Sound, Voice, and Music Healing Certificate Course Descriptions
MUSIC AND HEALING AS VEHICLES FOR HEALTH AND WELLBEING
WITH BARBARA CROWE
This course will focus on the numerous ways sound, sound wave vibration, and music are used in health, healing, and transformation. Two ancient ideas concerning sound for health and well-being will first be presented: sound/music is a direct curative agent and sound/music is a tool in generating a state conducive to health and healing. Using these two principles, the course will explore the "family tree" of healing techniques, tracing ancient applications and modern professions. There will be discussion of the similarities and differences in these techniques and efforts will be made to establish the common ground shared and the unique characteristics of each.
The second portion of the course will introduce a new theory of sound/music healing based on the physics theory and the science of complexity. Based on the presenter's 2004 book, Music and Soulmaking: Toward a New Theory of Music Therapy, the principles of complexity science will be introduced and the relation of sound/music to this theory explored. The discussion will include energy considerations involved in sound/music, music as a dynamical system (a complex system in motion), and the implications of the assumptions of complexity science for sound/music healing professions. Participants will engage in a dialogue with the instructor in an attempt to develop a "theory of all" for sound/music healing.
THE ART OF IMPROVISATION & BUILDING A VOCAL COMMUNITY
WITH DR. YSAYE BARNWELL AND SILVIA NAKKACH
There is an awesome power in the human voice and when uncommon voices are blended for the common good, they become a 'vocal community' at its best. Masterfully led by Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell and Silvia Nakkach, singers and non-singers alike will share the common experience of learning in the oral tradition and singing rhythms, chants, traditional songs from Africa and the Diaspora, and a variety of songs from African American culture including spirituals, ring shouts, hymns, gospels, and songs from the Civil Rights Movement. As part of the musical journey, Nakkach will bring together sacred chants from the Afro-Brazilian orixá tradition, indigenous songs, and the contemplative and ecstatic experience of the Indian ragas. The historical, social and political context will be provided as an introduction to the songs. Through out this experience, the group will explore the values imbedded in the music, the nature of cultural responses to and influences on political and social struggle, and finally the significance of a shared communal experience in ones' personal life. Through improvisational group techniques and the direct experience of the music of the East and the West, students discover how distant worlds of music complement and complete each other. This all-levels workshop is designed to help you develop confidence through creating a positive musical experience. All that is required is a willingness to sing.
SOUND CLEARING MIND
WITH ANAM THUBTEN RINPOCHE
These teachings are about healing through the power of sacred sound and mantra to clear the mind, exploring meditation as a path of devotion to cultivate an open heart. In the most ancient Tibetan mythological cycles, sound is considered to be the original source of all existence. Sound, which from the beginning of time has vibrated in ineffable emptiness, arises through mutations of light, and then differentiates into rays of various colors, from which the material elements that make up the entire universe originate.
The complete sound that comes from the fusion of the expressive force of the voice, the drum and the bell, is able to cut through the type of membrane that separates different states of consciousness, creating an atmosphere strongly permeated with wholeness and clarity. Rinpoche will discuss how the practice of sacred sound can activate our healing potential, when we are guided by the vision of helping as many people as possible to enter into this liberating realization, which transcends all cultural and philosophical bondage.
SOUND, VOICE, AND MUSIC FOUNDATION
WITH SILVIA NAKKACH
Through an innovative, cross-cultural, and integral approach to awakening one’s musicality, this weekly class will provide a framework for understanding how sound, voice, and music can affect one's state of consciousness, promote relaxation, and assist in the process of healing. Students will learn how to implement sound, the voice, and music for personal growth, and in a variety of clinical settings.
This class will introduce techniques from The Yoga of Sound and the Voice™, a system for sound and voice development that incorporates breathing, tone range, and vocal practices including seed-sounds, invocations, lullabies, storytelling, jazz, choral singing, indigenous and classical styles, sacred mantras, and overtone singing, and devotional chanting from spiritual and shamanic traditions. Students receive music theory, improvisation, steps for cultivating intuitive playing skills, and instruction on the use of simple instruments.
One’s musicianship will be enriched by integrating the contemplative to the expressive, the shamanic, and the ecstatic. Students will gain understanding of the use of sound in alternative medicine, as part of energy healing, music therapy, and as spiritual practice.
TOMATIS METHOD, AUDITORY STIMULATION PROGRAMS, AND CROSS CULTURAL HEALING MUSIC
WITH PAT MOFFITT COOK
Since the 1940s, auditory stimulation has been used for the reeducation of the ear. This field has grown to include a number of methods that address children and adults with specific listening and learning disabilities, including dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, speech problems, and poor reading comprehension, and communication skills. This workshop explores the comparative research on and clinical applications of the Tomatis Method and a number of Tomatis-basedrelated auditory stimulation technologies used nationwide in learning centers, schools, clinics, and homes.
The workshop encompasses includes lecture, audiovisual presentations, and demonstrations; individual, dyad, and group exercises; and discussions. Participants will learn about both indigenous and traditional cross-cultural therapeutic techniques and sound/music repertoires used in Western health care settings today. Emphasis will be placed on transcultural themes and the needs of a multiethnic client/patient population. Students will investigate how sound and music are used as diagnostic tools, healing agents, and connectors to spiritual domains, and how each of these elements creates and constructs a dynamic healing session.
SOUND SCIENCE AND SOUND THERAPIES
WITH JOHN BEAULIEU
BioSonic RepatterningTM is a method of healing that uses tuning forks to attune the nervous system and repattern mind, body, and spirit. WWe'll witness through demonstration how this form of energy medicine, based on sonic ratios inherent in nature, has practical applications in the healing arts.
Topics include the history of sound healing, the study of wave phenomena, sound and molecular science, sonic anatomy, voice and movement analysis, and sound as superconscious psychotherapy. We'll also discuss the alchemy of mind, the art of still point, cranial anatomy, sonic fields, chaos theory, and sacred geometry.
Students We will learn the theory and practice of healing with Pythagorean tuning forks through direct experience and group exercises. In addition, students we'will explore techniques of ear reception, point stimulation, and overtone healing, and examine numerous case studies representing applications for children, relationships, psychiatric disorders, and addictions.
CREATIVE MUSIC THERAPY AND CLINICAL IMPROVISATION
WITH ALAN TURRY
Just as speech has its rules of grammar, sentence construction, and different options of syntax, music too contains compositional elements that facilitate and shape its expression. An intimate connection exists in music between composition and improvisation. Both modes of creation use similar structural resources, such as formal procedures of harmonic progression, melodic construction, and rhythmic order. Composition, however, is free from any demands of immediacy, whereas improvisation is the creation of music in the moment and from moment to moment - composed in the living now.
To practice "creative music therapy" is to live at the threshold of artistic and developmental potential. It invites therapists to trust music making - musicing - as a means of reaching out and searching within, and as an instrument of clinical research.
Learn how intuition determines the clinical approach and inspiration for using music in therapy, the significance of the quality of expression achieved, and the importance of order in its form.
DRUMMING OVERTONE SINGING AND MIND-BODY SYNCHRONIZATION
WITH GLEN VELEZ
Since ancient times the frame drum has played an important role in The legacy of the frame drum extends to ancient times as an instrument used widely for ritual and healing. In this workshop, you will experience the pulsing of the drum with the rhythm of your own voice in a percussive language inspired by Konnakol, or South Indian rhythm singing. As a group, weWe will call for guidance and support from ancient drummers, and useusing our honest endeavors to create a resonant body-voice-drum sound temple.
This workshop will explore simple movement, rhythmic breathing, and the tones of the frame drum to help strengthen the connections betweenamong the body, the voice, and the drum, as well as to experience the joy of being alive. You We will use active listening, synchronized pulsing, overtone singing, and call and response to generate a sense of unity of purpose within yourself ourselves and the group as a whole as we explore the language of rhythm. People of all frame drum experience levels are welcome.
TRANSFORMING EMOTIONS IN DEVOTION: THE YOGI'S WAY OF KNOWING
WITH SWAMI SITARAMANANDA
Bhakti Yoga (the Yoga of transforming Emotion into Devotion) and Mantra Yoga (the yoga of chanting and repetition of mantras) are scientific and universal approaches to Divine Love that can be applied to our relationships in our daily life, whether you are religious or not. It is through the experience of Pure, Selfless and Divine Love that all our emotional wounds and unhappiness are healed. We are usually not consciously aware of all our emotional habits nor of the power of healing that comes from Divine Love and Divine Name. Swami Sitaramananda will guide you in meditation on how to develop spiritual love in our relationships , how to transform our emotions into devotion through the 9 classical methods of Bhakti and mantra chanting.
TIBETAN SOUND HEALING: THE FIVE SEED SYLLABLES OF THE WARRIOR MIND
WITH TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE
One of the world's oldest unbroken spiritual traditions is the Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet. This wisdom path has survived, thanks to the efforts of a handful of dedicated teachers such as Bön lineage holder, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, the founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha Institute and an acclaimed author and highly respected teacher. You are invited to learn from a master of this ancient lineage, and discover the power of sacred sound. This evening teaching is based on the book the Rinpoche has written recently on the Tibetan Art of Sound Healing and the Five Sacred Warrior Seed Syllables (A, Om, Hun, Ram and dZa). These syllables are termed warriors, because they have the power to control and overcome the negative emotions, problems and dilemmas that we face in our daily life. They are connected with the chakras and have the potential to expand our awareness and clarity of mind.