This workbook describes how to use Voice Movement Therapy (VMT) with individuals and groups with special needs to increase expressive and communicative skills and build a stronger sense of self by finding and developing their own voice. The first part illustrates basic principles of VMT, accompanied by a series of experiences to help both professionals and parents gain a better understanding of difficulties these children confront routinely. The second part shows how to apply these principles using song and vocalization in a classroom. The third part presents 3 examples of working with children by finding out what in a given environment attracts a particular child and using it to increase their desire to relate and communicate, both verbally and non-verbally, through voice and movement. This book was made specifically for working with children with both cognitive and physical disabilities, but it can be adapted for use with people of varying ages and conditions.
Brownell, Anne: - Anne Brownell, MA, LMHC, VMTR Anne is director of the Norma G. Canner Foundation for Voice Movement Therapy and teaches and supervises on the Foundation Training in Voice Movement Therapy: The Voice Unchained. After studying and working in the Expressive Therapies with pioneer dance therapist Norma Canner and noted clinician and author Penny Lewis, Anne's search for the vocal component for a movement oriented therapy led her to be the first American to train in VMT with founder Paul Newham in London; to teach and supervise with him on trainings in both England and America; and to establish her own training program, first in the United States, with Christine Isherwood, VMTR (4 trainings), and then in South Africa (2 trainings) where she carries on supervision.Anne has also acted as a VMT consultant for schools, working with children experiencing developmental and language delays; taught the first for-credit graduate course in VMT, for Castleton College, Vermont; conducted a private practice and supervision; and presented at conferences here and abroad. Prior experience includes working in Early Intervention programs, supervising graduate students in Dance Therapy on the therapeutic use of the voice, and conducting music and movement groups for previously homeless and substance abused people with HIV and AIDS. Anne has served as scriptwriter and executive producer on several films on the Expressive Therapies, most notably A Time to Dance: The Life and Work of Norma Canner and Going to the Source: A Study of Group Process in the Natural World. Her CD, A Journey in Song, illustrates a range of possibilities inherent in a single human voice, and she delights in performing songs in different genres and sounds.
Brownell, Deirdre: - "Deirdre Brownell, BA, MA, daughter of Anne Brownell, has a great interest in Voice Movement Therapy. A singer as well as a scholar, she believes that music has a language all of its own that everyone can understand, if not in a cognitive sense, then in a spiritual as well as a psychosomatic sense."I believe that psychotherapy must have a physical as well as a mental and an emotional base. We carry our emotions in our bodies all our lives, more than we realize, and the only way to get them out is to go back to that primal infant and child stage and release them through sound and movement. The voice is very powerful - and everyone has something to say."Deirdre started with a BA degree in Sports Medicine, then followed that up with a Masters in Psychology. At this writing, she is completing her PhD in Imaginal Psychology at Meridian University in Petaluma, California. She is working on a dissertation about healing the loss of the embodied voice in people with learning differences through VMT and imaginal psychology. She has also worked in Early Intervention Programs in Massachusetts and Sports Medicine at colleges in California. She recently completed her first year of the training in Voice Movement Therapy, known as the Experiential Program, and served her combined PhD internship and qualifying practical work for VMT as an intern at Alta Du Toit Skool in South Africa from February to December 2013."
