be good | be love

In New York Open Center the Integrative Sound and Music certificate program starts its annual course in October. 

A comprehensive multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary and highly experiential approach to the study of sound, music and voice and their powerful effect on the mind, body and spirit. 

Now on its twelfth year, the program is headed by Silvia Nakkach who has been coordinating the program since 2014 as its lead facilitator.

How sound heals.

The course offers students an in-depth study of the therapeutic power of sound and music to transform consciousness and improve well-being. A certificate of completion is offered to those who meet the program requirements. No previous experience in music and sound work is required. 

An assortment of ancient & ageless sound instruments.

This year Silvia Nakkach introduces the first session with the cosmic and scientific concept of The Great Silence — approaching the concept of imagination as being free from the very beginning. We are presented with a fable that ponders the rifts between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic elements and their effects. 

Technology and science work together to generate new knowledge like cymatics which studies the form of sound and vibration. Creating devices for displaying nodal images that have influenced visual arts, contemporary music and vibro-acoustic expression.

Silvia addresses acoustemology - a term that conjoins the words acoustic and epistemology to refer to a sonic way of knowing and being in the world. 

The term was introduced by linguist, anthropologist and ethno-musicologist Steven Feld following his fieldwork among the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea. 

Larger than ourselves, this sound program, NY Open Center and New York City - this conversation strikes our hearts in a deep and personal note. Taking us beyond ourselves and out into the bigger scheme of things - Who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? 

In essence we are gathered here to produce our signature individual and collective sonic resonance. As we seek to define and describe highly developed practices of listening, hearing, and sounding - characterized in our engagement within an organic, orchestrated environment we choose to co-create together. 

Silvia stresses that it is imagination not the instrument that will evolve us and by extension our approach to the art and science of our sound practice. 

The ideal sound environment is a balance between the sound we generate and the silence that gives us the space to listen. 

It is easy to imagine ecstatic masters of old, in deep trance, devoted and dedicated to finding some means of sharing this divine experience among the uninitiated. 

Mesmerized and enthralled with these transformative teachings. We fall in deep, eager and excited to discover and develop ourselves, our healing and our sound practice. 

Mindful prayer. Mantra repetition. Sacred space.