A Rhythm for Wellbeing
A Therapist Reflects
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Introduction
- Prelude: A new landscape for music and wellbeing – the development of the wellness industry
- Chapter 1 The therapist’s journey
- Chapter 2 An imagined dialogue
- Chapter 3 The role of musical instruments in my therapeutic practice
- Chapter 4 The unifying theory in my practice
- Chapter 5 The way forward
- Acknowledgements
- Postlude
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
←vii | viii→June Boyce-Tillman
Introduction
This book is an exploration of the complex landscape of music, therapy and the spiritual in the contemporary world. Its central chapters explore the journey of Jill Schofield into an integrative therapeutic practice, written autoethnographically. I have contextualized her work with a description of the context and a short postlude linking her journey with contemporary culture. The Prelude explores themes found in the Greek and medieval literature on wellbeing – ethics, meaning, autonomy, contemplation, ancestors and spiritual beings, respect – to critique the development of the contemporary wellness industry that has developed online, particularly during the pandemic. It interrogates the search for the spiritual within this culture and its eclectic nature – cross arts, cross cultures. The cultures that are brought together in the pursuit of wellbeing are described and interrogated.
The numbered chapters are by Jill Schofield. Chapter 1 examines the therapist’s route through various psychotherapeutic traditions, including cognitive behavioural therapy, gestalt therapy, Life awakening and shamanic healing. Chapter 2 is an imagined dialogue that debates issues involved in bringing different traditions together, using the medium of a dialogue between various players; it is set out in six scenes:
- • Scene One – Setting the context
- • Scene Two – Levi-Strauss
- • Scene Three – Jung
- • Scene Four – Siegel
- • Scene Five – Shamanistic interventions and therapy
- • Scene Six – An integrative approach
Chapter 3 examines the role of musical instruments in her therapeutic practice, particularly the place of the rattle and various drums. It explores neoshamanic journeying on the drum, using accounts of therapeutic experiences. Chapter 4 sets out her unifying theory in practice. It starts with an individual case study and then moves to group case studies relating these to the opening chapter and the development of the wellness industry. Chapter 5 raises issues arising in the preceding chapters such as professionalism, modes of integration and flexibility, the interrelationship between orate and literate cultures and how these interact in the new cultural landscape of wellbeing. It concludes with a Postlude continuing to place Jill’s journey within the wider landscape of wellbeing. The disciplines upon which this book is based, are hugely diverse; it draws on ethnomusicology, anthropology, spirituality, philosophy and therapy. As such, it is a trans-disciplinary book and looks at the phenomenon of integrative psychotherapy through the lens of a therapist’s development which is placed in the wider context of contemporary routes into wellbeing. It is the story of a journey that I hope will inform other people journeying in this area.
June Boyce-Tillman
Prelude: A new landscape for music and wellbeing – the development of the wellness industry
Introduction
This chapter will review the themes found in the Geek and medieval literature on wellbeing – ethics, meaning, autonomy, contemplation, ancestors and spiritual beings, respect (Boyce-Tillman, 2020) to critique the development of the wellness industry that has developed online particularly during the pandemic, in such contexts as the Embodiment conference, the SHIFT conference and the ZOOM peace choir and its relationship with traditional therapeutic practices. This developing wellness industry often involves a search for the spiritual, usually outside of established religions, although sometimes taking techniques from them; spirituality is frequently found in the descriptions of wellness in many of the internet courses (Puna & Tiatia-Seath, 2017), but definitions of the term spirituality are various. What is on offer ranges from simple techniques such as re-engaging with biophony and geophony (Krause, 2013; Whidden & Shore, 2018) to courses lasting for months with a range of charges. A vast range of often self-help strategies are on offer. A new cultural world of music, wellbeing and spirituality is developing.
Cultural change
There are some who regard the pandemic as a testing time and others who see it as a time of new beginnings, of redeeming past ills, particularly in the context of the earth, self-reflection and spiritual exploration. The ready availability of the internet and the extra time many had available led to the marketing of a huge range of techniques involving music for survival and spiritual transformation.
In musicians from academic and professional backgrounds changes are becoming apparent in ways of approaching and understanding music (Boyce-Tillman, 2016). In a conference on embodiment,1 Koji Matsunobu writes:
With a background as a performing pianist, I will address … how embodiment can be cultivated to explore subjectivities and cultivate care and spaciousness, for self and others … I will explicate a form and process of musical engagement, such as harvesting bamboo, manufacturing an instrument, and making a sound, as leading to an embodied experience of nature and place … I will explore numerous methodologies for cultivating intuition, so that trusting the heart, or listening to the gut is fundamental to sorting through the facts. (Matsunobu, 2020)2
This latter quotation contains many of the tropes that are found in the current spiritual search – embodiment, intuition, the heart, the natural world, the rejection of conventional religion and a search for new ways of spiritual musicking. Developments have included sounds that in previous conventions would not be called music and many others besides. Douglas Kahn (2001) in a book entitled provocatively Noise Water Meat; A History of Sound in the Art identifies a plethora of sound experiences in contemporary society:
Details
- Pages
- VIII, 116
- Publication Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781800799189
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781800799196
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781800799172
- DOI
- 10.3726/b19871
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2024 (January)
- Keywords
- Integrated Psychotherapy and neo-Shamanism Spirituality Wellbeing A Rhythm for Wellbeing Jillian Schofield June Boyce-Tillman
- Published
- Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2024. VIII, 116 pp.