Three Days of Sound Healing, Learning, and a Really Beautiful Group of People

I have been so excited to write about this week.

We had the absolute pleasure of welcoming Gabrielle Juliano-Villani, LCSW, to Peace of Mind for three full days for her Sound Healing for Clinicians training.

And it was AMAZING.

I knew I was going to love having this training here. Sound has been part of Peace of Mind for years, and so much of our work already looks at trauma, the nervous system, the body, mindfulness, regulation, and all the different ways people heal.

But this was different.

For three days, I got to watch this wonderful group of people learn together. They practiced. They asked questions. They shared what they were noticing and feeling. They gave each other feedback. They talked about their work. They talked about themselves. There was so much laughter and conversation happening in between everything Gabrielle was teaching.

We even got to stop and celebrate one of our wonderful participants' birthdays!

It was just such a beautiful group of souls.

By Friday, it was hard to believe most of these people had only been together since Wednesday.

And that might have been one of my favorite parts of the whole thing.

This was so much more than learning how to play a singing bowl

I think when people hear "sound healing training," they might picture a room full of singing bowls and people learning how to play them.

And yes, there were A LOT of bowls.

But this training went so much deeper than that.

Gabrielle taught about sound, the body, resonance, rhythm, nervous-system states, different instruments, and the different ways people can experience sound. The participants explored metal and crystal singing bowls, chimes, bells, drums, rattles, rain sticks, tuning forks, drone instruments, voice, and more.

What I really loved was that it wasn't taught as, "Here is an instrument. Here is what it does. Now go use it."

There was so much more thought behind it.

What does someone need?

How are they arriving?

What are you noticing?

What changes?

What feels settling to one person but not another?

When might sound be helpful?

When might it be too much?

When should we not use it at all?

Those are the conversations I want clinicians having.

Of course, we talked about trauma and the nervous system

Anyone who knows me knows there was no way we were getting through three days of this without talking a lot about trauma and the nervous system.

And we did.

The training explored resonance, entrainment, rhythm, states of activation and relaxation, and how sound may be experienced in the body.

But we also talked about something I think is even more important:

Not everybody experiences the same sound the same way.

Something can feel incredibly calming to one person and irritating to someone else.

Someone may love a particular instrument. Someone else may want it nowhere near them.

A person may find sound grounding one day and have a completely different response another day.

That is where the clinical piece becomes so important.

We are not deciding for someone else's nervous system what should feel good.

We are paying attention.

Trauma-informed also means knowing when not to use something

This was probably one of the parts of the training I appreciated most.

Sound wasn't presented as this magical thing that is good for everybody.

Because it isn't.

And that matters, especially when we are working with trauma.

The training spent a lot of time on choice, consent, pacing, sensory sensitivity, activation, dissociation, and how to recognize when someone's experience may be moving away from regulation instead of toward it.

They talked about screening too. Things like tinnitus and hearing devices, seizure history, migraines, sound sensitivity, implanted devices, dissociation, injuries, previous experiences with sound, and other things a clinician needs to consider before introducing it.

One sentence in the workbook really stood out to me:

"Deeper is not better."

I love that.

Because that applies to so much more than sound.

We don't need to push someone into a huge experience for something to be meaningful.

Sometimes three minutes is enough.

Sometimes quiet is enough.

Sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can do is notice that somebody has had enough.

And they practiced. A lot.

This was definitely one of my favorite parts to watch.

This wasn't three days of sitting in chairs listening to someone talk and then leaving with a workbook.

The participants were working with the instruments throughout the training.

They took turns practicing and receiving. They noticed what was happening. They talked about what worked. They gave each other feedback. They made changes and tried again.

By Friday, they were bringing what they had learned together and practicing more complete sessions.

I got to watch all of it.

And I loved watching how much more comfortable everyone became.

Wednesday felt like Wednesday.

People were learning. Figuring things out. Getting their hands on instruments they might never have touched before.

By Friday, the room felt completely different.

There was more ease.

More confidence.

More conversation.

More laughter.

And probably a lot more sound.

That is the kind of continuing education I love.

You aren't just hearing about something.

You are actually getting the opportunity to learn it.

We talked about the history too

Another thing I really appreciated about Gabrielle's training was the honesty around where some of these practices come from.

Sound has been used in ritual, community, music, spiritual practice, and healing traditions across cultures for a very long time.

But some of the stories that get repeated in the modern wellness world aren't quite as simple as they are sometimes presented.

Gabrielle addressed that directly.

The training talked about the histories of different instruments and traditions, cultural borrowing, the importance of knowing where something comes from, and not claiming a lineage or training that isn't ours.

I really appreciated that.

I think we can deeply appreciate a practice and still ask questions about it.

Actually, I think we should.

This wasn't training people to become music therapists

This distinction was important too.

Music therapy is its own profession with specific education, training, credentialing, and a research base.

That isn't what this was.

For clinicians, sound was being taught as an adjunct that can live within the work someone is already trained and licensed to do, while staying within their existing scope of practice.

They also talked about documentation, informed consent, clinical goals, and how someone would actually think about bringing sound into a real practice responsibly.

That made the training feel very grounded.

It wasn't just, "This feels amazing."

It was also, "Okay. What does responsible use of this actually look like?"

Both matter.

But honestly, I keep coming back to the people

The clinical information was wonderful.

The hands-on practice was wonderful.

Gabrielle was wonderful.

But when I think about the three days, I keep thinking about the group.

People came in ready to learn, but they were also so open with each other.

They shared their experiences.

They shared feelings.

They helped each other.

They encouraged each other when someone was trying something new.

Conversations kept going during breaks.

People laughed.

We celebrated a birthday.

And little by little, this room full of people who had come for a training started to feel like a little community.

You cannot force that.

You can make a space where you hope it happens.

And then sometimes you get lucky enough to watch it happen.

We did.This is what I want continuing education at Peace of Mind to feel like

This week made me even more excited about growing the continuing education side of Peace of Mind.

Of course clinicians need CE credits. Participants earned 15 continuing education hours over the three days.

But I want people to get more than credits when they come here.

If you are taking a day away from your clients, your practice, your family, and everything else you have going on, I want that day to be worth it.

I want to bring in trainers who know their material and who are willing to have real conversations.

I want continuing education for counselors and therapists in New Jersey that is actually interesting.

I want us talking about trauma.

The nervous system.

Somatic work.

EMDR.

Ethics.

Clinical practice.

Burnout and vicarious trauma.

Creative and holistic approaches.

And all of the places where those things overlap.

I want experienced clinicians and brand-new clinicians learning next to each other.

I want people to be able to ask questions without feeling like they should already know the answer.

I want people practicing.

I want conversations happening during lunch that weren't on the agenda.

I want people exchanging information because they met somebody doing work they are interested in.

I want people leaving with something they can actually bring back to their work.

And I want people to enjoy being here.

Because learning can be serious without every minute of it feeling serious.

This week was such a good example of that.

If you wanted to be here this time

A few people reached out about this training after it had already filled, which I hate.

So we started a waitlist for the next one.

If you want to be first to know when we schedule Sound Healing for Clinicians again, you can add your name to the waitlist here.

More NBCC continuing education trainings are coming

We are continuing to grow professional training opportunities at Peace of Mind in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, including NBCC continuing education trainings for counselors and mental health professionals.

I want these trainings to feel different.

Not because we need to reinvent continuing education.

I just want them to feel like us.

Warm.

Clinical.

Curious.

Experiential.

Trauma-informed.

Thoughtful.

And human.

A place where we can take our work very seriously and still laugh together.

A place where there is room for research and room to say, "We don't know that yet."

A place where people can learn something new without having to pretend they already know how to do it.

And apparently, a place where we might stop everything for a little while because someone has a birthday and that deserves to be celebrated too.

Thank you, Gabrielle

Gabrielle, thank you for bringing Sound Healing for Clinicians to Peace of Mind and spending three full days with us.

The amount of thought that went into this training was obvious.

The workbook alone moved participants from understanding sound and experiencing the instruments, into clinical application, trauma-informed practice, safety and consent, and finally into integrating what they had learned through practice.

And thank you to every single person who came.

You really were such a beautiful group of souls.

I loved watching you learn.

I loved hearing the conversations happening around the room.

I loved watching you encourage each other.

I loved how comfortable everyone became together.

I loved celebrating a birthday in the middle of it all.

And I am so grateful that Peace of Mind got to be the place where all of this happened for three days.

I already cannot wait for the next one.

Peace of Mind Yoga, Counseling, and Wellness Center has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7424. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Peace of Mind Yoga, Counseling, and Wellness Center is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.