Helen Bonny

By Carolyn Kenny and Barbara Hesser (Guest Editor)

On Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 a flurry of telephone calls and e-mails circled the world. Here’s an example of one of these many messages: “ I’m sad to let you know that Helen died peacefully this morning at 8:11 am.”

Indeed, Tuesday was a sad day. Yet in the midst of the regret, we all felt a tremendous sense of gratitude that we had known Helen Bonny and shared the many benefits of her work especially in the development of The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM).

From the early days of GIM, starting at the Maryland Psychiatric Institute in the 1960s to May 25th, 2010, the day Helen died, GIM has grown into an international movement.

The Bonny Foundation

Of the many experiences we have shared with Helen, perhaps the most notable were the months we spent setting up The Bonny Foundation: An Institute for Music-centered Therapies in Whitewater, Kansas.

Although we both knew Helen professionally since the early 1970’s it was at the Phoenicia, New York gathering in the mid-1980s that we began to know Helen as a friend as well as a colleague and to discover that the three of us shared many common beliefs about music therapy and hopes for the profession. We had many dialogues on wellness, music and consciousness, holistic practices, imagery, mythology, and the transpersonal movement. It was at Phoenicia in the summer of 1987 that we decided to work together to create a Center for music- centered therapies that acknowledged and built on these principles and was a place of dialogue and study of advanced music centered work and a place in nature for retreat and renewal.

In the summer of 1988 the Bonny Institute for Music-centered therapies, later to be known as the Bonny Foundation, was born. Helen had decided to move from Port Townsend in the Pacific Northwest back to Salina, Kansas close to where she had grown up and where she felt physically healthier due to the climate. A gift from Drs. Gladys and William McGarey, co-founders of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc. (ARE) Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, offered the support to establish our center in Kansas. They provided start up funds and a property in Kansas from which to begin our work. Edgar Cayce founded the original ARE association in 1931. So the establishment of The Bonny Foundation was an integrated part of a long history of development in transpersonal work. Together the McGarey’s had pioneered the integration of allopathic and holistic medical practices laying the groundwork for the cultural shift of recent years. It was the phoenix, a symbol representing continual growth and rebirth that came to represent so much to us in our work together and later became the logo for the Bonny Foundation.

Coming together in the center of the United States from our work in Santa Barbara, California and New York City we arrived at our new Center early in the fall -- a yellow barn with a metal roof in a brown and dry field in the middle of wheat and corn territory near Whitewater, Kansas.

The Legacy Lives On

During the early months of our collaboration we became aware that the first priority for the Center was to establish a place for the teaching and dissemination of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). We came up with the brand for Helen’s work, “The Bonny Method of GIM”, developed the Bonny Foundation newsletter, designed and offered GIM trainings with the assistance of Lisa Summer and Fran Goldberg, liaised with other Kansas Institutes interested in transpersonal work, and met to discuss every aspect of what it would take to clarify and guarantee the legacy of The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music.

Our moments with Helen during these nine months were full of dialogues, laughter, fellowship, and the great wind that sweeps across the prairies. We will miss our dear friend and colleague. But we will always treasure the memories of our experiences with her. Undoubtedly, her beautiful legacy lives on.

Invitational Special Issue of Voices dedicated to Helen Bonny

The November 1, 2010 issue of Voices will be an Invitational Special Issue dedicated to articles, interviews, and discussions about Helen and her work. For this special issue, Professor Lisa Summer will be joining our editorial team as a Guest Editor.