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Title: A Rhythm for Wellbeing

A Rhythm for Wellbeing

A Therapist Reflects

by Jillian Schofield (Author) June Boyce-Tillman (Author)
©2024 Monographs VIII, 116 Pages
The Arts
Series: Music and Spirituality, Volume 16

Summary

This book reflects on a journey as a shamanic healer and a psychotherapist, and how the integration of psychotherapy and traditional healing methods emerged. It explores an initial training in cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, to gestalt therapy, to body therapy, to energy healing and shamanism, to develop a unified theory. It explores the process by means of a dialogue between a psychotherapist, a shamanic healer, an academic and an integrative therapist. This is placed in a dialogue within the therapist herself. Later chapters give examples of the unified theory in practice, including both individual and in group settings. Opening and closing chapters contextualise the work in the context of developments on the internet in the areas of wellbeing and therapeutic practices drawing on different cultures.

Table Of Contents


←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.

The Rev June Boyce-Tillman MBE PhD, MA, LRAM, FRSA, FHEA

Professor Emerita of Applied Music, University of Winchester

Extraordinary Professor North-West University, South Africa

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
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.

Biographical notes

Jillian Schofield (Author) June Boyce-Tillman (Author)

Jillian Schofield has spent over ten years working with both modern-day psychotherapy and shamanism. She has been a psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor for over twenty years and was a university lecturer at the University of Derby for over 15 years. As a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist, she became aware of the limitations of Western psychotherapy and added EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprogramming) to her therapeutic toolbox. Gestalt therapy was studied at Metanoia Institute, she visited the Esalen Institute in California, and she visited shamans in Peru, Siberia and Ecuador to develop her practice. She now practices an integration of psychotherapy and shamanism. The Rev June Boyce-Tillman MBE PhD read music at Oxford University and is Professor Emerita of Applied Music at the University of Winchester and an Extra-ordinary Professor at North West University, South Africa. She has published widely in the area of education and music, often on spirituality/ liminality and eudaimonia. She has written about and organised events in the area of interfaith dialogue. She is an international performer, especially in the work of Hildegard of Bingen. She is the convenor of Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing international (www.mswinternational.org). She is series editor of the Music and Spirituality series of Peter Lang. She is an ordained Anglican priest and serves All Saints Church in South London.

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Title: A Rhythm for Wellbeing