NORMAS DE OBLIGADO CUMPLIMIENTO

The music therapists were asked if the flow experience change their relationship to the client. P4: I think everything you do with a client can impact on the relationship; if you make them a cup of tea you can change your relationship with them. For good or for bad, basically. But, I think this, you know this feeling of flow which is so hard to get at …is quite tangible. So I can say, “gosh I really felt sort of pulled along” or “I was

surprised how we were able to sustain that” or something. I think when I have that experience, it affects my experience of the client. And when the client has that experience, it affects their experience and expectations of what we can do musically. So I think inevitably it’s a… I think it’s one of the most powerful experiences. I mean we talk a lot about sort of connections and things like that, and in a sense I guess flow is an extended connection …whether it’s between two people, me and my experience of myself musically, so I think flow is quite big, it potentially has quite an impact on the relationship.

Participant 4 calls the flow experience an “extended connection” that holds the potential to effect the therapist’s and the client’s expectations of the therapeutic process. It might effect the expectations they have to themselves and each other and of what they can do together, he says. He also talks about the importance of remembering that anything and everything you do with a client may affect the relationship. A flow experience may well impact the relationships in music therapy, but so will many other elements in the context. This view is shared and emphasized by participant 5:

P5: To be honest I think that I feel like I’ve …we have a bit more understanding about each other, after these experiences, I think because we’ve shared something, like, meaningful together.

She says that in the flow experience, she and the client shares something meaningful. She mentions it again:

P5: Meaningful, special, like, sometimes transcendent …so, shared experience, if you share something that matters.

The word transcendent or transcendence means to “be or go beyond the range or limits of normal or physical human experience” (COED, 2006, p. 1530). This emphasizes the intangibleness of the flow experience.

P3: …it would be much, as a musical dyad, […] and then there is a certain point where we both enter into a union, a communion …and, it’s magic!

A dyad is “something that consists of two parts” (COED, 2006, p. 447). A union is a “state of harmony or agreement” (COED, 2006, pp. 1578). A communion is defined as “the sharing of intimate thoughts and feelings” (COED, 2006, pp. 289). What I think she might be

insinuating is that there may be two stages when entering a flow state during improvisation in music therapy: the starting point is two parts doing music or musicking together. Then there is a “point”, and after this point there is harmony, intimate sharing and magic.

This is the second time the word magic has been mentioned, and it will not be the last. Participant 3 also uses the words “peers”, “equality”, “mutuality” and “meeting”, when describing what happens in the flow experience during musical improvisation. In the

psychiatric unit where she works, there is a clear expert – patient dichotomy. In music therapy this dichotomy seems to be removed, she says, and explains:

P3: …well, as a therapist, I would feel very attentive to the young person, but there is a point, where there is actually mutuality in that interaction, in that dialogue. In so much as… I’m…it is not as though I’m just meeting their needs, they’re also meeting my needs, my needs to be matched and mirrored, and …extended, and to be playful as well. […] There’s a real connection of mutuality.

An important point to make is that she did not claim that the expert – patient dichotomy is removed only in the flow experience. She mentions for example the way in which she

presents herself by her first name, and not by the title “Music Therapist”. This and many other elements in the therapeutic context may play important part in removing this dichotomy. But the flow experience during musical improvisation might play a part in “deepening the

relationship” between the therapist and the client, she says. The word deep has to do with something that is beyond the surface of something (COED, 2006). Participant 1 agrees that flow is deep experience, and that it might contribute in developing the therapeutic

relationship:

P1: I think those improvisations are quite important in the therapy process, because I think it makes you more connected in an emotional level, with the client. And also this is an …experience of something which is quite deep…it also makes the therapeutic …relationship more, more safe and more trustful.

He says that the flow experience makes the people involved connected in an emotional level, and that it makes the relationship more trustful.

The last quotes contain a strong intimation saying that the experience of flow is a mutual and common experience. The therapists use words like “union”, “communion”,

“sharing”, “meeting”, “mutuality”, “connection”, etc. This initiates that the flow experience might be a mutual or shared experience. This study is limited in the sense that it only includes the view of the therapist, but if it is a shared experience it is a very interesting question to consider at a later time.