Silvia Nakkach

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is an award-winning composer, psychologist, singer, recording artist and author. She is an internationally accredited specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound, transformation of consciousness, and music shamanism. She has created the curriculum and is the academic advisor for the new certificate program on Sound, Voice and Music Healing at CIIS. Nakkach is also the founding director of the international Vox Mundi School of the Voice.  

Silvia has devoted 25 years to the study of the art of raga singing under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She has created an innovative repertoire of cross-cultural vocal techniques that have become a landmark in the field of sound, music therapy and voice coaching. Her opera Amazonia Insight was performed internationally. She was named by Utne Reader magazine as one of forty cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium. www.voxmundiproject.com

Post-Conference All-Day Workshop: The ‘Ancient’ Future of Sound and Music Medicine: Integrating Voice, Music Therapies and the Music of the Shaman In Today’s Health Centers and Hospices
Tuesday, November 13
La Terraza Room, 9 am-5 pm

As we experience how sound is an immediate vehicle to access and transform consciousness and emotional states, modern science is catching up to what ancient peoples have long known about health and healing: that mind, body and sound are intimately interconnected. Nakkach’s 25 years of travel, research, and enchantment into sacred Eastern and Western voice and music healing practices, consciousness, and clinical psychology inform her original model that enables individuals to enjoy, heal, and sustain optimal health through music creativity.

Integrating cutting-edge discoveries of sound science and cosmology, with Indian music, devotional chanting, energy awareness, and the wisdom of traditional shamanic systems, this program teaches a creative tool-kit of cross-cultural sound, music, and vocal improvisation techniques that can be used for relaxation, assessment, and treatment to address personal wellness and illness, both physically and psycho-spiritually. Silvia’s passionate and inspiring presence makes effortless these deep-rooted practices that are designed to free the innate quality of our creative expression, empowering the practitioner to make his/her own music according to any particular circumstances. By mastering the profound healing potential of this cross-cultural and integral approach, sound practitioners can reclaim their birthright as physicians of the spirit.

Topics include: freeing the voice, tuning subtle energy fields of resonance, brain entrainment through chanting and healing melodies (ragas), breath and sacred sound practices combined with Eastern attention training strategies to cultivate both insight and skillful means to release tension, gentle yoga postures, and joyful indigenous songs.

This program modalities includes: power point lecture, experiential exercises, chanting, sound healing technique demonstrations, music making, case studies, small group improvisation, handouts, discography and bibliography.

GOAL:

To broaden and enrich the practitioner’s musical and therapeutic imagination by introducing a systematic repertoire of multi-cultural voice and sound practices from the East, West, North and South. The emphasis is in the efficacy of an integral approach to chanting and music healing that identifies the differences, similarities, and shared aims of working with sound by scientists, shamans, artists, and therapists. Practitioners explore how these ancient and modern practices relate and complete one another.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:  

• In addition to the highly experiential modalities of this workshop, you acquire a tool-kit of sound practices and explore personal resources so you can design a sound, voice and music healing session, in private practice, complementary medicine and health care centers,
• To provide a joyfully journey that engages sound to inspire, stimulate, and demonstrate among the participants optimal consciousness and shamanic systems of response that dissolve rigidity and shift conditioned patterns, and
• To summarize and become familiar with current sound and music healing modalities and qualifications as practiced in health centers as well as shamanic communities around the world.

Keynote: The Ineffability of “Feeling” in Healing; Rapture, Transcendence, and Transformation through Melody and Chant
- Silvia Nakkach,

Sunday, November 11
Ballroom   9:00 am to 10:15 am

Healing with sound is more than just a change of melodies and chants; it is about a change of heart. Embark on an inspiring exploration of the architecture of the music that we create to accomplish the main goals of all sound therapies: to lessen pain and suffering, to balance brain functions, and to quiet the mind making it permeable to divine intervention.

In an attempt to shed new light on the affective power of sound and music, we explore the ancient concepts of raga (that melody which colors the mind), and rasa (mood, a sentiment that gives flavor to the mind), introducing the concept of spiritual melodicism, resonant harmonies, and timeless rhythms, with special attention given to melody as medicine. The exploration of these musical concepts can refine the practitioner’s auditory sensitivity, improving the therapeutic capacity to release stress and fear. In particular, we will examine melody’s potential to connect with archetypal consciousness, emotional nature and magic, by conveying profound sentiments through the irrefutable power of rasa.

Learn about the medicinal potential of the Indian ragas as divinely inspired tonal arrangements and their acoustic ability to color the mind of the listener with a particular emotion that stimulates brain and heart activity.

By experiencing the devotional nature of music, we open our hearts to the deep longing of the enchanters, those who journey through the magic of sound to attract their spirit power. The evolution of the art of sound healing may depend on deepening cross-cultural sophistication and the conscious treatment of musical structure with a spiritual emphasis.

Experience all this through a multi-media and experiential session with chanting, music-making and research.

 Goal:

To revitalize the understanding of the therapeutic potential of sound and  music to transform emotional states, by exploring the architecture of melody (raga) and the nine rasas of Indian art: aesthetic sentiments such as love, peace, joy, fear, devotion, wonder, aversion, heroism and compassion.

 Learning objectives:

• To identify particular intervals and melodies that can facilitate relaxation,    concentration, strengthen vitality, balance nervous system, alleviate pain, and enhance perceptional functions (sensation, reception, feeling, transmission and expression),

• To present an overview and demonstrate the reasons for the everlasting beauty and healing power of North Indian classical music, and  

• To appreciate healing with music as a spiritual practice that elicits joy and vitality, in harmonic resonance with the path of the heart and the well-being of all life.

Workshop: The Yoga of Voice: Ancient and Contemporary Sacred Sound Practices

Friday, November 9
Ballroom   3:30pm to 5:30pm

to my longing

I am just as ecstatic as they are,

but with nothing to say!

please, universal soul, practice

some song, or something, through me!

Rumi

Just as the perception of subtle psychic centers of the body (chakras) leads to transcendental space, the intoxicating bliss of devotional chanting liberates a sense of boundless radiance and openness, nurturing the intense yearning of the heart to unite with the divine. The singing voice is a vehicle to connect with the flow of life that can gush through our being at a full force, and the awareness of the voice as liberating energy, provides us with the opportunity to modify any unwanted feelings and to restore vitality instantly.

Engage in an exhilarating journey into the core of Eastern and Western healing uses of chanting through an innovative repertoire of sound and vocal techniques that have become landmarks in the field of music therapy, sound healing, and music shamanism.  Unlike any other program, the Yoga of the Voice is a systematic and evolving practice that integrates the discipline of yoga with ancient and contemporary techniques of singing, improvisation, music therapy and voice improvement practices, as a gateway to connect with one’s profound energetic insight, and discover scientific and creative ways to address any voice impediment.

Ancient sound healing practices will be introduced through Nada-Yoga, a meditative modality of chanting that reflects the union of body and spirit through subtle vibration and delicate micro-tonal movements. Experience Silvia’s sacred-based software of sounds and healing chants from the traditions of Shabda Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, Tibetan and Siberian musical divinations, tuning to divine energy through seed syllables and powerful mantras, accompanied by gentle body movements and hand gestures (mudras), shamanic songs from Afro-Brazilian and Amazon traditions, and the Sufi practice of sama (spiritual listening) to direct our attention towards the etheric tone. In addition, you will take home a repertoire of vocal meditation exercises and medicinal melodies that can be used in sound healing, yoga sessions, chanting circles, performance, and psycho-spiritual growth.

Goal:

Become familiar with the deep chanting of the voice that ­ through the function of breath and sound ­ transforms energy patterns, creates measurable effects in the physical body, and affects emotions and consciousness more efficiently than any other form of sound.

 Learning Objectives:

• Learning ways to ‘open’ your voice by reawakening the connection with the various dimensions of the healing voice: the contemplative, the expressive, the somatic, the shamanic, and the ecstatic, while unlocking the many layers of our imagination as healing artist,
  
• Becoming familiar with uses of the voice in music, yoga, complementary medicine, energy healing, and as spiritual practice, and
• To discover how and which vocal sounds are nutrients for the brain and the heart and offer a more efficient stimulation than any other form of sound, to unleash your creativity, and to incorporate sound-chant in your daily life towards a successful sound healing practice.