Music And Sound In The Healing Arts

Based on seventeen years of experimentation, observation and experience in assisting people through music and sound, this book is a guide for anyone interested in understanding and using music as a powerful means of healing for themselves and others.

The human voice has a remarkable ability to improve our health and well-being in ways that are not widely known. This book will introduce the reader to the dynamically expanding field of sound therapy and sound healing, and demonstrate the power of sound to heal through a presentation of research, theory, and numerous examples from the author's clinical practice, group work, and training workshops. The book is for both the general reader seeking simple, practical techniques for harnessing the healing power of sound in their daily life, and for music therapists and other professional therapists and practitioners who are interested in learning how to use sound-based models and interventions in their work, or to further their knowledge and expertise in this area. Easy-to-follow exercises with accompanying audio tracks will guide the reader to immediately begin experiencing the benefits of sound for mind-body health. Chapters on trauma and sound, toning and mindfulness, mantras and mental health, and Tibetan singing bowls are steps along the path of this fascinating and rich journey into the world of healing sounds.

Customize your sound environment for a better quality of life • Shows how to use music and sound to reduce stress, enhance learning, and improve performance • Provides detailed guidelines for musicians and health care professionals • Includes a new 75-minute CD of psychoacoustically designed classical music What we hear, and how we process it, has a far greater impact on our daily living than we realize. From the womb to the moment we die we are surrounded by sound, and what we hear can either energize or deplete our nervous systems. It is no exaggeration to say that what goes into our ears can harm us or heal us. Joshua Leeds--a pioneer in the application of music for health, learning, and productivity--explains how sound can be a powerful ally. He explores chronic sensory overload and how auditory dysfunction often results in difficulties with learning and social interactions. He offers innovative techniques designed to invigorate auditory skills and provide balanced sonic environments. In this revised and updated edition of The Power of Sound, Leeds includes current research, extensive resources, analysis of the maturing field of soundwork and a look at the effect of sound on animals. He also provides a new 75-minute CD of psycho­acoustically designed classical music for a direct experience of the effect of simplified sound on the nervous system. With new information on how to use music and sound for enhanced health and productivity, The Power of Sound provides readers with practical solutions for vital and sustained well-being.

"One of the best pieces of ethnomusicological research of the last ten years. Roseman shows just how central musical ideas and practices are to a way of knowing and imagining the world, to a way of transforming ordinary experiences, and to penetrating belief systems more broadly."—Steven Feld, University of Texas, Austin "An exciting contribution to interpretive medical anthropology. Moving analytically between Temiar cultural constrictions of illness and health, and the humanely organized sounds of healing ceremonies, Roseman explicates the culural logic whereby aesthetic configurations participate in a comprehensive, therapeutically effective pattern of reality. This author has brocaded medical anthropology with ethnomusicology, producing a shimmering postmodern ethnographic tapestry of great subtlety and strength."—Barbara Tedlock, SUNY, Buffalo

This book addresses an existing gap in academic arts-based research, whereby, rather than exploring music as an effective therapeutic intervention, it is explored as the central medium or tool of inquiry. Integrating heuristic, hermeneutic, and arts-based grounded theory methodologies, the book conceptualizes and describes the practice of Sonic Stretching as an in-depth example of using sound as an effective and systematic research tool. Stemming from evidence-based insights, the book explores and explains ways in which music and sound can be utilized in arts-based research (ABR) in all disciplines, as opposed to only being used among professional musicians and those operating within music studies. It points to some of the obstacles that have previously prevented this from happening more broadly and, in doing so, aims to help bridge the conspicuous gap in ABR studies, where music and sonic imagination should be. Offering a clear and well-presented example for integrating music and sound into processes of depth psychological inquiry and addressing the impact of colonialization upon embodied knowledge in music and academic research, it will appeal to scholars and researchers working at the intersection of psychology, music studies, education, social justice, and research methods.

A comprehensive course in the power of energy medicine—drawing on polarity therapy, esoteric anatomy, and somatics—that reveals the vital role of consciousness in the healing arts Esoteric Anatomy offers a spiritual approach to massage, bodywork, and somatic psychology, demystifying an ancient transpersonal model for understanding energy in nature and working with consciousness in the healing arts. It offers a comprehensive health care system based on understanding the body as a field of conscious energy—a system that promotes healing, health building, and self-actualization. Author and spiritual healer Bruce Burger begins by introducing Polarity Therapy in a series of energy-balancing sessions that can be used in conjunction with other forms of therapy and bodywork. This holistic approach can alleviate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering, including clearing trauma from the cellular memory of the brain. Next, he turns his attention to Esoteric Anatomy in a section of essays that explore the role of energy—or life force—in the healing arts, drawing from the wisdom of ancient India. And finally, Burger builds upon his studies of Polarity Therapy and Esoteric Anatomy to present a unique system of Somatic Psychology that can promote further healing. Thorough, insightful, and complete with illustrations, Esoteric Anatomy is a fascinating course in energy medicine that can guide you toward better health, personal growth, and spiritual transformation.

The true story of an orchestra made up of medical professionals that “makes the connection between music and medicine visible and palpable” (Yo-Yo Ma). You may have read about the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in the paper or heard them on your favorite radio station. But the LSO is not just any orchestra. It began in 1982 with a group of talented Boston-area physicians, med students and health-care professionals and has since flourished under the leadership of violinist Dr. Lisa Wong, who became president of the LSO in 1991. The orchestra is now a proud, extraordinary group of musicians with fans around the globe. In Scales to Scalpels, Dr. Wong and Robert Viagas chronicle how the musical acumen of these physicians affects the way they administer healing and, in turn, how their work affects their music. What cognitive and emotional shifts occur when a surgeon transitions from the chaos of the ER to the discipline of the orchestra rehearsal studio? What’s it like to make a house call to a poor neighborhood in the morning and then play trumpet in a jazz group that night? Does music heal the doctors the way the doctors heal their patients? How does practicing the art of music transform the art of practicing medicine?

Sound is a tool for creation. Not just any sound, but sound that carries a tone and a wave form that is coherent and pure. We call this "music." Then there's the "Musica Universales," or Music of the Spheres," an ancient concept attributed to Pythagoras who reportedly could hear the musical harmonies of the planets. Are these the sound waves that carry the Word that creates all things sent forth by the Creator into the void of space? Pythagoras based our musical theory on this mathematically precise Musica. My interest in the art of Sacred Sound relates to how it may enhance attunement and energy healing by generating a carrier wave for spirit and intention. My intent is to share with the reader the basic and advanced uses of the human voice, as well as musical and sound-producing instruments that lend themselves to the art of Sacred Sound, such as singing bowls, chimes, tuning forks, drums, and a few others I explore in the book. This book reflects over forty years of my experience with energy work and my use of sound in attunement-not so much to heal the ills of the physical body as to facilitate the generation and clarification of pneumaplasm, the rarified spiritual substance that connects spirit with form, and to engender a resonant response in the heart. Resonance plays a pivotal role in sound healing, as it is the vibration of the resonant response within the individual - self or other - that does the "work" in harmonizing and uplifting the vibrations of life in the tissue cells of the body. The content of this book is a labor of love and a work-in-progress