TMT's Story
"I believe that music can connect us to our inner selves, strengthen our sense of who we are and transform ourselves despite our challenges. Music brings us into community, creating strong and supportive spaces that allow us to express ourselves in the world."
Jessica Heise, MA, MTA
Owner and Founder of TMT
Transformative Music Therapy offers trauma-informed music therapy services for individuals, families and organizations in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba.
We believe that music is a powerful agent for mental wellbeing, connection and transformative growth
Transformative Music Therapy began as our founder’s vision to increase access to music as a mental health tool and inner resource. Through her early years as a voice teacher, Jessica saw how her students benefited from the comfort that the musical space provided to grow in their sense of identity, confidence and self-love. It is through this lens that TMT was created.
Our mission is to help people and communities envision an empowered future, through the strength-based, creative expression of music therapy.
Our values are the backbone of who we are and what we do. In all that we do, we value:
- Acceptance
- Compassion
- Connection
- Empowerment
- Quality
- Integrity
Our Perspectives
Trauma-Informed Practice
Trauma-informed practice means that a practitioner is skilled in:
- Recognizing trauma-related symptoms,
- Responding skillfully throughout the therapeutic process, and
- Preventing re-traumatization that can occur through processing past traumas.
Trauma-informed practice must also address the intersectionality of trauma and culture, history, race, gender, location, and language, and acknowledge how the impact of systemic inequity increases the effects of trauma.
Trauma-informed music therapy strengthens protective factors and increases resilience to help individuals turn patterns of “surviving” into patterns of “thriving.”
Anti-Oppressive Practice
Anti-oppressive practice (AOP) recognizes that multiple forms of oppression can impact the lives of marginalized people and communities. Within AOP:
- The therapist works to eradicate oppression and dismantle power structures, including those inherent to the therapeutic relationships. The therapist continuously reflects on how the therapy process is reinforcing oppressive structures, and how to dismantle them within their work.
- The therapist works to understand the diversity of oppression in a person’s life and recognize the compounding effect of multiple forms of oppression.
- The therapist encourages a person to externalize structural oppression, so that they, themselves, can acknowledge the impact that these can have on the self.
Resource-Oriented
Resource-oriented music therapy acknowledges that people already contain with in them the inner resources necessary to work towards healing. These resources may be any strength, potentials, or resilience factor (ex. cultural practice, relationships, support circles, coping skills, etc.).
It is the therapist’s job to nurture these resources so that people may recognize the potential within themselves.
Therapy is, therefore, a collaboration between the therapist and person.
Lastly, resource-oriented music therapy recognizes that people are complex individuals and live within a context from which they cannot be separated.
