The certificate course „Resource-oriented Music Imagination (RoMI)“ (formerly Music-imaginative Methods).
1. History
Since its beginning in 2008 the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM) training offered by IMIT (Primary Trainer: Isabelle Frohne-Hagemann) included Music-Imaginative Methods in Level I, II and III with the intention to add relevant receptive music techniques for groups, based on concepts of Integrative (Music) Therapy, to BMGIM. These techniques focused on a gradual, mindful and low threshold access to the clients’ sensitivities, resources and anxieties.
As most graduates of the BMGIM training programme taught at IMIT work in clinical settings with severely disturbed patients, it seemed necessary to take the resource-oriented mindful concept further. In 2016 six IMIT graduates (Fellows of AMI) formed a team in order to develop the programme as an independent certificate course for music therapists and psychotherapists working in clinical contexts. This course was also designed as a prerequisite for the advanced training in BMGIM, thus covering the contents of Level I and II of the BMGIM Training. Once some members of the team had been trained by Isabelle Frohne-Hagemann as IMIT trainers for MiMe , the method was offered as independent courses in Germany and Switzerland. Each MiMe training which took place so far was thoroughly evaluated and continuously developed.
In 2022 it was decided to change the name of the programme into Resource-oriented Music Imagination (RoMI), which is more appropriate.
The use of RoMI is an alternative to the use of BMGIM when therapists work in hospitals with psychologically often severely ill people for whom the uncovering work with BMGIM is still too challenging. The use of resource-oriented music imagery can prepare for work with the Bonny Method and can also be used in work with groups. RoMI supports important learning processes, for example, to promote body awareness and mindfulness, to expand the ability to experience, to stimulate creativity and imagination, to promote mentalisation processes and to improve the ability to differentiate and regulate emotions.
Building on the competences of psychotherapeutic and musical education, the trainees in the basic and intermediate levels of the BMGIM Training are sensitized during the RoMI modules 1-3 or 4 (in Switzerland) for the specific therapeutic needs of their clients in relation to the potential of music and imagination.
3. General description
While BMGIM is characterised that between the therapist and the client a dialogue takes place while listening to music in a slightly altered state of consciousness, there is no dialogue in RoMI. BMGIM is a method that promotes the exploration of different dimensions of consciousness and triggers very deep soul processes. If this is still contraindicated (e.g. for clients with a poorly integrated psychological structure), the work with BMGIM must first be prepared, often in the long term, through approaches in Resource-oriented Music Imagination.
RoMI is characterised by working in different settings. RoMI techniques are not only used in the dyadic context, but also in group therapy. Clients may be sitting with eyes open while listening to individual pieces of music. Listening to music is focused on a specific topic. Before the listening phase there may be insentives included like a special focus on a theme, working with poems, photos, fairy tales and processing may include intermedial transfers, etc..
RoMI tries to promote listening as an act of engaged relating and activating a client’s creative shaping skills. Mindfulness is one of the conditions to handle being involved or distanced in the music, to mentalise experiences and to regulate affects. The mindful work with single pieces of music is a safe field for a low threshold exploration of imaginations and also for one’s projections and the simultaneously contained affective spheres, different emotions and inherent ambiguity in music.
Music (not only classical music) is used in a variety of ways, e.g. to promote the ability to perceive and imagine or to express oneself creatively (by painting, dancing, writing poems or stories) or to anchor resources better, to focus on dystonic patterns and conflicts, and so on.
4. Entry requirements
They are the same as for the advanced level in BMGIM: applicants will be admitted who are psychotherapeutically trained and clinically experienced specialist therapists (e.g. music therapists, art therapists, Gestalt therapists, licensed psychotherapists, psychiatrists and medical doctors for psychotherapeutic or psychosomatic medicine with previous musical training). Furthermore, a minimum of two years of psychodynamically informed clinical work and continuous supervision are required. The trainer decides in an individual interview on the therapeutic and musical suitability and the ability to engage in an imaginative process through music.
5. Evidence has to be submitted for certification as a RoMI – Therapist
- 16 guided RoMI sessions,
- 5 of which supervised RoMI sessions (including prepared short psychodynamic and diagnostic assessments, preliminary discussions, inductions, music choice, resonance mandalas/intermedial transfers and processing postludes).
- Analyses of 2 different pieces of music
- 6 received RoMI sessions
- given and recommended articles read
- Created music archive
- 3 written and recorded inductions and talk-overs
- Colloquium
The required RoMI certificate entitles the holder to continue training at IMIT in the BMGIM (advanced level) graduation course.