Music Book Review: Musician Healer: Transforming Art Into Medicine by Islene Runningdeer

Musician Healer: Transforming Art Into Medicine
by Islene Runningdeer (Music 781.11 Run)

We have a lot of books about music therapy at the Polley Music Library, and there’s a bit of variety within that section, too: within general music therapy, there are books that focus on music therapy for specific conditions, such as autism, dementia, and pain management. Then there is a related section of books on the intersection of music and psychology, some of which have music therapy-related topics. And then there are a few books on historical traditions related to music and healing. Music historian Ted Gioia’s Healing Songs is a great overview of many of these healing traditions. And some such traditions are still being practiced, too. Toward that topic, we have a great new book by Islene Runningdeer called Musician Healer: Transforming Art Into Medicine.

 

Author Runningdeer has a diverse background that has informed her work with music as medicine, which she describes in the first few chapters of the book. After high school, she attended two music schools, although she had to leave her senior year to be a stay-at-home mom and wife. Ultimately she returned to school, graduating from the University of Vermont with a Masters of Education through a unique multidisciplinary program they offer, combining education, medical, counseling, and music disciplines. Runningdeer’s work combines this background, which in many ways approximates a traditional academic music therapy path, with her experiences with indigenous traditional music healing practices from ancient Egyptian, Native American, French, and East Indian origins. Her primary focus is using musical healing practices with elderly populations, including care for dementia and palliative care situations.

 

After this introduction to her own unique life path, Runningdeer introduces us to some of the core traditions she draws from throughout the rest of Part One, starting with ancient Egyptian concepts. Although we have lost the music of ancient Egypt to time, we still have the words from many hymns and the framework of many rituals that were performed in their temples. Runningdeer takes us through the life of a “shemayet,” or temple musician, which had some overlaps with ancient medicine practices. This is followed by a chapter on healing practices from the Seneca tribe ancestors of Runningdeer, where again we find that healing practices combined song, dancing, and plants in ceremonial settings. Next, we move to 11th-Century France, and focus particularly on their equivalent of hospice care, which included song and prayer at the deathbed of Benedictine monks. And finally we arrive in modern-day India, where the ancient practice of Raga Chikitsa, or Raga Therapy, continues to be part of a broader system of Ayurveda, the holistic Indian approach to medicine. While each of these approaches is unique, they all share many commonalities across geography and time.

 

In Part Two, “Techniques and Illuminations,” Runningdeer starts breaking down her particular approach to healing music (which she refers to as a form of “Energy Medicine” in the introduction to this section). The first area of focus she addresses is breathing, in which she explains how she has adapted the yogic pranayama technique of deep breathing for her work, pointing out that musicians focus on their breathing to perform better, and that the phrasing of music has its own breath-like patterns. In working with palliative care patients, she is able to practice deep breathing near them, which often helps their own breathing to relax.

 

Next, she addresses the heart—not the organ, necessarily, but the idea of expressing a generous, compassionate heart when working with music therapy practices. In this sense, the heart embodies the act of giving, and sharing music with a person in a vulnerable state is more successful with this kind of mindset. She carries this concept into the idea of “the magic of willful intention,” or focusing your work through the power of intention. The deep breathing and a generous heart help contribute to willful intention, creating a state of compassionate care.

 

To close out the book, Runningdeer discusses her sense that she has “helpers” that work with her during music therapy sessions, and various interpretations of this idea found in spiritual practices worldwide. Then she discusses the effects of this work with the main two populations that she serves. Through palliative or hospice care, she is able to help clients transition more gently. While working with dementia patients, her audiences are more energized, alert and lucid after her visits, sometimes remembering the words to songs from their own distant histories and even breaking into dance. Runningdeer discusses some of her musical selections for dementia patient performances (usually classical music and vintage songs), as well as some ideas she uses for songs to be sung near death (often hymns with references to grand rivers).

 

All told, it’s a fascinating look into one successful practitioner’s means and methods toward the use of music as a kind of medicine. For this reader, I found Musician Healer to be a fairly even-handed look at practices that sometimes fall outside of the boundaries of modern medicine, with a minimum of “woo woo,” as the author calls it. There was one factual inaccuracy that I noticed in the section on Raga music in India, a reference to Raga Kausi Kanhara as performed by sitarist Ravi Shankar being centered around a C# pitch that’s 432 Hz, or the “Ohm frequency,” but in fact 432 Hz is a detuned concert A pitch around which there has been a lot of controversy in the last decade. Other than that, I found the information presented here to be pretty solid and of a nature that’s not overly mystical for the average musical reader.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Healing Songs by Ted Giola or Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind and Soul by Andrew Schulman.)

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

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Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!