Abstract
Summary
Kulju, L. 2025. "It has been extremely thorough" - Musicians' experiences of music physiotherapy. Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, master’s thesis.
Musicians have a lot of symptoms that hinder their playing, the rehabilitation and prevention of which have still been little researched. The purpose of this master's thesis was to explore the lived experiences of musicians on music physiotherapy.
The study was carried out as a qualitative interview study following the research methodology of interpretive phenomenology. In the thesis, four musicians who had personal experiences with music physiotherapy were interviewed. The interviews were conducted individually and via video in December 2023 and January 2024 using the Zoom software. The material was transcribed immediately after the interviews and analyzed following the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). To the best of the researcher's knowledge, no prior studies utilizing a comparable research design have been published.
The results revealed three group experiential themes (GETs): interaction experiences in music physiotherapy, experiences with the content of music physiotherapy and experiences with music physiotherapy as part of the musician’s culture. The GETs were divided into both positive and negative sub-themes. Music physiotherapy is seen as necessary, and musicians feel it is important that the special features of a musician's work and the seriousness of playing are understood. However, there is not enough music physiotherapy available, and musicians feel the need for more multidisciplinary cooperation.
The results of this thesis add to the understanding of musicians' music physiotherapy experiences. The results can be used in the clinical work of music physiotherapy and in the development of music physiotherapy. In the future, multidisciplinary research on the promotion of musicians' health and the rehabilitation and prevention of symptoms hindering playing is important.