What is Music Psychotherapy?

• When a person listens to music s/he connects to the language expressed in the music; the rhythm, the melody, the instruments and the tonality are some of the elements of this language. This language evokes a response from within the listener.
• The responses will vary depending on the listener’s mood at that time, the perceptions, or understandings, about his/her life and what is occurring at this time.
• Used as a therapeutic modality the client, in a deeply relaxed state, listens to specifically programmed music selections. The client may experience visual imagery like dream states, emotional responses, memories or somatic [body] responses as evoked by the music.
• This process is known as the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM).

The Bonny Method

• This process of Guided Imagery and Music [GIM] is a recognised therapeutic modality.
  Registered practitioners of this process have completed a minimum of three years post-graduate training at tertiary level.
• A registered GIM therapist is accredited by the Music and Imagery Association of Australia [MIAA] Inc.
  MIAA Inc. has been a Member Association of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia [PACFA] Inc. since 2000.

Music and the transpersonal

• All great music has a timeless quality that transcends generations of listeners. This music acts upon our inner core, our soul.
• Sometimes this transcendent quality of the music reveals within us experiences of numinous qualities of sacredness and mystery.
• Our perceptions are opened to experiences of deep significance in which differences are not important. The music awakens feelings of wholeness, not only within the client but with all things.
• Music psychotherapy processes explore consciousness from a much broader perspective which includes the unconscious and spiritual dimensions.