the Good Wolf. What are some ways that people can use
music in their own life to feed the good wolf. Personally, for feeding the good wolf with music, I think people should like be more mindful of using music more often. Right, So, what's a party without music? Right? Think about any party you've ever gone to. If there's not music there, then it can get kind of kind of strange, like, oh, well, it doesn't really seem like a party anymore. So I think people using music more in their lives, more than
just something to put on in the background, right. You know, people, I know people a lot of times when I'm assessing them for appropriateness in music therapy, they say, oh, I'll put music on in the background while I'm doing X or Y or Z. And I really think we could be doing more outside of traditional music therapy, you know, more as people, we could be doing to feed the good wolf of music by bringing it to the forefront. Right,
So being more mindful of the power of music. Right, So saying, okay, well I really did pink Floyd, But if I'm going to listen to us and them, you know, it makes me feel this way. But you know, if I listen to comfortably numb, I feel this. You know, you go through and like just really pay attention, not just to the artist, but to help a song, maybe even parts of songs affect you. Hi, friends, The show is listened to over fifty thousand times a week, which
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make a donation today. Please be part of the small but growing group who are helping to support the show that they love and keep it going. Thanks so much, and back to the interview. One of the things that I've done is I've recognized that there are certain moods for me that the only answer is loud rock music. And I've had a couple of the people in the show,
Frank Turner and Mike Scott from the water Boys. I mean, those are two things that when I put on the radio relatively loud and listen to those two, it does something for me that I am unable to get any
other way. And the other thing I've done is I've created like a playlist of songs that have some effect on me in that direction, because when I'm feeling kind of blue or I'm wrestling with depression, if I ask myself, does that sound like a good thing to listen to him, He's like, no, I don't want to listen to that, right, Like, but I found that by knowing that like these set of songs help, I can just naturally turn to them, like, Okay, I need a little pick me up here, So this
is what I'm going to go to, um, instead of relying on what sounds good to me in that moment, which is probably like what depressing thing we could think of. But yeah, well I think in that same light, I would encourage you to start with something that does honor that initial feeling of blue. Right, And that's something that we talk about, and music therapy is acknowledging the feeling
in the moment and then moving it towards something rather experience. Right, Especially with all this, you know, music streaming services that are out there that like create these playlists just you know, based on your listening prices, and some that are out there that just create oh well this is you know outside of like the top one hundred Billboard songs or whatever.
But there's other ones like like, there's a playlist on on a music streaming service side subscribe to that has a decompression playlist, and I love it so sometimes, but I don't love every part of it, you know. So my encouragement to people would be to, like, if it's difficult to create your own playlist, because there there are people out there who would just rely on a playlist
it's his decompression, and not change it at all. My encouragement is to really adapt and make it your own, right, Like, if it's not starting where you need it to, then you know, borrow from the playlist what you like and and build from there. You know, music is this living thing, Like I don't look at it as like just you know, it's just music, right, It's not a non breathing thing. Like I believe music is really organic experience that should
be treated like a living thing. And in saying that, I believe there's a lot of flexibility and how we can use music outside of therapy, So making sure that we're honoring our feelings and then also honoring where we'd like our feelings to go. There's no shortage of sad sack music coming through my my player, no need to
worry about that. Yeah, Like some of my favorite music is you know Tom Waits his ballads, you know, Like I love his ballads, and I listened to my wife's like, oh my god, that guy he sounds Yeah, he's so he's so grumbly. I don't understand it, you know. I
think that's a good illustration of well for me. Like, you know, of course, when I've started listening to Tom Waits, like, I'm like, oh gosh, you know, I don't know how long I could listen to you know, his voice is something to get used to for for me, the more I tune into the lyrics and then the thought that goes into the music behind it, the more I'm excited by it, right, and the more my feelings feel honored
by his music. You know, I think that's probably one of the biggest takeaways that I want people to think about when they're looking at music and how to use music to enhance their lives, is how am I honoring what I'm feeling right now? Am I honoring this feeling only to get to another emotional state, or am I being true to myself in this moment in the music that I'm listening to, Like it essentially, am I jumping the gun by trying to get myself out of this state?
You know, that can be be frustrating. That could be like, okay, well, I have someone in their eighties or nineties who's like, really loves the music of Irving Berlin. You know, they might be familiar with who the Beatles are, but they're not going to care to listen to the people or furthermore than Nirvana or you know, Alice and Chains or someone who I really most of them are really into Alice Cooper, though strange, I find most nine year olds arts.
It's odd but true. But that could be frustrating if I took that music in there, right, so taking that same thinking of okay, well, I may be feeling this way and I don't want to feel this way. Okay, so I might need to start with some of those things that could make me more sad or more depressed. But it's worth giving some attention to that before you move on, because it could be important. And I think that kind of ties back into music can be reflective
of our emotional states more so than we believe. You know, I always encourage people to look up their lyrics. You wouldn't believe, like, how many times I'm in a session, I'm using someone's favorite music. Now, I never looked up the lyrics. I never realized, like there's an arc to the story, like it it's there's a story here. I never realized that because we talked about certain lyrics and how they might be powerful or in this moment when you're listening to it. It really stuck out to me
because of the emotional state of man. But in that conversation, people never really look at the lyrics in the entirety. They just kind of liked the song and they sing along with it. So I encourage people to take a step back and really look at what they're listening to. It can it can be a window into their emotional
self They really didn't think was there. Yeah. So there's an old question running around among people who listen to what would be considered depressing music, which was what came first being depressed and that made you listen to that type of music, or did listening to that type of music turn you into a depressive person. It's kind of a funny question, but I'm always sort of interested in that. That is interesting. I like that, and I think that's
a good line of questioning. Yeah, it's good. So you've mentioned, you know, listening to lyrics. What are other ways we can engage with music in a more mindful way to increase our enjoyment of it and and the power it has. Some of the things that you might have to do or be a sign to do in a music appreciation class, I always like to talk about that, and in regard
the listening portion of it. Right, So, you know, people tend to listen to one part of a song right there, listening to if their guitar player, they tend to focus on guitars or whatever like that. But for non musicians, I feel a lot of times you really listening to what's making the move, like dance or the lyrics. They really like how how the singer is singing. But try
listening with an open ear. So the next time you hear the next song that comes on or whatever, try and listening to the drums instead of the vocal track. Try and find the bass, guitar, try and find the strings and listen to it and listen to the intermingling of the music itself. I find that can be gratifying. Are people have reported that's that's a gratifying experience, and you're telling me there's people out there that don't already
do that. I'm sort of still stunned from the lyric thing, but I guess I just have been such a fiend for so long that those things seem completely foreign to me. But I'm sure it's true. There's times where I'm meeting with people that they'll they'll hear it and they're they're unable to identify the guitar, yeah, or they'll think that the electric guitar in somewhere or another as a keyboard or a synthesizer, and you know, in some instances it
might be, and it might be sometimes. Yeah. So just deepening a basic appreciation for music, I think is one way. And I'll go into cooler ways too, but that that one, I think it's really important if people aren't already doing that. I think finding a nice relaxing place and finding something like progressive muscle relaxation or something imagery based. There's kind of a gray area of that with like implementing it yourself, because you know, things can come up if you're in
an altered state of consciousnes. So let's say you talk yourself into a relaxed state and you've got some music on and imagery comes up that's uncomfortable. It would be good for music papists to be there. But if you choose music that's really predictable, and you choose the script that's really kind of surface level, it can be a really relaxing experience, right. And I'm not just saying, you know, choose orchestral music, but choose music that's um, that's really comfortable. Yeah,
excubers great. I'm just doing this for Chris. He's out here with me right now, so not that he's a big Alice Cooper fan, but it's kind of a joke, okay, but using your preferred music to just get yourself into that altered state. Right. So, progressive muscle relaxation, you can find scripts online for that, and it's you know, the systematic tension and release of the different muscle groups as you go through your body while you're listening. You know, music can be a good way to kind of gauge
the tempo of that experience. That's what I found fascinating when I was reading that in your work, was that idea of so, I know, progressive muscle relaxation I know music. I never thought of that as a way to like you just said, to pace it, you know, all right, for four beats, I'm going to clench my foot, and then after four beats, I'm going to release, and then four beats later I moved to my cab. I mean, it's just as a really interesting way to think of
approaching that. I'm going to give that a shot sometime. Yeah, excellent. This is one that I'll use with clients to get
them to an altered state. Is to visualize a color and when you breathe in, you breathe that color into your lungs, and then you follow that color as it moves through your lungs and then into your blood strain and then out to your fingertips, and then you exhale, and then it comes back, and then you inhale, and you visualize it going out until it fills your fingers up with color, and then until it fills your hands
and arms and so forth. You think about it. By the time fifteen minutes has gone by and you've listened to a couple of tunes, I mean, you're pretty relaxed. Yeah, you know, and you shifted your attention from anything that's stressful, your work day, school, whatever it is you've taken time. So, I mean, it's a fun way to just kind of increase your awareness of your body, stay and you know, kind of remove yourself from any thing that's going on emotional.
It's a good distraction technique that people can use on their own. Well, it's also a useful mindfulness technique, right, because mindfulness and meditation can be challenging. Right. I have a brain that does not settle down easily, and even after many, many years, it still is a fairly untamed horse in certain regards. So sometimes just sitting and following the breath is not workable for a lot of people. Meditation, if you think of meditation, is an idea of there's
some anchor that we keep our attention on. Then our mind wanders off, as it naturally will, do we bring it back to the anchor. Music that doesn't have like lyrics and stuff can be a really useful and stronger anchor. As we learned to be able to concentrate better. A lot of times I'll get like if someone finds out on a music therapist, you know, I use that at home.
You know, I found a CD at the store, you know, music for relaxation, and you know, I'm glad that those work for some people, but I always encourage people to choose their own music and not buy these CDs that are designed for music relaxation, because essentially, what someone's done most of the time is they've just thrown some piano music on a CD and said this is for relaxation,
you know, without putting much thought into it. So I encourage people to put a lot of thought into the music they choose because it's their experience, you know, And and and there should be thought put into the music that's used because it's this important thing, right it affects how you feel. Has there ever been one of those CDs that did not have Pocabell's cannon on it. That's really the big question of this interview. I'm pretty sure it is.
It's it's been on them all. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, I believe. So there's some version. This one's got harpsichord, that's right, that's right, it's always there. This one has piano, but there's a drone behind it, you know. So choosing your own music, I agree, is important. There it seemed to be some characteristics of the music that tend to be helpful. Like I used to try and do this with classical music, and a lot of classical music I
found that challenge. I also used to try and sleep to it, and there can be variation in tempo, there can be variation and loud versus soft, and for me, that's a little bit more Joscelyn. And so the music that's more aught of as meditative music at least the things that I'm looking for is a fairly repetitive theme. I mean, it can vary a great deal and a fairly level volume, and usually that it plays for a long period of time, so I'm not having to go
from track to track. Is often that's great, You're on the right track with that, I mean, because what people typically call classical music can be very evocative, right, like emotionally evocative, and it's it's written for that purpose, right, And that's one of the reasons, Like in my music therapy sessions, if I'm with a client and we're using like we're trying to do something imagery based with the music relaxation, I use that evocative music, but for someone
in their home that that wants to use it to relax, you do need something that's gonna repeat and that's predictable, and that the dynamics are really level, and the tempo isn't too fast or too slow, like it's just kind of right in the middle, especially if you're going to use it for something like progressive muscle relaxation where you're really pacing it and something that's somewhere between ten twelve or fifteen minutes is ideal for progressive muscle relax station.
Or I mean just to kind of zonk out for a little bit and just focus on on the music and let it kind of take you where you need to go. If anybody listening to the show has ever used Slayer for progressive muscular relaxation, please give me a call. I'd like to tell you can be on our next episode.
So I want to wrap up here in a minute, but let's finish for those of us who are musicians, and there's a good number of people I know who listen to this show who are musicians, and Chris and I are, what are some ways that we can make music in a way that it furthers our wellness, get away from the page, and that a lot of times what you'll see in musicians is that you know, I gotta nail this lick just right, right, like it's it's got to sound exactly how it's written, and I say,
make it your own, right, So um, improvise. That's that's my biggest thing for folks who are musicians is to improvise. So take to you know, take a couple of bars of something that you're working on and just improvise right. And you know, take a melody like if you're if you're playing and singing, take that chord progression and change the melody. Or I encourage people to make music together. You know. It's one thing to improvise on your own, and that's great and you can get a lot out
of that. But if you have the opportunity to improvise with someone else, that that to me is where you know someone else or more people in a group. That is just so gratifying, I think for people, and I mean think about what that does for self expression, Think
about what that does for relaxation or distraction. To me, people have made music with over the years, I have some of the deeper connections with I might not even talk to those people anymore, or you know, we might not even been that closer friends at the time, but because we made music, we have this deep connection. Like I I know, like if I start playing this, you're going to come in and take it this way, you know, And like that musical relationship I think does a lot
for our overall well being. So my biggest thing for musicians that I encourages, you know, improvise. Yeah, that's absolutely true. That idea of playing with other people can be so powerful. And I never really learned to play other people's music, which has been a drawback in a lot of ways, but then in a lot of other ways it's been good because that's really all I know how to do is basically partially figure something out and then steal it from my own and you know, and and just kind
of play. But it is really such a powerful thing. And I've been reflecting lately on how grateful i am that I learned to play the guitar. What a thing that is that I have in my life that is kind of always there for me. It's a hobby, it's something I like doing, it's something that challenges me. It just has so many wonderful benefits. And Chris and I write all the music for the show, all the music
breaks are and sometimes it's Chris, sometimes it's me. My favorite ones are certainly and it's the both of us working on it together. You know exactly what you're describing, that sort of that sort of thing happens. Another thing I would encourage musicians to do is to, you know, try new instruments too. I personally get a lot of joy out of that. Like every every year a year and a half, I'll try and pick up something new.
My primary instrument has always been drums and percussion, but when I entered in degree program for music therapy, it was required that I pick up guitar, piano, and boys and that kind of ignited this firing me was, oh my gosh, you know, okay, So I went through these classes and I learned how to play these instruments to It's pretty high level of expectation, you know, because as music therapists we have to be able to support the clients with whatever we have around us. But it really
ignited this fire me. So, you know, after guitar was ukulele, and after ukulele was banjo. And I've been on the banjo for a little bit because it's pretty difficult, so I don't know what's X, but maybe mandolin or you know, fiddle or something. But and just finding a new instrument and learning how to play it is a really gratifying experience. Too. What I've had fun with is a lot of the music we make for the show I do on garage band, So I'm using other instruments that I don't really know
how to play in a normal way. It's just a different way to sort of approach music, and it's a it's a fun one to do it. And I think the other thing about music and playing guitar and being a musician, I always encourage anybody like, if you don't play an instrument, you want to just start. It doesn't matter how old you are. You don't have to be great at it to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I mean, I'm not great at it by any stretch of the imagination, and yet I've gotten years
and years and years of joy out of it. It's about the process, not about the product. You know that. That's what I love about music, And that's a lot of times what people's biggest fear is when they're in a music therapy group, and you know that hesitation that resistance playing an instrument and non musicians like I'm a gonot sound like crap. It's like, okay, well that's that's you're feeling towards it. But it's not about how you sound.
Regardless of how you sound, it's your emotional expression. We're going to use it. So it's it's really about process and so little about product. And once people get that in their minds, then they really do free themselves up in the sessions that we can use music to work
towards their goals. You know, musicians tend to be kind of perfectionists, I think, so getting musicians away from the page and improvising and trying new musical instruments are two really great ways for musicians to kind of use music as their own therapy. Excellent. Well, I think that is a perfect place to wind up, particularly the it's about the process not the product. That is a line that you can use in all aspects of your life and can be very valuable. So Dean, thanks so much for
taking the time to come on. It's been fun talking with you about music. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been great. All right, take care of you as well. Bye bye, m If what you just heard was helpful to you. Please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot Net Slash Support. You can learn more about Dean Quick and this podcast at One you Feed dot Net Slash Dean