How music feeds the soul _{by Madelaine Empson}

Originally from Argentina, Carlos Riegelhaupt Landreani worked as a chef for over a decade and says the culinary arts are what led to his career in music therapy. Working as a chef on a Russian icebreaker circumnavigating Antarctica on a course for New Zealand, he moved to Golden Bay seeking a change of vibe – to explore a different way of living. Here, he discovered permaculture, which set off “an almost ontological shift” in the way he perceived the world through food. He learned the value and power of good, healthy nutrition – and that the best food you can get comes from the land around you.

“Fresh is best, right?”

Incorporating his knowledge and love of the culinary arts with permaculture, he opened a business with a partner at the time: a restaurant where they would grow the food on the premises. When the relationship collapsed and took the business with it, Carlos felt lost.

“It was a very dark period in my life”, he says. “Really, music was the only thing that was keeping me alive.”

Moving to Wellington with “no idea what to do”, Carlos found himself at a protest and wound up in a conversation with a stranger who was playing drums on the street. After the two shared how instrumental music had been in their healing journeys, the drummer told Carlos he had just completed a music therapy degree that changed his life. It was a comment that would change Carlos’ life in turn.  

After making his enquiries, Carlos auditioned and was accepted to study a Master of Music Therapy at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. He did his final-year placement at the rehabilitation unit within Rimutaka Prison – “a big jump in my professional career”. Coming from a performance background and as a musician himself, the more he did music, the more he realised this shift was the right one for him.

“Cooking was paying the bills; music was feeding my soul.”

Carlos graduated in 2021 and has worked with acute mental health patients at both Hutt Hospital’s Te Whare Ahuru unit and Kenepuru Hospital’s Rangatahi unit in Porirua. Cooking activities formed part of the occupational therapy at Kenepuru Hospital, but the unit was under a lot of pressure, with the nurses trying to do everything all at once. And so, Carlos told the manager he had a background in cooking.

“Do you want me to do the cooking, and the nurses can just be nurses?”

That developed a whole new job for Carlos: therapeutic cooking activities with adolescents for their mental health, incorporating a holistic overview of nutrition and even permaculture, with fresh food being donated from Mangaroa Farms in Upper Hutt where he lived. Funding cuts resulted in the loss of that position for Carlos, who emphasises the importance of music therapy, describing it as a humanistic therapeutic approach.

“Music has been around forever. It’s part of our humanness… I find that music therapy is such a wonderful tool to help people reconnect with their humanity, whether it’s with themselves or the people around them.”

The practice will be honoured when Music Therapy New Zealand Te Roopu Puoro Whakaora O Aotearoa marks their 50^th anniversary with a two-day hybrid conference this September. Looking Back, Moving Forward begins on Friday the 13^th in the Hunter Council Chamber at Victoria University of Wellington – an evening that also celebrates the 20^th anniversary of the very Master of Music Therapy course Carlos studied – before spreading out across Wharewaka Function Centre on Saturday and Sunday. The programme includes over 60 local and international presenters, one of which is Carlos, who will be leading a workshop on Sunday the 15^th in the Mokopuna room at 11:50am titled Music Therapy and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy: Past, Present, and Future.

Carlos’ workshop will explore Helen Lindquist Bonny’s work in Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), a method using music to facilitate therapeutic experiences in expanded states of consciousness. Helen used LSD and music therapy together in the 60s, but when LSD was made illegal, she developed the GIM program to work without psychedelics.

Carlos trained in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and the Integrative Psychiatry Institute and is extremely passionate about the subject, explaining the role of music in psychedelic therapy as follows:

“Music acts as a guide. The music becomes this sort of flow. It’s almost like the water in the river, and you’re floating in the river. The water takes you downstream, and you find rocks and sticks and obstacles that the water will go around and make its way through. Music is a therapeutic support that will help elicit or evoke emotions or memories that actually result in therapeutic processes, which then, you would discuss with your therapist in your integration sessions.”

Considering the illegality of psychedelics, Carlos says one of the core elements of psychedelic therapy is safety and risk reduction.

“Looking from the harm-reduction approach to treating mental health disorders triggered by psychedelics, we need to be trained in this. We need to be applying this knowledge so we can technically apply psychedelic therapy to people that consume psychedelics and then have a psychological emergency. Then we can help them integrate the experience. People take psychedelics, blow out their masts, don’t know how to make sense of the situation – hey, here’s a psychedelic therapist who can you help you.”

“People have this curiosity to explore spirituality using psychedelics”, Carlos continues. “Going back to the harm-reduction approach, if people are going to do psychedelics anyway, it would be great to educate them about how to do it safely. Just like how at festivals, there are drug-testing stations… That’s harm reduction: we’ll test your drugs for free. But what about preparation, information, education? That’s really important to help reduce the likelihood of harm. I think the word harm here is a little bit tainted with the assumption that there is going to be harm. I like to use the word risk: risk reduction, harm-risk reduction. We’ll reduce the likelihood of the risk of people causing harm to themselves or others, and by doing so, educating people how to do it safely, how to take care of things.”

“I don’t touch psychedelics, I don’t encourage people to do psychedelics”, Carlos emphasises. “If they’re going to do it anyway, okay, let’s do it safely.”

Carlos is thrilled to be part of the Looking Back, Moving Forward conference, which you can register to attend in person or online at the Music Therapy New Zealand website.

“We have presenters from all over the world covering a range of topics – one of them I'm presenting on psychedelic therapy and music therapy – but also the use of music therapy in mental health, rehabilitation, pain management... It’s so, so broad, music therapy. So, I think raising awareness around music therapy and what it’s actually bringing to people’s lives is crucial. We need it. It’s humanising. It connects us with everybody, connects us with our emotions, and helps us process things in a way that feels nice, feels good. It’s this thing that everyone can connect with, regardless of your cultural background, your musical abilities, your age. It doesn’t matter. Music is for everybody.”