The sound of a warm, rich keyboard fills the room as Ryan Tonkin, Orlando Health’s music therapy program coordinator, begins a music and stress management class at Orlando Health’s Integrative Medicine room in downtown Orlando.
“Music therapy,” according to Tonkin, “is a form of therapy with trained therapists who have the ability to utilize specific music interventions and elements of music to address non-musical goals in people.”.
The Orlando Health music therapy program has four full-time employees. Tonkin is the first music therapist hired by Orlando Health specifically to serve adult patients. As program coordinator, Tonkin serves patients of all conditions at the Orlando Regional Medical Center. There are three other music therapists who work at the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.
Music therapy services are typically provided by request. For adults, oncology and burn patients are most frequently seen, according to Tonkin.
Tonkin also holds a music and stress management class weekly on Thursday mornings with his current interns, Emma Knapp and Victoria Maldonado.
The class includes outpatient Jennifer Paster, who is joined by her husband, Bruce Paster. Jennifer Paster said she was diagnosed with breast cancer about a year and a half ago, but she has since recovered. She still attends the sessions because she finds them beneficial for her overall mental health.
“It was really helping with my thoughts and fear. Hearing a cancer diagnosis can be very scary,” Paster said.
Attendees get a choice of what therapy technique to focus on. Paster chooses guided meditation. Tonkin leads the session where he plays his instrument of choice while he verbally directs the group, leading them to a relaxed, meditative state.
Paster said if she misses a class, she cannot wait to go back again. “It is a place to feel safe, to have your emotions, process your illness,” she said.
Routinely attending the sessions has led to a strong bond between Tonkin, his interns, and Jennifer Bruce Paster. The group said they often joke around, and Tonkin and Bruce Paster talk about their mutual love of the 1960s jam band Grateful Dead.
Tonkin said music therapy is often misunderstood by the public.
“You hear the word music, you hear the word therapy, we can put those together and say I know what that is," Tonkin said. “There is a lot of education that still needs to happen for the average person.”
Tonkin said music therapy research has significantly improved in recent years and has helped reinforce its scientific basis.
“Music therapy is cited a good amount, other music therapy research is being published, even in non-music-therapy journals,” he said.
Tonkin believes the field is growing, and there has been an increase in awareness; however, Central Florida has no higher education institutions that offer a music therapy program.
“I believe that there is a need for an accredited program in the Central Florida area,” Ryan Tonkin said.
Knapp, a music therapy intern from Florida State University, said she has shared her degree and desired occupation with others and received skeptical responses about the field’s legitimacy.
“Another misconception is that we literally just go in and play music and that’s it… but a lot of it is the talking part, the actual therapeutic sense of music therapy.”
Knapp said that in her experience, many music therapy sessions with adults do not involve any music, just talking one on one with patients.
“I always feel lighter when I leave here… it’s another kind of medicine for me to come in here for music therapy,” Jennifer Paster said.