Thank you for joining us for On a Positive Note.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and each month I'm sitting down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which makes it the perfect time to talk to today's

guest.

Jennifer Buchanan is an acclaimed music therapist and author of the new book Wellness Well Played,

The Power of a Playlist.

She's here to talk about why music and mental health go hand in hand, how you can harness the power of music to change your state,

and how to create a purposeful playlist that just might change the way you listen to life.

Jennifer, welcome to on a positive note. Thank you so much for having me. You are the perfect

guest to have for this episode because the whole month of May, we're talking

about mental health. And you, of course, know better than most people how good music is for

our mental health. And before we really unpack that, I wanted to talk about, like, why is it

important for us to start to realize the effect that music has on us? Yeah, so, you know, I have been

giving a lot of thought to this over the 30 years that I've been a certified music therapist

and working with a variety of people. My youngest client's been two months old and my eldest

has been 104.

And, you know, mental health is certainly something that all of us experience value.

But really, we've started talking about it at such a higher level over this last decade or so that I have found.

And as we're doing that, this connection about how music can be a bridge to our wellness

has just kept coming up for me over not only in a clinical session where I might be working with someone

going through some of the most difficult time in their life.

They might have just been in a car accident or had a stroke or been diagnosed with dementia.

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