Special Issue 9 (2) 2017 “Guided Imagery and Music: Contemporary European perspectives and developments” – Article (first published on 22 December 2017)
Music as dynamic experience of unfolding wholeness in Guided Imagery and Music (GIM): A psychoanalytic, musical, transpersonal and trans-scientific paradigm
Martin Lawes
Abstract
This article discusses how the music used in Guided Music and Imagery (GIM) functions as a container for the client’s experience as he opens to unconscious depth. Many different but related perspectives are systematically presented and integrated. Included is a discussion of music having an inner necessity that governs its unfolding. As a result of the client attuning with this necessity, which can be understood ultimately to be that governing the creative unfolding of the universe itself, the music can help the client discover inner resources, find solutions to problems, and experience healing and transformation in the often unexpected yet deeply enriching ways that are possible in GIM.
Keywords
Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), rhythms of harmony and dissonance, subtle body, dynamic equilibrium, opening-closing, hidden order, implicate order, present moment, real-illusion, trans-subjective-participation
Biography
Martin Lawes is a GIM Therapist, Primary Trainer and Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery (AMI). He is the founder of the Integrative GIM Training Programme (www.integrativegim.org), which offers training in London. Martin’s clinical GIM practice is in bereavement and palliative care. He also employs GIM techniques in his improvisation-based music psychotherapy work in special needs education, including in work with staff. Martin is published in four peer-reviewed journals and has presented nationally and internationally on numerous occasions. He is the current chair of the education and training committee of the European Association of Music and Imagery (EAMI).
Email: martinlawesmt@gmail.com