Sound Healing in Schools

College members write about their experiences using sound healing in schools.

Gaer Infant School Newport South Wales

Headteacher MS.M. Biddle

September 28th 2006 - Chrys Blanchard

I am working with a class of twenty-four, 5-7 year olds. It is an inner city school that has many children who have challenging behaviour.

There are social and drugs related issues in some of the family backgrounds.

The children can be very unsettled and have a tendency to interrupt any adult who is talking, albeit with comments, ideas and suggestions. There is much jostling and winding up of each other. Several children display behaviour that suggests ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or show some degree of Autistic Spectrum traits.

Peter is a particular child who has several problems; he struggles with class work, is poor in social skills and is overweight. This affects his ability to mix comfortably with the others, and affects his self-esteem. His behaviour is disruptive and he is attention seeking. He tends to push others around physically and is quite bolshy and hard to engage. He also tends to sulk if things don’t go his way, and this can affect the dynamic of the whole class.

I was asked to work creatively with the children on one afternoon a week for a term. The head teacher was open to any ideas I might bring to enrich the children’s experience.

I wanted to extend their social skills, work on group dynamics whilst working on communications and feelings.

Many of these children craved attention. I decided to work with giving positive attention. In our culture, there is not enough opportunity for people to participate in group activities that are about expressing emotions and are about support and nurturing.

I decided to use music and sound as a vehicle to work with their emotions and to heal them as a group and make them a more coherent class. My intention was to encourage positive behaviour in the children both individually, and towards each other.

I used a particular song that could be used as healing medicine, not only for these children, but also for the whole school.

Song: ‘ We’re going to hold you in our circle, hold you in our love’ [By Emily Maxey Jukes]

I intended to use the song much in the way we would use a sound bath, with the person receiving it standing, sitting or lying in the centre.

Method: I built up to the concept of putting someone in the centre and the rest of the group singing to them by going through various stages. There were 3 Phases: -

Phase One

a) Standing up, we all held on to the edges of a parachute stretched out to create a circular space where we all were connected – a tangible, physical connection. We learnt that we all had to hold it together or it would not stay held out as a circle.

b) We played with the parachute for a while, wobbling it and wafting it and getting familiar with it.

c) Then we sat down, cross-legged on the floor still in the shape and holding the parachute. We told the story of ‘Charlotte's Web’ with the main characters Wilbur (a pig) and Charlotte (a spider) represented by soft toys.

d) We talked about Wilbur’s feelings of loneliness in the story, and his need for friendship, and about how Charlotte offered him friendship, she wrote words in her web to cheer him up.

e) We talked about how we could offer him friendship.

f) We decided that the parachute could be like a big web, and we could use our web to cheer him up (We actually drew a web onto the white parachute).

g) Then we put Wilbur (soft toy of a pig) in the middle of parachute and we cheered him up by bouncing him up and down on the parachute. Then we gently rocked him, using different sounds for each action.

h) Next I taught the song to the children ‘We’re Going to Hold you in Our Circle’.

i) We sang the song to Wilbur as he lay in the middle of the parachute.

j) I asked if anyone else would like to go in the middle of the parachute and have us sing the song to them. Those who wanted to took turns lying down in the middle, whilst we sang the song to them.

Phase Two

a) When the children were used to the concept of being in the centre receiving positive attention and being sung to, we moved to the next stage

b) I taught the children another song, ‘WE WE OH’, a Native American song that is about spiders spinning a web. It is gentle and like a lullaby. When we had learnt it, we sat once again in a circle, but this time did not have the parachute. Instead, as they sung, I passed a reel of thread between them back and forth randomly across the circle and as it came to each child they had to hold onto their bit of thread, eventually creating a huge web.

c) Now we had spun a woollen web, with threads between each child connecting us all.

d) We noticed that we were all connected and discussed this.

e) One at a time the children volunteered to tiptoe over the threads and take a place in the centre web and have the original song ‘Hold You In Our Circle’ sung to them.

f) Peter was particular eager to go into the web and stood very still in the middle as we sang. He beamed and flushed pink and his whole body softened as he stood in the centre, receiving love and sound from his classmates. It was quite a different experience for him to be getting positive attention.

g) The Headteacher arrived and the children asked her to go into the middle so that they could sing the song to her. This was entirely spontaneous on their part. The Head Teacher loved it. The children called in other teachers from the school to experience it too.

Phase Three

The children just gather in a circle and sing the song and take turns to go into the middle and be sung to. It all seems very natural to them now. The ones on the outside tend to put their arms around each other and sway as they sing, rather like the camaraderie of a ‘football’ crowd.

Feedback

The Head Teacher took the song to a staff meeting and taught it to the staff. The children and staff have used this method since, and have sung the song many times to each other. They also burst out singing it spontaneously at other times, i.e. in art session, walking down the corridor, in the playground, when sharing fruit at fruit time.

Ideas for the Future

I suggested that the song could be used when any child was suffering in school, perhaps when they were upset or not coping. There are several children in the school that are particularly disturbed and difficult to deal with.

The song could be used on a one to one basis i.e. a member of staff singing it to a child.

An idea that I would like to see put into practise in the future is that there would be a special singing team of about 5 children (these could be selected weekly and put on ‘duty’ as it were, i.e. be on call for emergencies) that could be called upon to come and sing to the upset child in a quiet and clam space.

The child then would receive a ‘sound bath’ via the song, and the peer group would learn that we need to take responsibility as a community for helping each other.

Three months after this session, I observed the children singing this song spontaneously as they were going about their business in the rest of the school. We used it regularly in the weekly session during the term that I visited.

Update - December 14th 2006

I have been visiting the class one afternoon a week since September.

I assessed the mood of the class. The weather was bad, the children had been bottled up all day, and had not been able to go outside to play and let off steam. It was raining extremely heavily and there were gusty, stormy winds. The children were extremely unsettled. To add to this we had to meet in a different room than usual. The children throughout the whole school were wound up and restless.

Class Exercise

I introduced my collection of Tibetan bowls to the class. I showed them the patterns made in water when a bowl was filled and struck. I demonstrated lying down and placing the bowl on the body and striking it gently. I also demonstrated putting a bowl on the floor at the side of someone’s head and striking it gently. I gave out one bowl between two children and let them experiment.

Finally we placed someone in the centre and put the bowls around them and gently struck the bowls. The children then requested that they all do this with the headmistress receiving the sound lying down in the middle. All children placed their hands on her whilst she received the sound.

Feedback

The children had varying degrees of response. Some were not able to strike the bowl gently, striking too loudly. Several attempted ‘winding’ the rim of the bowl. Two boys working together, (one with considerable behavioural and social problems), noticed that when they used two bowls, putting one on either side of the head it produced a ‘wah wah’ sound (discovering the effects of oscillation) and they were very excited by this effect.

Some of the children struck the bowls too hard with the beaters at an angle around the rim making dents in the beaters.

Outcome

The children became calm when we worked as a group, responding to the meditate quality created by sound of the bowls, and at the end of the session they focused on giving the sound healing to their Headmistress. I felt that they learnt to focus positive, gentle energy and to ‘give’ to another human being in a gentle, healing way.

Future Development

I have suggested the idea of having a sound healing room in the school. Something small would do, painted white or cream with very little in it, it would be a very calm space. I also recommend a simple training for a member of staff.

I have started designing a basic sound healing package for use in schools, consisting of a few carefully chosen instruments with specific functions, and a series of healing songs to be ‘applied’

(The pupils name’s have been changed to protect their identity).

For more information please contact Chrys.

Sound Healing in Schools by Penny Burns:

Vital Spark Music promotes holistic growth through music, sound and performance.  We work in schools, community groups and with individuals; teaching, performing, composing, recording and enjoying music with all ages and abilities.

Our intention is to share the healing properties of sound in positive ways, as well as to increase the understanding of the effects of music.

In a school environment we usually begin with warm-ups, which include toning and 'shaking -out'.  This relaxes and loosens the body and is great fun.  It is a great ice- breaker which includes everyone.

We have found that children naturally enjoy taking part in non-threatening activities.  We ask them how different notes make them feel, and where in their body they feel the sounds. The children are encouraged to voice their opinions.  As well as increasing their self-awareness, this gives an ideal opportunity to let the child feel heard.

We use simple chants, exciting rhythms and gentle movement.  Together we gain a sense of unity and create the most beautiful harmonics!

Children are introduced to a wide range of music and encouraged to explore the sounds of weird and wonderful instruments to see what delights can be found. The magical sound of the biosonic tuning forks is a consistent favourite with the children!

So far our workshops in schools have been well received and have produced positive results ie. an increased knowledge of music, improved listening skills and clear evidence of emotional growth.

Penny Burns MCSH, Teacher, Composer, Musician.

Penny has produced a book and CD for use in schools. For more information about her work please contact Penny - tel 01588 630 047

Christine Cleobury writes:

"Anndrum & Company consists of Ann Easthope (Drum Circle Facilitator) and myself Christine Cleobury (Sound Healer). Ann and I are both lucky as we’ve had prior experience of working in schools before we became Anndrum & Company so were well aware of what to expect."

"In our Drumming for Health workshops we use a combination of Percussion/Sound/Movement to help people to gain confidence, free their voice and body, understand rhythm, learn to work together as a group and have fun; all of which is very healing."

"We had been working with children at a youth centre when we got the contact for the school and followed that lead which was in the beginning of last year 2005. Working with children as opposed to adults can be freeing and challenging all at the same time. You have to make it interesting and fun and learn to pitch the level of work that you want the children to do at a range they can understand and prevent the boredom."

"We have a wide variety of instruments that the children can play with; from Djembies to wood, bells, bowls, tingsha, frogs, shakers, etc. We stress that they don’t have to have any musical experience and we encourage all to have a go. It helps to have the teachers present so that you can concentrate on what you are doing with the children and not have to worry about discipline."

"I have found that children as well as adults have some reluctance when it comes to using the voice. Helping them to just have a go and do some loud noises, clapping and stamping to various sounds gives them the confidence to be a bit freer to then be able to go onto chanting and singing. We always bring the spiritual aspect into our work and explain how the different cultures use sound for ceremony as well as healing."

"We have had some wonderful experiences with children who were afraid to pick up an instrument at the beginning of a workshop and then were unable to put their instrument of choice down at the end because they didn’t want to stop. They were also able to feel in their body the different vibrations of the sounds they were making and were amazed at how different instruments and voices caused different reactions."

"Although it is early days for us yet in the field of working in schools we are hoping that it continues to grow as its given us a new outlook of how sound can cross the many barriers that we have and bond together groups of all ages in healing harmony."

Christine Cleobury IIHHT MCSH - Holistic Therapist