Singing and healing are integrally connected in many traditions and belief systems.
*You need not have any experience to do this work. And it's completely up to you if you want to...
...There is A deep potential for healing in freely singing with another; finding and exploring our voices in a therapeutic relationship can support deeper self-esteem, personal agency, integration and expression, and contribute greatly to a sense of well being.
““In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?””
Integrating music into our work together is one option that makes my practice unique as a therapist...
Songs and harmonic worlds carry significant personal, communal and even archetypal meaning. Singing with others (at least one caring other) releases oxytocin and dopamine into our bodies, along with other neurotransmitters creating a physiological change in our ability to bond and interact. Our understanding is increasing of the manifold effects of vocal music on social interactions, accessing and expressing suppressed emotions, attaining calmer self states, and contacting personal agency and creativity.
The trauma of loss and grief has perhaps been the most universally treated through sound and song in communal processes.
Music and sound can support healing from trauma in many ways: in its calming and embodying effects; in it’s role as a container for regression and remembrance of early wounds, and in its ability to reengage our agency and creative potential. Working more creatively with your voice holds a unique potential as a part of therapy. Musical vocalizations shared between therapist and client can be profoundly embodied experiences of healing- a rich musical relationship often emerges. Therapist and client are drawn into a deeply vulnerable creative process in the here-and-now, recovering lost feeling and memories. It can be a truly amazing and surprising process...
How does it work? What's so special about sound and music?
From our earliest origins, both in our individual lifetimes, and in our species’ lifetime, musical communications abound, and they figure prominently in our co-regulation and bonding. The sound play between mothers and infants is incredibly songlike. Before any linguistic expressions of feeling are possible, as infants we share our feelings through sound; ideally our caregivers acknowledge and mirror with their own sounds. Although facial expression and physical contact are so often dominant, vocal soundings are interwoven with these modes, and are the carrier for attunement and emotional accompaniment when we are not in sight or in reach of our caregivers.
Improvised voice work can be a bridge to a preverbal and unconscious realm. Leading us on a healing journey to our earliest experiences...
For those with attachment failures and other early childhood adversity, nonverbal sound-making has a special power to send us into our earliest memories of connection or lack thereof in our holding environment. This kind of singing and sound play allows our left brain critics to take a break. In therapy we can create a safe space to vocalize in this way- and there are few venues where vocalization can be untethered from words.