21 June 2024
Psychedelic Journey Music is More Than a Soundtrack
by Marilyn Clark
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV Number 1 • 2024
Inner explorations have been an important part of the human story stretching back to prehistoric times. Indigenous people’s ceremonies, shamanic rituals, and ancient civilization’s mystery schools show us that the blossoming practices of today are a welcome expansion of an ancient understanding of who we are within ourselves, in our community, on this planet, and in the universe. And almost always, these rituals and explorations have been accompanied by music.
We are a music-making species–always have been, always will be–and music’s capacity to explore, express, and address what it is to be human remains one of our greatest communal gifts. We are also a music-exchanging species: people have used music to communicate and connect with one another since the beginning of time.
Music which extends across cultures and boundaries, which requires no translation to be understood, is the most uniting language we have…Just as people are people, made of the same essential stuff, all music is created with the same sonic DNA, the same tonal building blocks, those miraculous vibrations of air that can be shaped in myriad ways to become a Bach cantata here, a Beyonce chart-topper there.
In the role of sitter with someone embarking on a medicine journey, our complex role may include being the one who chooses music for the traveler in our care. Thanks to sophisticated technology, we have any genre of music we want at our fingertips. We don’t have to be wed to CD programming and can spontaneously create the music path for our travelers. For the traveler, the task is to trust the music as a pliable medium, especially in the expanded states of their journey. What music do you trust for your journeys?
Everyone who listens to music has their favorite type of music for different kinds of situations. Music in public spaces such as large concert venues often produces meaningful and enjoyable experiences for those gathered. But difficulties can arise for someone when they lose touch with themselves through pairing with an environmental circumstance (such as a concert, rave, party, or group with whom they feel ill at ease) and a psychedelic medicine whose effect they may be naïve about or have not carefully considered. When unstructured, cacophonous music is played at high volume, they can become overstimulated, and negative results can occur. This can cause them to leave their normal life far behind in a disjunctive way which makes subsequent integration more difficult, if not impossible. Such outcomes can be devastating.
When music is carefully and thoughtfully added to an expanded state experience, there can be positive potential added to the experience. Music can shift perceptions, open hearts to feel, eyes to see, and spirits to soar. Emotions become accessible and fluid. Our physiology responds. With music’s invitation, deep memories, dreams, and beliefs may open and invite integration. Music can be in the background and the foreground. It can bring us to an experience. It can deepen and focus our consciousness. Join music with psychedelic medicines and we have a powerful gift that can challenge, soothe, clarify, confound, heal, and transport us.
I know from my professional experience that music alone–without medicine–can open our psyches and provide healing, insight, and lifetime change. In my years of working with the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music, I remain in awe of the power of music. It can support the psyche and provide a pathway to resolution of relationship difficulties and traumatic events, awaken creativity, and make transpersonal realms accessible. With my Bonny Method clients, I have used prerecorded CDs that include programs designed by Helen Bonny, visionary music therapist, and Linda Keiser Mardis, musician, and Reiki healer. My connection with these mentors and years of using the Bonny Method in my therapy practice have deepened my relationship with music, particularly music of the European classical tradition. Frequently at live music performances, I am moved to tears when the exquisite beauty of the artistry and composition overwhelm me. I know that even as a passive member of the audience, I am an important part of the music by being present, listening, attuning, and blending with the “sonic DNA” of which Clemency Burton-Hill speaks.
It is important to find a guide who will help you discern how music enhances or detracts from the unfolding of your journey. It is also important to get to know how different genres of music affect you. Listen to a wide variety of music and notice how you are taking the music into your body and your psyche. Do you like long pieces? What instruments effect you? Is that an effect you would like amplified in a journey?
I invite you to get curious about the music you choose for medicine sessions. Do you listen and experience the music yourself in various states of consciousness so that you have an inside knowing of what is possible with the music you choose? Do you take the word of a teacher or a colleague without finding out for yourself? Do you use readymade playlists? If you are a guide, are you influenced by your own medicine experiences when choosing your favorite music for another’s exploration?
What is your relationship to the music you use in your psychedelic journeys? The following questions comprise a self-evaluation of your openness to music beyond simply knowing that you enjoy an artist, genre, or song.
Questionnaire for Self-Awareness as a Sitter or Traveler
Thinking about a psychedelic medicine experience and the music that accompanied that journey, consider the following:
- What kinds of sounds support you as the medicine opens your journey?
- What music helps you relax?
- What music helps you soar?
- What music can take you into your darker feelings? And what music can bring you back?
- Think about a particular piece of music. What do you notice as you listen to it?
- Is it boring?
- Is it beautiful and calming?
- Is it too distracting to give you the time and place to explore uncovered elements in your psyche?
- Does it align and harmonize with you?
- Can it challenge you in some way?
- Can you count on it, and if so, in what circumstances?
- What genres of music are your favorites? Why?
- When you listen to music, what are your expectations? What surprises you?
- Have you experienced music as spacious and simultaneously as a safe container? What music creates this environment for you?
- Notice as much you can about the music:
- How does this music affect you?
- Can you trust it? Does it feel safe even when it changes abruptly?
- Is it an ally? Will it come through for you in a tough patch?
- What do you know about how it was conceived? What was the composer’s vision? What is its purpose?
- How do insights about your music preferences make you a better sitter…
- With supporting the traveler when physical and emotional responses surface?
- With furthering the traveler’s conscious and unconscious goals for this experience?
- In holding the space for the traveler to face their darkest shadows?
- As witness and support when the traveler attains expanded, transcendent states?
- Are you curious about linking your preferences for music with the wide range of possible musical genres you bring to your work with others?
- Does the music partner with you or require center stage? Reverse that question: do you (the sitter) require center stage while the music is only background?
- Do you share your findings about music with colleagues doing similar kinds of work?
In closing, please consider the words of my colleague and friend, Bill Richards, who offers succinct guidelines for journey music and the traveler:
We have learned that in high-dose sessions, especially during the onset and intense period of entheogen effects, the supportive structure of the music is more important than either the guide’s or the volunteer’s personal musical preferences. In states of ego transcendence, the everyday self as the perceiver of music may no longer exist, having entered into a unitive awareness… As the ego approaches its dissolution and when it begins to be reconstituted, however, the nonverbal structure of the music may provide significant support…Thus, sensitivity to the therapeutic potential of carefully selected music may be an important factor in enhancing psychological safety.
Unlike the creator of a movie soundtrack, your role is closer to psychedelic disc jockey, choosing the right music to support the moment. Music is your partner in this adventure whether you are the sitter or the traveler. Be very familiar with the music you choose for a psychedelic experience. You and the music together are environment-creators, movers, holders, challengers, comforters, inspirers, connectors, permission givers, healers, and witnesses. Your own preferences for music should be carefully considered noting likes and dislikes. Your personal associations with a genre of music could influence whether you choose a favorite piece too often or a disliked or unfamiliar genre not enough. The challenge of responding as a sitter to what the traveler is experiencing requires openness with a strong dose of intuition educated by and through your experience with music and psychedelics.
Marilyn Clark
Marilyn Clark is an LCPC and a Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery. For most of her career, she has guided clients through, trained others in, written about, and advanced the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery & Music. She was an assistant guide in individual psilocybin research sessions at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and she wrote a chapter in Denise Grocke’s Guided Imagery and Music: the Bonny Method and Beyond. Currently, she enjoys participating in local groups of psychedelic practitioners, creating playlists for music-assisted inner explorations, occasionally singing in a local choir, and keeping up with her intercoastal family. Catch up with her through creatingmandalas.com or visit her website: https://www.marilynclarkintegrativepsychotherapist.com.
