Currently Mandy is known in New Norfolk for her beautiful and calming music and sometimes voice that flows in the moment. She plays on a weekly basis at The Arthouse while people are enjoying coffee. This is a unique way to play music. It is not so much a performance, feedback from one customer is you find yourself sitting in the music.
Mandy also host's guests from all over the world in her home, her art and her music is the perfect place to share her talents in simple ways.
About Strings of Colour and Mandy Cruickshank’s Journey
Mandy’s musical journey began one day as she was asked to dance her life. Her immediate response was to burst into tears, her life suddenly flashing before her and she saw a part of her soul that yearned to play music. Not much later whilst revisiting some colour therapy training that was camping in the Centre of Australia, a small lyre was placed in her hands as she picked her colours for the day. Again the urge to burst into tears.
Upon returning to Hobart she accessed a small cardboard box harp 16 strings especially made for her by a lady in Launceston. She eagerly started music lessons, but found her most magic moments was sitting in front of the fire tinkering. She soon became aware that the harp was playing a part in healing grief that was currently in her life. As the healing happened, she sold her rotary hoe to a neighbour and purchased a bigger harp.
It was a lovely harp, a second hand one, some of the joy diminished as the strings would not hold properly. Whilst visiting her father-in-law Ralph Cruickshank, a retired musician, among other skills she admired his handcrafted wooden toys, she jokingly suggested that he could perhaps make her a harp. His response was to start the next day. Nine months of research, crafting and joy began for Ralph. It was a craft of love that bonded both Mr Cruickshank and his daughter-in-law. Upon finishing Mandy recognised that her harp was not just an instrument crafted with Tasmanian timbers, it was an instrument that somehow held the love within it.
And that love has flowed from the harp ever since. There is a story where the harp has been placed on the banks of the Styx Valley, on a beautiful day with a group of ladies. Mandy stopped playing to take a photograph and realised with the gentle consistent puffs of wind the harp took up its own tune. And it played that way for the rest of the day. There were many reports of healing that went back to Hobart.
The journey continued, both training on line with therapeutic Harpists and by attending therapeutic Harp seminars in Melbourne with Peter Roberts and Christine Tourane. Her most powerful moments of learning have been some what unusual to the normal way and these ways don’t come with a piece of paper. But early in her training she achieved with absolute ease, the ability to allow her fellow student to feel powerfully held energetically cradled in music. Intuitively she played the strings of a harp with no musical structure whatsoever; she simply made use of particular strings to bring the required sense of being wrapped in music which is the ultimate goal in Harp therapy.
Since then Mandy has held many people within a cradle of music. She has worked with people with extreme anger and trauma allowing the suppressed memory to arise safely as the free-flowing music vibrations have worked on the body, but also given a space in the mind for painful emotions to be processed within the individual notes of music and gently let go of.
Some people have experienced a sense of cleansing within their energetic bodies. She has played for a couple who experienced an electrical storm creating havoc and felt that they had received an electric shock in their bodies. The harp cleared both the house and the discomfort felt in the body due to the electrical current.
Her journey continued taking confidence in her free flowing meditative music, playing in a Hobart cafe about to change the music then suddenly realising the customer enjoying coffee was also deeply emerged in the simple healing music.
She played for many years in the Department of Psychological Medicine in the Royal Hobart Hospital on a voluntary level. There are different responses and at times the staff drop in for a couple minutes to feel the calming music.
Mandy has played for Oncology patients at the Royal Hobart Hospital. And that is where the real training happens at the bedside. You offer a simple piece of music improvised in the moment. Within the business of the Hospital ward you suddenly with the offering of the music create a sacred space.
Many different but profound responses were experienced often by a similar same piece of music slightly altered according to the response of the patient. When you are doing this sort of work, as in her training “less is more “. You become more conscious of each string and giving it the space to have a voice.
She has also completed voluntary work in the Corrumbene Nursing home working within with all levels of Dementia. She has completed a 12-week University unit working with Dementia and the Arts Evidence Based. High distinctions were achieved.
She uses not just music, but also abstract art which allows her to use her knowledge of colour in a way that aligns with main stream therapy. Music and colour, both nonverbal languages, are carriage ways to help facilitate healing on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level. As with her music, her art is offered in a way that the client will process their own healing. One starts on a journey and for Mandy it is at times bumpy, but she is still going, aware that her work is a Ministry, a creative one implementing the use of colour and music.
She has a background in Counselling which grounds her ability to work on a higher level in the moment, with music and colour. She feels that working this way, the mind is bypassed allowing the space for creating an inner shift in Mental Health. In Oncology she saw patients being held in the music when the pain was intense. The opportunity to bring peace to palliative care situations simply playing in the corridor. She saw much more, and at times feedback was given leaving her feeling incredibly humble.
In dementia she sees different responses, it’s exciting when you see a patient move right into the music and the added image of their favourite colour opening a doorway to emotional/spiritual healing. Other days you know that beneath the drugs and dysfunctional behaviours that there is a sense of peace when you leave the dementia lounge.
The difference in Mandy’s Life training, as doors open and close, is that she plays her music from a different place in the brain which is in connection with the heart. She works constantly with a music teacher/harp therapist but never uses the songs, they just don’t seem right. They may open somebody to an emotional memory which can be healing, but the improvised music opens the mind to experience a letting go integrating emotional trauma in a way that does not take them back into the trauma. Instead they are left with elements of insight/forgiveness/ peace.
We all have, even within Dementia a part of the brain that is whole, and operates in the now. It is where unlimited grace and amazing creativity flows. People from all walks of life have healed themselves on all levels from this part of the brain. It’s really not something that can be taught. The only teaching is to facilitate people on a creative level to open to this part of the brain. That is the scientific explanation.
Mandy is aware that there is a great need for this work to expand and to minister to people. She sometimes feels an inner push to be somewhere with her harp and humbled to learn that whilst playing her simple music a person who had suicided came through in the music to let her mother know she was ok.
Mandy is aware that as we work creatively in art forms it allows us to move beyond the often chaotic mind and experience the embodiment of a higher love and presence. She has experienced this herself. She has opened up to working creatively with colour aligning her counselling skills helping people to experience the often negative emotions that block the peace or the ability to experience something of a higher nature.