The Voice as a Tool for Healing Emotional Wounds (5 credits)

Presented by Sally Bonkrude MA, LPC, MT-BC

Singing is already part of many music therapy sessions. But how many different ways are you intentionally using the voice to support your clients’ goals?

The voice offers possibilities far beyond singing familiar songs. Humming, toning, vocal improvisation, melody, dissonance, sound play, shared singing, and spontaneous voicing can create opportunities for expression, connection, exploration, and musical interaction.

In this experiential course, you’ll explore the voice as a versatile music therapy tool and discover 20 different ways to use singing and voicing to address therapeutic goals with the populations you serve.

You’ll experience vocal techniques yourself, exploring what happens when voices connect, contrast, soar, play, improvise, and create sound together. These experiences will help you consider how different uses of the voice may invite participation and expression in ways that structured songs alone may not.

Most importantly, you’ll learn how to move from simply singing with clients to thinking more intentionally about how you are using the voice, what the vocal experience is inviting, and how it connects to the goals you are addressing.

In this workshop, you will learn:

Ways to use singing and voicing to support therapeutic goals.
How to move beyond familiar songs and expand the ways you use the voice in music therapy.
Ways to incorporate humming, toning, vocal improvisation, melody, dissonance, and sound play.
How shared vocal experiences can create opportunities for connection and interaction.
Ways to use the voice to encourage self-expression and exploration.
How to create vocal experiences that invite clients to participate without requiring traditional singing skills.
Ways to adapt vocal techniques for different populations, abilities, and clinical goals.
How to choose vocal experiences more intentionally based on what you want to accomplish in the session.

Leave with 20 new ways to turn the instrument you always have with you into a more versatile music therapy tool.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will:

1. Practice three ways to create safety when doing voice work

2. Create a list of ways to process feelings that come up with singing and voicing.

3. Explore and create new ways to use singing and voicing for self-care, adjusting to life changes, grief and loss, impulse control, self motivation, self-awareness and insight, self esteem and connecting to spirituality

4. Create a list of ways that skills learned in this class may transfer to other settings.

Schedule

30 minutes – Introductions and class overview

30 minutes – Practice three ways to create safety when doing voice work

1 hour – Create a list of ways to process feelings that come up with singing and voicing.

1 hour – Explore and create new ways to use singing and voicing for self-care, plus helping clients to adjust to life changes, grief and loss, impulse control, self motivation, self awareness and insight, self esteem, connecting to spirituality.

30 minutes- Create a list of ways that skills built in this class may transfer to other settings.

Assignment: 45 minutes

CBMT Domain Areas

3A-3 Treatment modification within and across sessions based on the client's response and growth (e.g., alternate applications of music, appropriate music selection, adaptation of the physical/virtual session space) Task Statement 33

Task Statement 33

3A-6 Theoretical frameworks for music therapy treatment implementation (e.g., educational, developmental, neurological, psychological)

3A-5 Transference and counter-transference in treatment

3A-11 Effects of music elements and music experience (e.g., psychological, emotional, physical)

The Voice as a Tool for Healing Emotional Wounds is approved by the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT) for 5 CMTEs-Continuing Music Therapy Education credits. The Spiegel Academy, CBMT Approved Provider #P-106, maintains responsibility for program quality and adherence to CBMT policies and criteria.

Class Description