Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

the presence of the imminent death of a family member or someone very
close, there is a sense of no time and all time being present at one and the
same time. I call this state a healing space. There is often a sense of
things falling into place, or a sense of being guided in this time. I believe
it is because there is no place for the ego in the presence of someone
dying. There is therefore less of a barrier to the Self. There is something
very precious about this experience, and even in the presence of
enormous sadness it can feel like a gift.
Case study
It is now time for my case history. In it you will see that the experiences
of time can be explained in terms of synchronicity, but not of causality.
The time experienced in the sessions made no distinction between what
in normal consciousness we term the future, past and present. In
allowing this information it was possible for my client to integrate
material from the unconscious into consciousness and use it to arrive at a
new solution.
Jane was 60 and had heard of GIM from a friend. Her mother’s mental
state was deteriorating and she now felt there was no longer any hope of
developing the relationship she had always longed for. Her father had
died the year previously and she had brought her mother to live close by
her, but the reality of the distance between them in terms of relating was
extremely distressing. Jane was an artist and a therapist. Her parents
were members of a fundamentalist Christian group throughout their lives
together and she had been brought up in this extreme lifestyle. The only
music that was allowed at home was religious music acceptable to the
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