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When Clara, a 35-year-old single mother with a daughter, sought consultation, she had been undergoing psychoanalytic therapy for two years. She expressed her interest in exploring her creative side out of curiosity, stating, "My mind is filled with things that sometimes exhaust me." While it's not a prerequisite for my clients to be musicians, Clara, being a violinist, was drawn to me, wanting to explore how to integrate the violin into her therapeutic process. In her psychoanalytic therapy, Clara focused on thoughts and memories to understand and resolve the contradictions in her life. However, Clara was not in tune with her body and life organically due to her tendency to intellectualize her experiences. Her physical appearance reflected a lack of personal care and appreciation despite her attractive features. In our occupational therapy work, personal care is fundamental as part of activities of daily living (ADLs). I suggested that, given her extensive analytical process, we should start our sessions by focusing more organically on her appearance. Clara was surprised and somewhat bothered by this suggestion. I asked her to bring a mirror and look at herself closely, telling me what she observed. Laughing, she said, "I need to fix my hair." Clara began paying more attention to her appearance and accepting her physical beauty without the projected guilt she had internalized from an authoritarian and insecure mother. The aspects of interpreting her traumas were not addressed in our therapy sessions as she was working on them in psychoanalysis. Instead, we discussed her desires and potentials. As she organized her confusion and the excessive tendency to overanalyze and interpret everything, she began to decrease. ADLs had a noticeable impact. Once she achieved this stage of body awareness and its impact on her environment (she tended to project her frustrations onto her 8-year-old daughter, something her mother did to her compulsively, which she managed to overcome by the end of her process), we began incorporating the violin into her therapy. With the use of music therapy improvisation techniques such as musical empathy, I created a harmonic foundation where she was encouraged to improvise freely and spontaneously, something she initially struggled with due to her tendency to judge and suppress herself. Her subsequent openness allowed her to use the violin expressively, deeply, and organically; making the violin part of the vibrational essence of her body. She began to break free from her psychological trap to explore and understand life, her life, and her potentials. As Clara discovered herself, she began to understand that she was not bound by familial conflicts and contradictions that had caused her anxiety. Another technique I employed was musical meditation or contemplation in action (an Indigenous and Buddhist practice). As we improvised, we entered contemplative states, without words. Clara mentioned feeling unified, not divided, during our improvisations. She connected with her vital energy, intuitive intelligence, and began to flow in her life without moral, religious, or even political constraints. Today, Clara expresses acting more consciously, less intellectually compulsively. In our meetings, she appears calmer. "I have made peace with myself, this inner work makes me feel good," she affirmed.

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