Mental Health Services

Music can be a great tool for exploring and/or expressing our lived experiences through a creative healing process. You might be feeling nervous about using music in therapy spaces, and that makes so much sense. Music can be a vulnerable place, especially if we're worried about "doing it the right way." The good thing about music therapy is: You don't have to have any background in music. You don't have to be a "musician." We're not here to make something "perfect." We're here to be present in the music and engage in it as a way to foster health and wellbeing.

Music therapy can help people of all ages with a variety of mental health needs. There are aspects of our human experience that are difficult to reach with words, and music therapy can provide a valuable tool to gaining insights, developing coping strategies, and connecting with our mind, body, and spirit in a new way. Music therapy is a powerful treatment option for people with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, stress, difficulty sleeping, and more. Our music therapist is also a mental health clinician working under supervision to become a Licensed Professional Counselor.

Focused on the overarching goal of improving quality of life and wellbeing, music psychotherapy can involve:

Music and relaxation techniques

Music can be a helpful tool for fostering mindfulness and relaxation and also for stepping into reflection on a given theme/topic.

Lyric/song analysis

Bringing songs into sessions can be a helpful way to start a conversation on a difficult topic, connect with others who have gone through similar experiences, and find insights into ways of moving through our own experiences.

Songwriting

Whether writing a parody of a familiar song, piecing together lyrics from your favorite songs, or writing something completely from scratch -- songwriting can be a tool for expressing yourself and also a way to examine the way we think about and relate to our lived experiences

Improvisation and active music-making

Sometimes making up music in the moment and on the spot can help us to get out of our own heads and be more in the present. It can also be a tool for exploring a specific theme/topic through musical symbolism.

Using music with other forms of creative expression (e.g., art, poetry, dance, etc.)

Pairing music with other creative outlets can be a powerful experience. For example, mandala making, stream-of-conscious journaling, and dancing around a specific theme/topic can help us deepen and gain further insight into our lived experiences.

These creative experiences are often processed mutually within the therapeutic space to gain deeper understanding, make meaning, and relate these discoveries to our everyday lives.

At Becoming Through Sound we offer:

Individual music psychotherapy sessions

Work individually on your specific identified goals

Group music psychotherapy sessions

Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender Expansive support group for adults: Meets every other Thursday from 6pm - 7:30pm EST and runs from 2/3/2022 - 8/5/2022. This music therapy group is intended to be a welcoming and inclusive space for those seeking to explore their gender as it intersects with other aspects of identity and to connect with peers. The group uses music and the arts as a tool for radical self-love, creativity, empowerment, and embodiment. All spots are currently filled! - Facilitated by Maevon Gumble

Stay tuned for additional opportunities!

gender affirming voicework

Gender affirming voicework is a new music therapy method developed by Maevon Gumble which aims to address gender-based vocal needs on a holistic level through the use of singing, conversational improvisation, toning, movement, imagery, relaxation experiences, and other music-based experiences.

Gender affirming voicework can be a lot of different things depending on what you're hoping to get out of the work. It could be:

Working with your physical voice to access a more affirming sound through changing vocal habits

Working with the body to encourage relaxation and groundedness

Exploring your emotional connection with your voice, body, and/or gender and ways of feeling more at home within yourself

Some combination of these!

The overarching goal of this work, though, is to access and embody a more affirming way of existing within the world.

A typical session includes beginning with a check-in, establishing an intention for the session, engaging in mindfulness and body-focused experiences, and then moving into our intention through music- and voice-based experiences.

Intentions can include, but are not limited to:

shifting how high or how low your voice might be

shifting where your voice is resonating/vibrating within your body

exploring imagery/thoughts that are reflective of your experiences of your voice/body

working on fostering a more sustainable and affirming vocal sound

learning strategies to ground your voice in your body

practicing interacting with each other within affirming spaces

exploring the various emotions that might come up within this work

healing from gender-based trauma

and so on

Gender affirming voicework is grounded in the belief that we as people often experience a kind of gender trauma through being socialized to interact with and live within the world in limiting ways. Directly working with the impacts of existing within this incredibly gendered and binary world, gender affirming voicework surrounds listening deeply and profoundly to our own experiences of ourselves--our own authenticity--as a way of honoring and fully embodying authentic and affirming gender expressions. By listening in to ourselves, we might begin to speak, sing, move, and live in the most affirming and authentic way we can.

A key idea to the way we practice: We are not "prescriptive" about the voice; we are collaborative. In a nutshell, this means that you are not going to be told "this is how you must voice." Instead, we're going to explore your own voice so that you can be with your own voice and, if working to shift the physical voice, decide which aspects of your voice you are wanting to shift and then develop a set of strategies for shifting these.

This method continues to be developed as Maevon Gumble continues to work alongside 1) individuals who seek to access and embody more affirming gender expressions for themselves and 2) music therapists who seek to provide gender affirming voicework services.

At Becoming Through Sound we offer:

Individual gender affirming voicework sessions

Work individually on your identified goals specific to your voice and gender.

Gender affirming voicework workshops

Gendered Voice: Workshop Series for Exploration & Embodiment: Use music, singing, and toning in a nonjudgmental, curious, and creative environment to build a deeper relationship with your voice, more specifically developing bodily awareness of what your voice is doing from moment to moment and how that impacts both the quality of the sound and the way you experience this sound. While we will explore gendered sound, this workshop series will be less of a "how to" voice in a specific way and more of a guide on getting curious about your own voice and all the many ways we can move and shift it.

Workshop opportunities for 2022 are still being planned/scheduled. Reach out for more information.

Learn more about gender affirming voicework

LITERATURE

Embodied Speech Through Song: A Queer Autoethnographic Exploration of Gender Affirming Voicework in Music Therapy (Master's thesis)

Gender Affirming Voicework: An Introduction for Music Therapy (Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy)

Gender Affirming Voicework: A Queer Autoethnographic Account (Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy)

INTERVIEWS

Queer: More Than An Adjective (The MTea)

Interview on Gender Affirming Voicework (Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy)

Gender Affirming Voicework (The Feeling is Musical)

CLICK TO LEARN ABOUT GETTING CERTIFIED IN GENDER AFFIRMING VOICEWORK