with Michele Lees, friend and movement therapist

Barbara Nussbaum 62 11tth Street Parkhurst, Johannesburg SOUTH AFRICA 2193 27-11-788-7281 (home office) 27-82-628-1886 ( mobile) email www.Barbara-Nussbaum.com

with Bishop Mvume Dandala, writer and exemplar of ubuntu wisdom

What is an underlying question that gives form to your work or interest in this field?

What role can music play in creating the context for the deepening of collective wisdom?

In what way can concepts derived from African culture enrich our understanding of how individuals and groups create enabling conditions for wisdom, compassion and wholeness to emerge in groups?

What is your personal experience of collective wisdom in groups?

I feel expansion in my heart. I feel moved by the ways in which the intense purity of a powerful silence; a silence which holds a shared and deeply felt resonance, ripples out silently, flowing, amplifying the unspoken bonds of our shared humanity.

I feel the spontaneous delight of enthusiastic energy when wisdom bursts out in expected surprises in small groups of people working with the intention to co-create.

What is it about the work in this field that excites you and connects you to your own deepest self?

My present work lies in harnessing music to deepen intuitive awareness and collective intelligence in groups. Music is the bridge which for me, links essence, imagination and expression of the intangible aspects of our lives. It is through music that I hear the deepest layers of my soul and in listening to the musical choices of others that I connect to their souls.

I am deeply moved by a profound belief in our common humanity which is released when groups heal collectively. A Zulu sage in South Africa once described the interconnectedness of our common humanity as ubuntu, “My wealth is your wealth; your pain is my pain; your salvation is my salvation.”

Ubuntu fascinates me and lies at the core of my exploration about some of the universal human underpinnings of this invisible bedrock which is the gold of collective wisdom. The experiences that have evoked “universal tears” within me, arise when I feel the immense power of exemplars of isithunzi, (concern for the wellbeing of the larger group) be it Nelson Mandela’s compassion, or women in the Truth Commission helping each other to find the wisdom of forgiveness for policemen who killed their sons.

Please provide a brief storyline or snapshot of what brought you to this work.

A profound personal experience, recognizing the power of movement and music to inspire healing, led me to embrace the field of creative arts therapies in the early 80’s.

For my dance therapy thesis, I studied 40 traditional African dances in Zimbabwe, and learned about the role of music and dance in traditional African culture. I learned from a variety of traditional (indigenous) healers, about the connection between music, consciousness and group healing.

At the end of the first year of study as a dance therapist, at the age of thirty, I developed acute arthritis in both knees. I danced less and less and honed the skills of listening with greater consciousness and imagination. My body and soul began to hear the music more intensely and with more subtlety. I learned how to listen to music differently and how to sense layers and textures of the music with more “inward” kinesthetic awareness. I then began to develop a methodology for integrating music and conscious awareness, and slowly started applying the work to individual and group transformation.

During the nineties, at Wits Business School, I co-authored a book about African values and the role these played in humanizing corporate culture in the work place (Lessem, R and Nussbaum, B: Sawubona Africa, Embracing Four Worlds in South African Management). I learned even more about African culture, and how the capacity for reconciliation within groups is such a powerful part of the gift of this culture’s heritage. I learned and experienced a concept I feel moved to write about a great deal – ubuntu. Ubuntu is the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening community.

Since 2001, as an adjunct faculty member of the Spiritual Leadership Institute in Houston, I formalized my work in the art of reverential listening, to self and other, through the medium of music. Dr Steve Byrum and Dr Leland Kaiser and Michael Annison, all fellow faculty members, have been mentors who have given me tools for understanding and self clarification.
Contact and dialogue, during the last two years, with Sheryl Erickson, Alan Briskin and Renee Levi have paved a rich pathway to find both a language and a community for continued articulation of my work.

How would you like to be available to others in this field?

I have developed a respectful methodology to enable people to become more intimate with their inner essence through music. Attuning to the other through music deepens the intimacy and awareness in groups. I call this reverential listening, which is grounded in a more intuitive, sensed pathway to knowing and understanding people. People learn to reach new levels of mutual and shared resonance through a felt non-verbal connection. I work with music tracks, on CDs chosen by fellow members.

I am very happy to share this methodology and would be happy to be included in your program at retreats, workshops and teambuilding events. The music for team building works best in groups of no more than 10 - 12 people, where there is a time slot of about 2-3 hours.

I am also very open to co-creative work with anyone who feels there is synergy between our work. I love to talk to people about ubuntu and isithunzi and to contribute to dialogue and research on the values and knowledge that indigenous peoples contribute to this field of collective wisdom.

I delight in thinking with fellow travelers and am open to conversation with anyone in the field about work which draws you. If you feel that I would be an insightful listener and thinking partner. E mail is good, phone calls are even better.

Links to this site or others:

www.Barbara-Nussbaum.com