Listen to your own life-journeys of loss and healing.   What music captures those moments for you?

Hear the everyday "music" in the sounds brought into your music room (or other setting).  Do you hear chaos?  Laughter? Anger? Despair?  Anxiety?  Comfort?  Hope?

Match It and Move It!  Find/play/sing/lead music that matches the present emotion.  Move the emotional tone with a an appropriate contrasting piece.  Caution:  Don't just yank others' emotions and experiences around.  (Examine "CORE Values.") Continue to tune in --- to truly "hear" and see others' responses.

Listen for musical nuances of expression, emotions, and meanings.  Don't assume another's interpretations.  Sensitively ask.  As a musician, you can experience and lead others in "aha" moments of musical and internal interpretation.

"Bigger" isn't always "better."  Be willing to cut back toward simplicity, as well as to "pull out the stops."  Go for the meaning, not just the glitz.

Listen to silence.  Create silence.  Move into the silence of your soul.

Create a ritual moment of sound at the beginning and/or ending of your rehearsals or concerts.  It may be a particular sound (like a chime) followed by a moment of silence, or a drum, or a song that signals "this is our time together."  Such a ritual can create an ongoing security, trust, and a continuity of community.  Keep it simple.  If applicable, let others take turns in leading the ritual.

Explore emotions, associations, images connected to a particular piece of music.  (This can be a great community builder, and tool for personal reflection.)

Closely examine texts, images, and moods of the music you present.  What new emotions and meanings are stirred by today's contexts?  What might they stir in the near future?  Select and use with wisdom and care.

Ask your musicians, "what music brings you comfort?"  "Energizes you?"  "Let's you cry deep inside?"  "Brings you hope?" 

Ask your musicians, "If there's a time or place or person in your life you'd like to revisit, what music would take you there?"

In a smaller group, pass around a simple, user-friendly instrument, that can create many different sounds. (A drum works great!)  Invite each person to strike, strum, tap, play it however they want (about 10-15 seconds each), to express "where they are" right here and now.  After everyone has played, invite members to share the meanings of their sounds.  (Takes about 10 minutes.)

Use musical metaphors to explore grief experiences.  (Contact Joy Berger for more specifics.)

Create a wide variety of musical experiences through singing, playing instruments, moving/dancing, composing, listening to music, and dialoguing about meaningful musical experiences.  Different personalities need different modalities:  visual, auditory, vocal, motor, reflective, tactile, imagery, etc.

Assist in "re-collecting" memories by creating a musical scrapbook (group or individual)  that captures and communicates the person's story, emotions, and meanings related to the loss.

Pair music with photographs, VCR tapes, paintings or other visual images to integrate auditory and visual responses.  (Honor copyright laws as applicable.)

Similarly, pair music with movement, art activities, etc. to add tactile/motor responses.

Encourage writing new words or creating musical variations to familiar music.  (Honor copyright laws as applicable.)  Tap into both grief and hope.

Affirm others' personal expressions through music with less of a critical, judgmental, performance ear, and with more of a  compassionate, common-experience ear.  Find a healthy balance between typical musical critique and the heightened needs for positive, self-affirmation of your musicians (and yourself)!  Yes, call forth excellence in musicianship.  Do so with empowerment, not shame.  Teach.  Call forth the other's best.  Motivate.   Don't blow out the life-spark within!  Protect it and fan it into a soul-flame!  If you struggle with this, dare to ask yourself, "who was critical of me?"  "Did my personal expressions through music ever get damaged by someone else's critique?"  "How can I heal my own wound?" "How can I reflame my own soul-music?"

Create a graffiti wall or ongoing list of music where your students, singers, instrumentalists, dancers, etc. can write down titles of music they find meaningful through these difficult times.  A great starting place can be music that has already helped them through tough times.  Affirm diversity of expression.  Use this as a tool for calling forth and validating each others' "soul music."  (See CORE Values, above.)

In litany form, write a group reading, alternating leader/group readings with a brief musical refrain. Involve your group in the writing and presentation of it.  It can be used in rehearsal time with each other, or in a concert setting with audience participation.

Much further into the healing process of a significant loss, re-hear a specific piece of music that evoked an earlier catharsis.  Explore together previous emotional responses to the music that have now shifted, changed or been transformed.  Affirm the person/group's grief journey and growth.

Learn about grief.  Educate others about grief through your musical rehearsals, concerts, and leadership.    

Let your music history training inform you about previous composers' contexts of grief. Bring bits of that awareness into rehearsals and performances.  Bring new life to the life of your music!

Using any of the above "HEALing Techniques" or "CORE Values" (below), continue to explore, express, and learn from your ongoing losses, griefs, and rebirths.

Base decisions of music from an inner core of care --- over and above standards of performance or one's own personal tastes.  What do you hope the music will provide?  Stir?  Express?  What cautions do you need to be aware of?  Then --- after the prioritizing, carry out those decisions with the best musical quality you can give.

Hear, affirm, and use music from the cultural, religious, and meaning-base "core" of the persons involved.

Allow for personal and community participation (listening, providing texts, singing, playing, movement, creating).  Again, keep musical elements within the world of the persons involved. 

When verbally introducing music, never assume or tell another what s/he "should" be experiencing, feeling, thinking, believing, or moving toward.  Naming different kinds of experiences can validate both diversity and community within the room, and varied responses within the self.  However, such experiences should never be imposed.

Be sensitive to the speed and power with which music can stir emotions.  Provide an emotionally safe, trusting environment for your musicians and audience.  Allow yourselves to be human with each other.

As a music leader or performer, if you feel detached or preoccupied in the midst of leading or performing, allow yourself to re-experience the music later, intentionally tuning into your own responses.  You might do this through hearing a recording of the service or performance, reflecting on the program, playing the music at the piano, or quiet reflection; whatever fits for you.

Know, affirm, and cherish your own music --- as being uniquely yours.  It is your music of your soul.  Hear the memories, meanings, and values it holds for you.  Trace your favorite music to its deeper roots within.  What emotions does it stir?  What memories does it call forth?  What meanings from your past and for your future does it bring into your present --- your here and now?  

Likewise, honor the music of another's life-story, culture, religion, experiences, and meanings.   Honor, affirm, validate the other's experience as his/her own, not yours.  Let yourself learn from another in the midst of your different life-experiences.  Let yourself stretch, grow, and understand.  

The above applies as well to selecting music for funerals, memorial services, rituals, etc.  Affirm "ownership" of a  community's heritage of music.  Most services of grief, remembering, memorializing are in places of religious worship or  public, community gatherings.  Some are in workplaces, or smaller more private settings. Whatever the setting, maintain an integrity to the hospitality and role of the setting (school, church / synagogue / temple, town hall).  For example, don't assume or impose one's own religious convictions onto a public, multi-cultural gathering. Find a congruence --- a meeting ground --- a coming together of philosophy, policy, and practice.  

Know, attend to, and learn from your own losses and grief.  Don't transfer your experiences and assumptions onto someone else.  Maintain a healthy empathy.  Avoid a distancing, over-under, or enmeshed "sympathy."

Respect another's emotional boundaries and timetable.  Emotional defenses, denial, and resistance / protection all have their appropriates place in the big picture of healthy mourning.  In the words of Paul McCartney, let another "be" --- let them "be" where they are.  Like Job's friends (from the Old Testament) in those first 7 days, "be with them."  As the psalmist wrote, may another feel from you that "through the valley and the shadows of death, you are with me."

Respect another's musical tastes, expressions, and reflections, even if they differ from your own.  (Most all of us are extremely protective and opinionate about our music!  We know what we do and don't like!)  Ask, "Tell me more."  "What memories or emotions does this music stir for you?" "What does it mean to you now?"  "Help me understand."  Allow the differences to learn another's background; to "get" and grow from their essence, their "who they are." 

Especially in your leadership role, respect another's privacy.  Avoid gossip or hearsay.  Stay with validated facts.  Treat another's life and loss with integrity, not intrusion.  Do not re-victimize persons by spreading false information.  Do be responsible and accountable for what information you give where.  When possible, ask the person for permission, and what information or needs one does (and does not) want given out.   

Respect our larger, more universal, spiritual realm.  Develop a healthy respect and ability to voice what we do not know, can not fix, and can not heal.  In doing so, we allow ourselves to more truly find what we can do, be, give, and receive.  

Seek a power and courage for what you can do, a surrender and serenity for what is beyond your control, and a wisdom to know the difference.  (Adapted from the Serenity Prayer)

With persons experiencing loss, ask not only "what do you need?, " but also "what do you not need?"  (For example, "I don't need others telling me what I should be feeling.")  Put out suggestions, but truly hear and respect the other's response.

Seek whole truths, not mere sentimentality.  This especially applies to selections and uses of musical texts, moods, and settings.  Music can move into one's core depths with speed and power.  Be responsible, sensitive, and accountable.  Avoid manipulation.  

Tune into emotional well-ness and health, not a pathology of pity.  

Acknowledge and respect your own emotional boundaries and timetables.  We have each other because no one of us is able to do or carry it all!  Know your power and powerlessness.  Refill, restore, renew your own energies within -- mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. 

Hear, nurture, protect, sing, play, and compose your music of your soul!