Alexina Davis (MTA, MT-BC) graduated from Capilano University in 2016 and has been working full time as a certified music therapist since then. She has experience working with people who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Seizures, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, stroke, Cerebral Palsy, Alzheimers, Dementia, depression, anxiety, general mental health challenges, vision impairment and bereavement.

In her internship, Alexina specialized in working with children and youth in resource classrooms at elementary and high schools over the lower mainland. Some of the areas addressed in sessions were attention, cognitive concepts (such as counting, colour recognition, opposites, etc), communication (verbal and non-verbal), emotional regulation, autonomy, anxiety, appropriate social interactions, range of motion, various social skills, etc. During this time, she also worked at a private centre doing individual sessions with children and youth ranging from 4-14 and groups for adults with developmental delay. In 2014, she began volunteering with a bereavement society at the bimonthly support groups for grieving families, helping to support the music therapist in the children’s group. When she entered internship, she attended one of the annual four day family retreats offered by this organization and then supported the pilot project for their hybrid program of support group and community choir.

Since then, Alexina has been working in the preschool program at several large daycares where she targets many of the same challenges addressed in her internship. She still works with the bereavement society, attending their yearly retreats, facilitating groups for children 8-11 as well as planning and implementing the music (last year she lead the music therapy team at the BC, Ontario and Atlantic locations), running two monthly children’s groups for 6-12 year olds, has lead several terms of the bereavement choir for a maternity leave, and recently moved into the virtual realm to begin leading the choir branch in Ontario. Along with this work with children, she has also continued to run several longterm care programs privately and through the health board, and private individual contracts.

Alexina works in a person centred model and believes that all care should be individual and unique to each person. Everyone brings their own essence to sessions and the relationship between client and therapist is crucial on the road of personal growth.

Alexina also believes strongly in professional growth and her family and friends often call her a “perpetual student”. She feels that all of the knowledge she gains in her professional training seeps into her personal life as well, and helps the relationships all around her. She is constant searching for new models to incorporate into her practice and regularly meets with colleagues to get new tips and techniques. In the recents months of the pandemic, she has attended several workshops on Telehealth practices, Narrative therapy, trauma informed practice, and other music based meetings. These events have rekindled her desire to work on her Masters to specialize in grief and trauma counselling. Her dream is to be a regulated counsellor and be able to blend it into her music therapy practice.