Music and Movement

Music and movement is one of the most versatile and flexible interventions that we’ve talked about in this blog. It can be used with almost any population you can think of, because it can be adapted to work specifically on the areas of need for your clients.

Music and movements is used very, very frequently when working with children, whether or not the children have physical goals they are working on. As you can imagine, you can’t expect a group of young children to sit and listen to music for 30 to 60 minutes, and that’s where music and movement comes in. Children often get very excited to get up and move to interact with a song. Many very young children may have goals relating to self-regulation skills, such as following directions. Although this isn’t necessarily a physical goal, a music therapist could incorporate movement by choosing songs such as “Old MacDonald,” and asking the children to get up and move like the animals they are singing about. While the emphasis isn’t on the movements themselves, the children are still getting up and moving around the room to work on following directions in the music.

Many adult populations use movement and music as well. Older adults may benefit from stretching along to music in order to maintain the range of motion that they have. While this may seem like a very different intervention than the high-energy dancing and movements done with children, they are both still considered music and movement as there is still some physical response to the music itself. With adults in particular, it can be a bit intimidating if a music therapist introduces movement to music as “dancing,” and in many cases the clients aren’t dancing at all. In this way, music and movement is great descriptor of these very versatile and widely used interventions.

-Maggie