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Background: Live receptive music therapy offers an intimate relational space in which the therapist serves as an interface, attuning to clients through music and often transcending verbal communication. Within this context, the therapist’s body functions as an instrument of perception and containment.

Objectives: Drawing on phenomenology and embodiment-based theories, this study explores how embodied and implicit experiences can be articulated through creative writing and how they inform the therapeutic understanding and intersubjective processes in therapy.

Methods: Using a first-person autoethnographic design grounded in phenomenology, the researcher employed embodied writing as both a method and a source of reflexive data. Composite vignettes derived from clinical music therapy sessions were analyzed inductively, informed by psychodynamic and body-oriented perspectives to situate embodied experiences within intersubjective dynamics.

Results: Embodied listening emerged as the central finding, enhancing three interrelated and dynamic dimensions: 1. listening to the self, 2. listening to the shared space, and 3. listening to the client. The therapist’s body served as a compass, guiding interventional choices and clinical decisions, while the music functioned as a co-therapist, creating an additional container that fostered attunement, resonance phenomena, and interbodily connection.

Conclusion: This study highlights therapists’ embodied experiences as central to navigating therapeutic encounters in music therapy. Cultivating embodied and atmospheric awareness enhances therapeutic attunement and intersubjective understanding, underscoring the therapist’s body as a vital instrument for self-reflection, assessment, and meaning-making. These insights provide a foundation for dialogue on embodiment-centered theoretical frameworks in music therapy.