A music therapist shows how to choose music with intention, so you can sharpen your focus, manage stress and get into the right state for demanding client work.
Professionals work under constant pressure from client demands, tight timelines and high expectations, and doing their best work depends on a brain that is fully “switched on.” In this interactive and uplifting session, a music therapist with over thirty years of clinical experience shows how music can be one of the simplest and most powerful tools for focus, resilience and well-being.
Drawing on research from hundreds of randomized trials showing music’s effect on stress, anxiety, pain and mood, the session explains why music engages more areas of the brain at once than any other activity. Through a short video case study, you’ll see how music can help someone get physically “unstuck,” and what that reveals about its ability to shift our state.
The heart of the course breaks music down into six elements: genre, tempo, timbre, melody, groove and lyrics. Through exercises and discussion, you’ll learn how each element affects mood, energy and attention, and how to choose music for the task at hand rather than letting it play in the background. The session also covers entrainment as a model for team collaboration, the “tone” we carry into client meetings, and the idea of an anchor song: one piece of music that reliably puts you in the state you need.
You’ll leave with practical ideas for building playlists for focus, energy and recovery, and for listening more intentionally every day.
1 activity • 1 videos • duration: 55m
The CPA Small Practitioners’ Forum was created to offer an inviting, semi-causal, and easygoing professional development weekend that provides substantial professional development value to small practitioners. All profit earned by the CPA Small Practitioners’ Forum is donated to the Alberta CPA Education Foundation, so you are helping young people in Canada get scholarships for university. All these courses are reviewed by the delegates at the Forum in Banff annually so we have a great lineup that is adjusted every year to keep things relevant to small practitioners. If you work at a public accounting firm in Canada with employees of 1-50 people, you are our target demographic and you should find this course useful.
