Course Descriptions

TaKeTiNa: Rhythm for Evolution
An intensive one-day rhythm workshop Reinhard and Cornelia Flatischler

TaKeTiNa is one of the most effective musical learning processes of our time. This rhythmic work can be a form of meditation as well as a support in pain and/or psychotherapy. It is definitely a joyously challenging rhythm and singing experience!

The TaKeTiNa process incorporates three different rhythms -- in the feet, hands, and the voice--and guides participants into an experience that uncovers the body's innate rhythmic knowledge. The TaKeTiNa process is a way of integrating movement, rhythm, and voice, and, as a non-linear process allows participants to learn at their own pace. 

Sound, Voice, and Music Foundation:
Applications in Healing and Transformation of Consciousness
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.

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is an award-winning composer, therapist, and specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound and transformation of consciousness. She has devoted 24 years of study to the art of raga singing and classical Indian music under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and systematic uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She is the founding director of Vox Mundi School of the Voice, and was named by Utne magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium.

Sonic Meditations and Deep Listening®
Pauline Oliveros

Deep Listening® is a practice created by Pauline Oliveros that explores the relationship between sound and consciousness. In this practice, you actively direct attention to any and all sounds to expand listening and to direct the interaction between oneself and the sources of sound. In this way, practitioners experience meaning within themselves and their world.

In this workshop, you will be introduced to the history and practice of Deep Listening through listening exercises and partner processing. You will have an opportunity to experience energy exercises, listening practices, slow walking, journal writing, and Sonic Meditations - original compositions by Pauline - to understand how the practice of Deep Listening can be used for improvisation, creativity, and movement with the intention of healing.

Pauline Oliveros is considered one of the most influential figures in experimental music for the past 50 years. As a composer and improviser, she has created definitive and original works using a classical electronic music studio, modular synthesizers, and her own Expanded Instrument System (EIS) that combines any acoustic instrument or voice with software transformations she has designed. Pauline has written extensively about music, consciousness, and humanitarian concerns. Her Deep Listening philosophy advocates expanding awareness and attentiveness by "listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear, no matter what you are doing."

Tomatis Method and Cross-Cultural Healing Music Applications in Health Care
Pat Moffitt Cook

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.

Applications of the “Tomatis Method" and Selected Auditory Stimulation Programs for the Listening and Learning-Disabled
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, poor reading comprehension, and communication skills. This workshop explores the comparative research and clinical applications of the Tomatis Method and a number of Tomatis-based auditory stimulation technologies used nationwide in learning centers, schools, clinics, and homes.

The workshop encompasses lecture, audiovisual presentations, and demonstrations; individual, dyad, and group exercises; and discussions.

Healing with Sacred Sound
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Since ancient times, meditative practices from a variety of spiritual traditions have used sound and its vibration as an essential tool for healing. Through singing and chanting sacred syllables and mantras, spiritual practitioners, healers, and lay persons can access purification and restore harmony to a range of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. Guided by the mind and carried by the breath through subtle channels, the power of sound opens the potential to heal illness and dissolve energetic disturbances.

The Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition is one of the oldest unbroken lineages of wisdom to make use of sound for the well-being of its practitioners. During this lecture, Rinpoche will explain the relationship between the sounds of particular Tibetan syllables and their healing qualities. Translating ancient texts into modern western idiom, Rinpoche will present these teachings in sacred sound and instruct the meditations that empower their healing capabilities.

Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, founder of the Ligmincha Institute, is one of the few masters of the Bön Dzogchen tradition presently living in the West. Known for his clear, lively, and insightful teaching style, as well as his ability to make Tibetan practices easily accessible to the Western student, Rinpoche is a highly respected and beloved teacher throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

Music and the End of Life Care: A Cross-cultural Model for the Voice and Sound in Palliative and Hospice Care
Silvia Nakkach

Drawing from indigenous practices as well as Western and Eastern spiritual perspectives on death and dying as a journey, this class presents a framework within which to consider the subtleties and modalities of implementing the voice, music, and sound to accompany the death process, and the experience of shared chanting and healing sounds as a gateway to gently comfort the person who is making the final passage.

As a therapeutic instrument, simple humming, sacred sounds, and the singing voice become a vehicle for the patient to transcend the limitations of the physical body, as she or he releases tensions and fears. A sequence of cross-cultural music healing practices are introduced including chanting, lullabies, story songs, microtonal melodies, invocations, and self-generated prayers. The methodology combines singing with a drone and echoing strategies with ancient techniques of breathing. Simple string instruments, percussion, bowls, and bells provide the instrumental accompaniment to facilitate an atmosphere of spiritual intimacy and open heart. Participants learn about the capacity of meditative singing to lessen depression and anxiety, and the therapeutic value of building a multi-cultural repertoire of vocal applications to assist specific terminal conditions including cancer, AIDS-related syndromes, and degenerative diseases.

The repertoire of practices also includes vocal improvisational techniques for grounding, relaxing, and an in-depth exploration of the emotional texture of vocal expression. The class includes a careful selection of music for end of life care that describes the relationship between the architecture of the music and its power to shift emotions and lessen pain through exploring the musical concepts of rasa, spiritual melodicism, mystical minimalism, and changeless harmonies. In addition, hospice workers will be invited to share their experience and clinical case studies. Students are encouraged to download and read this article before this class: http://www.voxmundiproject.com/recommended_readings.htm

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is an award-winning composer, therapist, and specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound and transformation of consciousness. She has devoted 24 years of study to the art of raga singing and classical Indian music under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and systematic uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She is the founding director of Vox Mundi School of the Voice, and was named by Utne magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium.

The Mysticism of Sound and Music
Silvia Nakkach

Join sound-healing pioneer and vocalist Silvia Nakkach on a journey through the transformative power of music and experience firsthand ancient and contemporary sound tools as a healing modality. Since time immemorial, sound has been used as a gateway to transcendence and the exploration of consciousness by shamans, yogis, mystics, and scientists. Sound expresses the relationship between the human and cosmic orders, and it can deepen our knowledge of the universe.

This course offers a comprehensive and systematic understanding of how sound underlies our most fundamental existence, and how music and intention can be used to assist psychospiritual insight and transformation. The extensive coursework integrates the power of mantra in addressing the subtle root of a problem. Students also explore spiritual healing with sound, involving instruction in the music of the Sama Veda, Sufi teachings, Indian ragas as microtonal melodies, and Rudolph Steiner’s studies on etheric tone. In sound and awareness practice, students learn how sound can induce ecstatic states of consciousness as it enhances intention, ritual, shamanic journeys, and meditation.

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is an award-winning composer, therapist, and specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound and transformation of consciousness. She has devoted 24 years of study to the art of raga singing and classical Indian music under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and systematic uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She is the founding director of Vox Mundi School of the Voice, and was named by Utne magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium.

Sound Therapies
John Beaulieu and Silvia Nakkach

BioSonic Repatterning™ is a method of healing that makes use of tuning forks to attune the nervous system and to re-pattern our minds, bodies, and spirits. This workshop will demonstrate 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 super-conscious psychotherapy. We will also discuss the alchemy of mind, the art of still point, cranial anatomy, sonic fields, chaos theory, and sacred geometry.

Students will learn the theory and practice of healing with Pythagorean tuning forks through direct experience and group exercises. They will also learn techniques of ear reception, point stimulation, and overtone healing, and have an opportunity to look at numerous case studies, which include work with children, relationships, psychiatric disorders, and addictions.

John Beaulieu, ND, PhD, is a naturopathic doctor, composer, and sound therapist. He is the founder of BioSonic Repatterning™ and the author of Music and Sound in the Healing Arts. He currently oversees molecular research on sound and the healing effects of tuning forks, and has published numerous research papers.  

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is an award-winning composer, therapist, and specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound and transformation of consciousness. She has devoted 24 years of study to the art of raga singing and classical Indian music under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and systematic uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She is the founding director of Vox Mundi School of the Voice, and was named by Utne magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium.

Essential Music Therapy and Clinical Improvisation
Clive Robbins

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.

Music as Devotion
Claudio Naranjo, MD

In our secular and pluralistic world it has become questionable to prescribe traditional devotional practices, and yet devotion is a necessary part of human life. In this workshop I'll be proposing that certain musical works in the classical repertoire—without words or explicit religious intent—may serve the universal need to cultivate appreciative and worshipful love.

Music and Sound Healing for Performance Wellness
Louise Montello

The Wellness field is exploding with new opportunities for music/sound healers to offer their clinically-tested behavioral and depth-oriented healing techniques to expand creativity and prevent/treat stress-related disorders. The music therapy sub-specialty of Performance Wellness is a relatively new clinical offering that was pioneered by Dr. Louise Montello in her ground-breaking research on the use of music therapy in preventing and treating the stress of “performance” with a variety of populations (including musicians, teachers, public speakers, health professionals, corporate executives and athletes.)

This intensive course will include a systematic approach to facilitating performance wellness that draws, not only from the field of music therapy, but from behavioral medicine, yoga science, and other creative arts therapies.

learn to use music/sound-based processes to uproot and heal these causes at the level of the body, breath/energy field, mind, imagination, realm of bliss, and pure Spirit.

Upon completing the course, participants will be able to design a music-based performance wellness program for their own personal use, and also develop music therapy-based wellness programs for any clinical population (i.e. retirees, people with chronic illness, corporate executives, etc.)

Effects of the Tomatis Method on Personality Development
Pierre Sollier

Tomatis, a leading pioneer in the use of sound as a therapeutic tool, was able to explain many facets of human behavior and describe the many steps that characterize the listening process. The lecture will present the different steps of that process and its impact on personality development and will suggest strategies leading to better listening. The goal of the presentation is to familiarize attendants with the listening process described by Dr. Alfred Tomatis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify the different functions of the ear as well as the neuro-physiological parameters leading to good listening.
• Discover the impact of those parameters on child and adult development.
• Identify listening psychological PERSONALITY profiles and what strategies to implement in the therapeutic process to work with clients.
  

Insights into the Invisible World of Sound:
Laying the Foundations for Sound Therapies
A multi-media, multi-modal exploration of the science of Cymatics
Jeff Volk

Sound is a dynamic force with vast creative potential.

Cymatics (the study of wave phenomena and vibration) offers a quantifiable approach to understanding how this potential comes into manifestation. As we witness audible sounds animating masses of inert powders, pastes and liquids into life-like, flowing forms, we can begin to penetrate the mysterious workings of the universe––those complex and intricate processes which govern cause and effect.

While Cymatics vividly depicts this in tangible materials, it is not restricted to the realm of dense physical matter. Cymatic principles are equally at play in the more rarefied, subjective, causal realms of perception, feeling, emotion, thought and belief. It is these subtle vibrations that must be brought into coherency in order to effect lasting change or “sound health.”

On Friday night, Jeff will present an overview of the colorful history of the science of Cymatics, which began in earnest over 200 years ago, and is now radically evolving through the efforts of several contemporary researchers around the world.

The Saturday workshop will combine astute observation and analytical abstraction with inner listening and poetic insight, offering participants the opportunity to experience their own vibrational soundscape from both the particle and wave perspective.

We will then explore the profound implications of some of these universal principles, as exemplified through Cymatic phenomena, such as chaos and re-integration, and the triune nature of manifestation. Once these principles are recognized, understood and assimilated, they can provide a context for our daily oscillations, helping us to maintain balance throughout our dynamic, turbulent, and often chaotic lives.

Drumming and Mind-Body Synchronization
Glen Velez

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, we will call for guidance and support from ancient drummers, and use 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 between the body, the voice, and the drum, as well as to experience the joy of being alive. You will use active listening, synchronized pulsing, overtone singing, and call and response to generate a sense of unity of purpose within yourself and the group as a whole as we explore the language of rhythm. People of all frame drum experience levels are welcome.

Glen Velez is a Grammy Award-winning percussionist, an international soloist, and a seminal figure in the history of the frame drum. After 15 years performing and recording with Steve Reich and Paul Winter, he is working as a soloist while continuing to collaborate with a variety of prominent artists in many genres. Glen’s own compositions have been featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and John Schaefer's New Sounds, and have been commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Jerome Foundation, among other organizations As a master teacher, he has developed his own teaching approach called “The Handance Method,” which incorporates voice and body movement into the process of learning to play the frame drum and has been presented in hundreds of universities worldwide.

Sanskrit Mantra: Theory and Practice
Jim Ryan

Sanskrit has been called the Indian “language of the gods,” and is understood to have always existed. The nature of the universe is said to exist as the language of Sanskrit congealed into form. When one chants or simply speaks Sanskrit, one is understood to be making a direct connection to all of reality, both what is here and what lies beyond. In this way, the chanting of Sanskrit is seen as a path of liberation or salvation in and of itself.

This workshop will introduce students to the Sanskrit alphabet and its proper pronunciation, as well as the primary theories of language and mantra that underlie the practices of Sanskrit chanting. Sanskrit chanting will be a central part of this workshop.

Jim Ryan has taught Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy at CIIS for 24 years. He teaches courses on the Upanishads, Bhagavadgita, and Hindu Tantrism. He has a special interest in the Integral Philosophy of Haridas Chaudhuri. His focus in teaching on yoga is the issue of embodiment and the intersection of worldly and transcendental aims in yoga.