Category: Wellness

  • Sounding in the New Year!

    Sound Well in the New Year with a Community Music and Wellness Group. I think that many would agree that 2016 has been a challenging year. As we get closer to the end of the year, your thoughts may be trying to figure out ways that you can make 2017 a better one for you.…

  • Your Re-Sounding Self: Being Your Voice, Being Your Truth

    What comes to mind when you think of the word “voice?” Do you immediately think about the voice of someone you love? Someone you fear? Or do you associate the voice with singing, causing you to begin thinking about the sound of your favorite singer? You may instead think about your own voice. If so,…

  • Embodying Voice & Self Reflection: An Interview with Francine Brocious

    Francine Brocious is an author based in Pennsylvania. Her writing style is built upon self-reflection, and she recently wrote the book, “All About Me: A Journey of Self-Reflection,” which encourages others to dive deeply within themselves. She and I have known each other since 1999, when we both were music majors at Viterbo University in…

  • A Life in Music: An Interview with Rachelle Norman, MA, MT-BC

    To kick off the March “Women in Music” series, I’m happy to share my recent interview with Rachelle Norman. Rachelle is a board-certified music therapist in the Kansas City area. She is a music therapist through and through, having both a bachelor’s and Master of Arts in music therapy. She focuses her work on eldercare,…

  • Being Music: Insights from a Buffalo Drum

    An Invitation to Experience Being Music A few nights ago I was at an event in which we were invited to go on an inward journey with the assistance of a buffalo drum. As I listened to the drumming, I found myself becoming one with it- absorbed and enveloped in the sound waves in a…

  • Hearing Ourselves: Voicework for Self-Care

    A few months ago I was asked by music therapist colleague, Megan Resig, to write a guest post for her website Music Therapy Annex. I jumped at the chance to do this because I love her holistic approach to music therapy, and have enjoyed reading about her perspective on wellness and self-care. Below is what…

  • Embodiment of Sound

    Like all of us, I don’t always practice what I preach. Doing what I do for a living, I know about the healthful benefits of making music and how vocalizing is an effective way of relieving stress. Yet I don’t always practice that for myself. But today was different. Today I remembered to create time…

  • Examining A Transpersonal View of Aging

    For the past month or so I’ve been gradually reading the latest issue of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, which happens to be devoted to the concept of transpersonal gerontology. I’d never heard of this concept before, and it has been a slow and steady process going through the issue as I’ve been finding each…

  • Inspiration in Solitude

    How often do you feel alone? How often are you actually alone? When you feel alone, what do you do? When you are alone, how do you spend that time? I ask these questions simply to make a distinction between one’s sense of feeling alone, as opposed to being alone. The latter experience of “alone”…

  • Playing with Shadow

    Shadow. What comes to mind when you think of that word? You may envision a shadow that is created when the path of a direct light source is obstructed by a physical object, but what I’d like to share with you today is the psychological understanding of “shadow.” In psychology, shadow is a concept that…