Rochester, N.Y. -- Music can warm the soul. You can see that in the partnership between music therapist Sam Snyder at Hochstein School of Music and individuals at Lifetime Assistance. 13WHAM sat in on one of their sessions.
Sam talks excitedly and passionately about his work, "Music therapy is the use of music as a therapeutic tool.... Often times there will be people who don't make eye contact for example and through music because it is sort of this extra character in the room, this extra medium and it has it's energy all its own it brings that person to be able to look at somebody and give and actual one on one eye contact."
"I see people's abilities, rather than their disabilities. and in doing that we get the instruments for which they're able. Not try instruments that they are not able to do cause that creates a sense of ugh, I can't do that. We always want it to be a positive experience."
"There are a lot of goals that we work on, one of them is sensory integration, that is basically giving people sensations that they don't normally feel... It helps them to make sense of the world in a different way. Drums do that as well, guitar is an awesome instrument... if you get it right up on somebody's chair and start playing it they can feel those vibrations."
"There is a lot of wow feedback. Wow! I've never seen this person focus for that much time at one time on any one thing or wow, I've never seen them move their arm that far and those are the kinds of things I get or wow that was fun and that's cool too."
"It's a job unlike any other because you get to use what you are passionate about, for me that's music and working with people."
Lifetime assistance is running a holiday campaign to continue to fund the partnership. You can find more information at: http://dayinalifetime.com/
