Business Innovators Radio - Judith Pinkerton: How to Release the Healing Power of Music Therapy

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Judith Pinkerton was honored by the Academy of Country Music with their first Lifting Lives Honor award. She is a music therapy clinician, internship director, author, TEDx speaker, trainer, and recording artist. The first to receive a music therapy license, Judith has more than 30 years of experience working with more than 11,000 patients in addiction treatment centers.Learn more at: themusic4life.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/judith-pinkerton-how-to-release-the-healing-power-of-music-therapy

You're locked in to the station of the planet. Resistance is futile. The revolution has begun. You're listening to Revopreneur Radio, helping you break the rules and build the business you need for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal

through somewhere beyond the status quo. Here's your host, best-selling author, marketing and media strategist, Ralph Brogden. Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden. Well, most people love music. I'm one of them. I love music. I like all kinds of music. And most people see music as entertainment. But did you know that music is also, for some people, medicine? Did you know that there is a therapy called music therapy? And we, We are so privileged today to have one of the pioneers of musical therapy to explain her work and how it is transforming the lives of many people around the world. The Academy of Country Music awarded Judith Pinkerton with their first lifting lives honor. She is a music therapy clinician. She is an internship director, author, a TEDx speaker, trainer, and record.

artist. She is the first to receive a music therapy license, and Judith has been working in this field for over 30 years. She has worked with more than 11,000 patients in addiction treatment centers, and she tells me in this interview that she has just been awarded a patent for something very, very important and life-changing. So be sure to listen and hear. hear what that's all about. Enjoy my conversation with Judith Pinkerton. Break the rules. Build your business. Live your dream. You're listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. www.w.w.Ralph Brogden.com. Judith, welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. Thank you so much, Ralph. It's such a pleasure to spend time with you.

It's wonderful to connect and to talk about this idea because, you know, we're in this mental health crisis. We hear about it all the time nowadays. And if there is a better way for us to address mental health issues, depression, stress, anxiety, burnout, if there's a better way than the typical prescript. or medicine, if there's an alternative that would work, I think we should explore it. And I'm just thinking that so many people would benefit from your gift and how you take music and use it as therapy. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you became really adroit at bringing music into people's lives. lives for medicine and for therapy and for healing. Tell us how that came to be.

Well, 37 years ago, I had a hospital experience where my solo violin music replaced post-surgical high blood pressure medication after a loved one's emergency back surgery. And when that occurred, I was like stunned. That was not my intent. And the nurse was also. so stunned. And I remember her scratching out that medication had not been used and wrote in that music instead had been used, which brought his blood pressure into normal range in 30 minutes. Wow. From her first reading his vital signs.

So music replaced the blood pressure medicine and got the result without the medication. That's incredible. In 30 minutes. Yeah. So I thought so too, right? And I was like, wow, I got to tell the world about this. Well, at the time I was living in Anchorage, Alaska, did not know about music therapy. And it wasn't until I really moved to Las Vegas and bumped into a music therapist.

They went, wow, there's a whole world out here. I'm not aware of. So today, there are 10,000 of us and growing across the country that are board certified as music therapists. Wow. And it was that initial experience that other music therapists will also say they had some sort of experience where it motivated them to want to be in the field. So since then, I kind of figured out, you know, from one experience to the next, which is thousands and thousands of experiences with clients and patients about how music can

work differently in emotion regulation, stress management, and really taking it to a deeper level that looks at all music genres. So, Ralph, when you think about healing music, you know, what does that mean for you? What is healing music to you? What is it to me? Well, you know, I'm glad you mentioned genre because I will use music in different genres depending on the state that I'm trying to create in myself. So in the morning, when I'm more contemplative and meditative, and prayerful, I'm listening to something very soft and relaxing in the background. When I'm kicking off a podcast or an interview, I'm playing the rebelpreneur theme song because I'm motivating me and the guest and the listeners.

So that's a broad range. But when you came on, I had chillax jazz on there. So it's, to your observation, I'm, using different genres of music to create different states of mind. And so I guess healing music for me, I just, I love to shower with Vivaldi, right? To me, that's healing. That's recuperative. But I can go in any direction with that.

Music is so wonderful that way. That is a really good answer. So now I want to stretch. I want to stretch. So could it be that someone you know is experiencing a lot of anger or anxiety or depression or sadness? And you're noticing their music choices. And it's possible that that person could be stuck or trapped in a mood and doesn't know it. So you may think, man, you're really angry all the time.

They're like, no, I'm just energized. like, okay. Yeah, but let's look at your music choices. Okay, so maybe they're listening to Death Metal all day long. And so that does create a state that is maybe not serving you the way it ought to. Right. So what's interesting about this protocol that I've developed over the decades is that we acknowledge that all genres are potentially healing, including death metal. Okay.

And it's understanding what specialized playlist it goes into that then is cold to create what we call a music medicine pill, which is in my background here. That music medicine pill that ignites our physiology or emotions, our behavior to be what we desire. So you talked about some situations, you know, where you choose mindfully music to get you into the state that you. desire. And at Music for Life, we acknowledge that and more. So we're suggesting that when you are stuck in anger, anxiety, depression, or sadness, you may be so stuck there and trapped there that you don't even know you're there. And people will tend to, and their music listening habits, push play on music that feels good to them. Those that don't know that they're trapped in those emotions will possibly push play on music that actually traps them in those moods.

Now, what's interesting here is I'm going to give you an analogy. Imagine a tea kettle full of water and we've got it boiling and recognizing that our bodies also are made up of, I don't know, 78% of water, that when we are boiling with a particular unsettled mood, anger, anxiety, depression, or sadness, that in the tea kettle, it is is the spout on the tea kettle that relieves the pressure of the tea kettle so that it doesn't burst from the pressure, right? And so for us, we relieve the pressure of that emotion by listening to music. And we tend to listen to music that matches where we're at, and it kind of relieves the pressure. So people will say, yeah, listening to metal soothes me. It relieves the pressure.

and it validates me. It recognizes what I'm feeling, but they unknowingly keep themselves trapped in that mood. So this protocol embraces that, creates a mood sequence formula that utilizes that music along with others in a broad emotional continuum to actually create a catharsis

that neutralizes the unsettledness and builds at the same time greater peace and happiness. Wow. That is a mouthful of what you just said there. that that's pretty powerful now explain it to me like i'm in fifth grade so what you're saying is that you can arrange music not just the genre but you can specifically take someone from where they are to where they want to be emotionally in their physiology and their state and their emotion not not only through genres of music but specific sequences of

music, like a special arrangement or a prescriptive playlist. How about that? Will that be a fair thing to say? Exactly. It is prescriptive. A prescriptive? Dr. Derriterate. Well, that's got to be better than a pill. Well, there in some cases, in some cases, the music medicine pill, which is not an actual pill, right? It's a mood sequence formula called into a specialized playlist with potentially a variety of genres in a mood sequence that has been recommended by a music therapist trained in this protocol. So when you're able to... Yeah, so give us an example of, I mean, I don't know how many songs would be in this playlist, but give us an example of a sequence of music that would take you in this prescript. of playlist. Like, what would be in that playlist?

Let's say that I'm just, I'm in this place of anxiety and general anxiety and depression. What would be an example of music that would get me from that into something else progressively? Okay. So I'm going to open up my playlist right here and go to my. handy dandy platform. You can use any platform. So the beauty about this, specialized playlist is you can do it on any platform.

You know, it's such a powerful, portable command center that it allows you to work no matter where you're at in an airplane and an ICU unit, wherever. So imagine breaking the habit by Lincoln Park. Okay. I can't imagine that because I don't look. listen to them. Okay, well. That might be a problem.

So it's, it's, now you're going to listen to her. So imagine for viewers that might choose to listen to it, that I'm recommending not just to listen to that piece of music. Okay. But to allow it to immerse you in the feeling that the music itself brings and the words, talking about any kind of habit that you might have that you're wanting to break. Okay. That is just completely consuming you.

I don't know. Could be playing games. Could be substance. Could be relationships. Could be sex. Could be whatever that you find yourself consumed with that has become a habit that you're really wanting to break the habit of. And this music can help you feel.

what that's like in wanting to release that. So it's more like an angst, kind of maybe a little bit angry, anxious kind of energy. Those that are trapped in that mood may say, no, it's energizing. All right. So in this protocol, energizing is another specialized playlist, not this particular playlist that I'm talking about. moving from that one into there's a CD that I really like called Black Aria by Glenn Donzig. Didn't sell very well because he used a symphony orchestra instead of its rock band.

But it really goes into music that's more depressing and will help to sequence from breaking the habit into something that's, because you mentioned depression, addressing that. mood and allowing it to come up and then sequencing to something from soothing because you want to neutralize what you just brought up. The best soothing music is one that has no words and no beat, but a lot of people need to have words and need to have a beat. So there's absolutely soothing music out there in a variety of genres that would work in this case. But you have to make sure that it really takes you to that quiet place where you're able to release what you just stirred up. So in a balanced music diet of this mood sequence formula,

you need to have equal time in the unsettled part, equal time in the soothing part, and then you end with changing and shifting yourself into a positive mindset in the energizing part. And it's really crucial that if you are stuck in this, what I call a chronic unsettled comfort zone, you're trapped there and you don't even know it. So you could be placing music into the wrong area of the mood sequence formula that will then keep you actually trapped.

Interesting. And that does not get you out of it. Interesting. So when you look at music then that's in that third category, Ralph, it's got to be music that is uplifting, that makes you want to dance with a smile on your face, that has words that match the music of being positive. And yes, I can do this. And what do I want in my future that's good? So it really takes you from the unsubtle place to neutralizing it to the positive place. And when that can happen, and the recommendation is that if you found the perfect playlist like that for yourself,

you listen to it every day for two weeks. Our experience with hundreds of people is that in this kind of customized playlist, you can mitigate medication. We even have a published study where the physician stopped incest. depression and pain medication because of the music medicine pill. Wow. That's powerful. Now, something you said interested me, and that is that it's not only the music, it's not only the genre, and it's not only the sequence that you are listening to these selections in. But you mention lyrics.

So the words are important as well. It would, is it, is it possible to have words that match? Is there a marriage there between the lyrics and the, I'm thinking rap music, for example, which is very, that's a cultural thing as much as a musical thing. All of that is working together, it sounds like. It's like, this is all part of the recipe, all of the milieu of emotion and genre and lyrics and words and beat. There's a lot of variables there and it's different for everyone, it sounds like. Yeah, there, you know, it's interesting.

And this, anything that I say is just kind of a general comment. It's not specific. It's not meant to be the rule. because we're also individualized and music is so subjective. But I find that, for instance, with rap, love rap, by the way, that the lyric tend to be upset about something that went wrong. And there tends to be a bit of anger with the, the words because of the upsetness with it.

And I find that the music itself doesn't match the degree of anger of the words. And so it's like it just stays in that mode of just being angry and not being able to get out of it. It's not really expressing with the music content itself. There's a lot more music, especially in the metal deafness. metal and that genre, that is much more aggressive and much more energetic to really match a state of anger that you may find with the words in reps. That makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and then what came to mind is country music, for example, which some forms of country music are just really expressions of sadness and pain and almost. trying to make light of it. You know, my, my dog died and my wife left me and, you know, I'm here alone, or Randy Travis, the bedroom where, the bed where so much love was made. And now I'm picking up bone, digging up bones. You know, so that, it, these genres tend to get typecast into, okay, that's the down and out country song. And this is the angry rap song. And this is the,

I'm going to kill you death metal song. I guess what I'm hearing you say and what I'm learning from you now is there's a lot more nuance to the music, the genre, the lyric than maybe we realize we take a lot of it for granted. We really can't categorize it all into that typecast model. It's different for everyone. Yeah, it tends to actually keep people. trapped in emotions in a state of confusion. You know, for instance, what you were referencing was some country music or a lot of country music, that it's about something unsettling with happy music that's seeking maybe to lift you out of feeling so bad, but really what it does. So this is my music therapist hat on.

Really what it does is it just kind of keeps you stuck in, well, I'm not happy about this, you know. one. So you don't really feel better after listening to the music. It's temporary. I've got friends in low places. And, you know, it's, yeah, fascinating, fascinating. So I think I understand the theory enough to appreciate that it's, I know why you have to be certified in this because it's very complex.

I mean, it's like, it's like a pharmacist. You're like a pharmacist for medical or for musical drugs and all these different combinations and it can create different effects. And that is just fascinating. So as a business, let's look at it from the business standpoint of things. How do you get clients? How do you work with people? How do you find them or how do they find you?

or how do you get this treatment to people? How do you bring it to market? You know, I've had a music therapy agency for decades, contracts with facilities, and finally decided that because there's not enough of us, and I had major support from people saying, Judith, this is so successful, you need to convert it into mass consumption that I started working on. Okay, so what is that? So you noticed at the beginning of this interview.

that you said you'd like interviewing people that break the rules. Well, I'm known as an out-of-the-box thinker in my profession. I've had arrows thrown at me because some people disagree with a direction that I want to go. But truly, there's not enough of us. Only 10,000 of us in the country. So there are hundreds of jobs in the country being unfilled by music therapists because there's not enough of it. So I've risen to the position of training the trainer. So I train non-music therapists as well as music therapists in this protocol. So that's how I'm getting the word out there. We do have an evidence-based practice called the Music for Life Music Medicine Protocol.

Funny that you should reference me being a pharmacist or like a pharmacist. It's actually being sold through a pharmaceutical distributors catalog. Wow. Interesting. Interesting. So I had a recent hospital. experience, Ralph, that I was able to have some distance from it now because it's been a couple months where I reflected and realized that as the creator of the six habits of music medicine

for highly empowered people, that's the name of the curriculum, which has been taught now through NAMI, which is National Alliance on Mental Illness in Nevada. What I realized, that I practice all six of those habits. And as I reflected on my hospital experience, where the patient went from taking their last breath to life within minutes because of music. And I'm still so not perplexed, grateful, definitely, that this occurred.

I started really looking at how did my training support me and being present enough to be able to make this happen for my father in less than 24 hours being in another state for another loved one's funeral that I had helped orchestrate with my music. So I had my music therapy tools with me, which was a Bose speaker and sheet music if needed and my iPhone with music and music. and my violin. That's like your medical kit, right? I have a lot of instruments. You know, I'm also a Remo Recreation Music Center that's been on hiatus during the pandemic. So I have a variety of rhythm instruments and guitar and keyboard and all of that, too. But they're not as portable as these tools.

especially into an ICU unit in another state. Right. Yeah. But yeah, my dad was having acute respiratory failure. And literally in less than 24 hours, we found ourselves the day after the funeral service being admitted to the hospital and in ICU. and then immediately the medical team saying, if you do not intubate him now, meaning go on the ventilator right now,

he will most likely die. So I'm with my mother. Bear in mind my parents are 92. I'm with my mother and my cousin. My cousin was our medical advocate. He is a physician assistant, flight nurse with decades of emergency medicine. and he was the one that noticed that my dad needed to get to the hospital immediately.

So he was able to orchestrated, you love that word, put together him being admitted quickly and getting assistance. So I noticed that my dad was really struggling with trying to breathe because we refused to intubate him because we decided with my siblings and my mother and I that we had, And we had to communicate with them in other parts of the world by a telephone that he wouldn't be in control if we had him on a ventilator. And he needed to be in control. He was a tough old bird. He's a push pilot and a mountaineer and he's just tough. So I'm noticing that his tongue is turning black, that his skin color is changing and that he's struggling with trying to breathe. And so I took the violin accident and what else to do to try and calm his struggle.

So I played a couple pieces for him that he had taught me how to play. He was my violin teacher. He was also my conductor for a youth symphony. I mean, we were just really connected through music. And so I noticed that he stopped struggling and that he was becoming much more peaceful. And it was at that point with just the three of us, my mother, myself and my cousin in the room, that my cousin said, all right, we need to gather around his bed right now. He's about ready to take his last breath. And I remember being stunned.

And I yelled at him and said, no more soothing music for you. We need to get some energizing stuff going on. and I whipped out my violin, well, my violin was right there, but I whipped out the bow speaker and put the sheet music at his feet on his bed and pushed play on the iPhone. It was a music minus one track that had the violin, you know, where I could play the violin part. And it was a piece of music that he had not only taught us to play, but he had performed himself and he had conducted and had recent experience with. And so I started playing, started wailing on the Bach double violin concerto.

And after the first movement, I just noticed there wasn't much change with him as I'm watching him and noticing the monitor and vital signs above him. So I skipped the second movement because that was soothing and no more soothing music. So I skipped to the third movement and started playing it. And, oh, man, it's a very robust movement. three pages worth on the sheet music. And I had such deep conversations going on with God, with him, with everybody in the room, which was three of us. And I realized that by the end of that movement, he started conducting me.

Wow. And he ended, he ended the last note with me like this. and I was I was dumbfounded because first of all, he didn't cut me off. So I think I made a joke of it saying, really, dad, you're not going to cut me off. I also realized in my environment that I had the medical team, the doctor had shown up with her medical team watching this. He was still unresponsive, but within minutes, he regained healthy color, his, monitors went into a normalized monitor reading, and everybody remarked in writing about the miracle that music saved him.

Wow. Powerful testimony. The miracle of music. To bring healing, to bring therapy, to bring physiological strength. you just saw him transform, just based on the different kind of music. Well, you know, it's so individualized, Ralph. That wouldn't have worked for somebody else. Yeah.

You know, so it's knowing the patient as best as can be to deliver really what's needed. And I, as I reflected on, you know, these habits of music medicine that you've got to be able to recognize what. zone you're in and what zone everybody else is in, particularly the patient, you have to have this deep awareness about what is happening for everybody, including yourself. You have to be able to control your moods so that you can be effective in whatever high-intensive situation that you're in. You have to be doing your own work with self-care and cleansing your own emotions on a regular basis so that you can practice emotional fluidity where you can move in and out of any emotional state like that to be able to keep yourself balanced and that you're so aware of your environment

that you know when to be appropriate and how to be appropriate and that's what the six habits of music medicine for highly empowered people teach you to do Yeah, that's amazing. And what I really like about this is you are now training the therapists. You are leveraging your years of experience, your expertise, your wisdom. And there's 10,000, which is, in the grand scheme of things, not a lot, more than what I thought. I didn't even know this was a thing. And I'm wondering how many counselors, therapists, coaches, healers out there now,

that would benefit from learning this therapy and adding it to whatever they're doing now or maybe using this exclusively coming to you to be trained in this particular therapy to get results. Maybe this resonates with someone who's listening. And you're in a coaching, or a healing thing that you're trying to get results for your clients. And you haven't even considered the possibility that here's another dimension that is evidence-based and is getting results.

And what I really love about it is once you learn how to apply it, you're not asking the patient to do anything other than just be and just listen and just absorb. It's not like you're asking them to go on a special diet that they can't stick to. Or you've got to repeat affirmations 3,000 times a day until you notice a shift. But what you're suggesting is here is something that can transform you from the outside in, but then from the inside out. And the transformation need not take years and years and years or weeks, but it can be almost instantaneous. That's a powerful paradigm for coaches, counselors, healers, people out there, therapists,

anyone in a helping profession to consider this. Judith, how do people reach out and find out more about your work and about what you are doing to help empower and train? the next generation of musical therapists. We have got a website that is pretty robust. This website, as if you can imagine, has like over 50 integrations to make it robust. And so simply, the URL is the music for the number for life.com.

The Music for Life. com. And it connects you to the training platform, to our continuing education platform that you can subscribe to to get weekly updates that are current, that are meaningful about what's happening right now, to do telemedicine. We have just so much products that can help people. Curriculum, yeah, we've converted everything to be audio. e-books, virtual trainings, telehealth, it's all available now. Awesome. So, yeah, that's another benefit is you can practice this, and distance is not a problem.

Now, because these are, it's digital tools, it's music. It's something that everybody, virtually everyone has access to. Most people have access to Spotify or. or iTunes or some type of music. It is such a part of our lives. It's such a central part of everything that we are. I mean, I've got my Spotify app. I've got my playlist.

And it's just part of life. I don't have to go out and buy the CDs and the albums like in the old days. It's like I can find stuff in here and it becomes a part of the library. I can play it, create the mood. create the state that I want. And the idea, just the possibility that you can turn someone's mental, emotional, and physical, and even spiritual state of mind or state of being around from where they are struggling and help them and guide them to a place of wholeness and healing, that's very powerful.

We'll have the website on the Rebel Burnoover Radio website as well. It's The Music for Life.com, and it's the number four, the music forlife.com, or you can just click on the link that we'll have underneath this audio recording. Judith, this has been very eye-opening. I feel like I have gotten an education in the time that we've taught. I thought I knew a lot about music, but didn't know as much as I thought I did. And especially the possibility that you've just opened up new worlds. So this has been very, very powerful, very transformative. Any final thoughts or words of wisdom you'd like to leave us with as a last word?

Imagine accessing a mobile app that takes you through how to create your own music medicine pill. So I am so pleased to announce that we just had our patent approved. Wow, that's huge. For the app. So you can find out more about that app as now we're able to really develop it out with what's been approved that will help you to build automatically in your cell phone, a music medicine pill. and tutorials, assistance, guidance. I mean, I'm so excited that I can now finally focus on making this app happen. So there's going to be a Kickstarter campaign coming up.

All right. All right. That we can engage people with to get all sorts of goodies from us. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. It's not patent pending. It's patent approved. And more to come. So stay tuned.

Judith Pinkerton, thank you so much for sharing your. work, your wisdom with us. I'm really thrilled to have you on and to be able to share in your very valuable work. You were doing good. Keep up the good work. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you, Ralph. Blessings. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.