What Is Psychedelics Integration, or Integration Itself?
Integration circles, set and setting, preparation, guides, facilitators, retreats…what does it all mean, and why does it matter to someone who’s considering using psychedelics for the first time?
It is important to understand the preparation/journey/integration cycle, and, since this awareness is evolving in the psychedelic community right now with much more publicity, cutting through all the noise is more important than ever before.
This page offers a conversation-starting article: a white paper authored by Bill Protzmann, Founder and Consulting Educator at Music Care Inc dba Musimorphic™.
June, 2023
The Purpose of This Article
This article is an attempt to reverse-engineer a process that, in the psychedelic arts, bears very little resemblance to dualistic thinking: the process of integration. Whether sparked by a psychedelic journey or a numinous experience of any kind, the underlying assumption of the process of integration is that some form of awareness has taken place and must be incorporated more fully into one’s psyche, practical daily life, and spiritual growth.
The difficulty of this process is to somehow bridge a gap that only exists in the Western, Cartesian paradigm: binary compartmentalization. That is, while Western thought posits, for example, a body separated from a soul and a mind-based “self” that controls things, the indigenous psychedelic arts see no difference between body and soul and mind and spirit – a cultural ethos where this unified framework underlies existence itself.
Paradoxically, this more holistic notion has been gaining traction with binary cultures for several hundred years, although setbacks such as the North, Central, and South American genocide of indigenous peoples and the current anti-trans fervor in American conservative politics indicate that there is still a long way to go.
Nevertheless, bridges between numinous experience and real life must be built if one is sincere about using ineffable awareness for good. We will explore how to do this, beginning with the most recent background on integration as a practice and concluding with suggestions for how to make the process most relevant and useful to you, dear Reader.
The Setup
In August of 2022, a paper on integration authored by Geoff J. Bathje, Eric Majeski, and Mesphina Kudowor of the University of Chicago was published in the professional journal Frontiers in Psychology: “Psychedelic Integration: An analysis of the concept and its practice” (accessed in June 2023 for this article).
The following quote from that article illustrates a fundamental opportunity for Western practitioners of the psychedelic and integrative arts:
“Western participants may not possess adequate cultural references to comprehend complex, abstract, and symbolic content that often emerges with psychedelics, necessitating therapeutic support throughout the process, including during the integration stage. Still, we must acknowledge that treating integration as a separate phase of psychedelic experiences probably imposes Western dualistic thinking.”
We argue that Western cultures DO possess more than “adequate cultural references to comprehend complex, abstract, and symbolic content that often emerges with psychedelics,” and that “therapeutic support” – we assume this means “psychological support” – is therefore too narrow a restriction on the integrative process.
In addition, we contend that the Western interest in the indigenous psychedelic arts is further evidence of a fundamental missing piece in the practices of Western psychology and religion, a hunger that has yet to be satiated even by the growing presence of modalities such as yoga and the esoteric extra-religious arts in Western cultures and that this fundamental need has been systematically deepened at least since the period of the American Enlightenment.
The Problem
Bathje et al make the point that:
“Westerners may particularly need support for integration due to first needing to disintegrate limiting mental structures, then orient and adjust toward new, more authentic, and integrated ways of being that may be unknown to them, within the context of a culture that may define them as abnormal for doing so.”
If you, dear Reader, have ever felt at odds with the mainstream around you, or have performed in such an exemplary way that it calls attention to your outstanding abilities, or have even been slapped down for doing your best and exceeding some artificially normalized expectations for doing so, you have experienced a collision with what these authors call “limiting mental structures.” This is a primary obstacle to the process of integration.
For a dualistic Western mind to grapple successfully with a concept such as “reciprocity” can be overwhelming at first, but when a numinous or psychedelic experience calls one to do precisely that and offers one a vision of interconnectedness and pan-egoic “unity consciousness” (using a popular term), the invitation is not to be missed and cannot be ignored or successfully sublimated. In a dualistic paradigm, however, there is no touchstone of support for such awareness. This missing framework strands us clutching our engraved invitation to integrate with one foot in the boat and the other on dry land, unable to fully commit to the earth or to the voyage.
This bifurcation can feel like an existential threat, which is exactly the moral dilemma facing much of Western social and economic policy today. Good examples include the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. the crisis of worldwide debt, and climate change. How do we begin to shift our weight toward the boat without the collapse of the systems that we believe make the earth feel so solid beneath us? More poignantly, how do we bring these overwhelming issues home to the level of personal experience, and begin, little by little, to shift away from the individual limits we have chosen towards a more imaginative potential future?
That question illustrates the core of integration. It is a hard problem, and its answer must necessarily be interdisciplinary or it will be insufficient. We will begin to develop the answer from the standpoint of psychology, then move on to include extra-psychological aspects that make our response more holistic. Once we have a working theory of integration, we will examine how the theory supports the three arguments postulated above:
- That Western cultures DO possess the chops to deal with the content of the numinous or psychedelic experience;
- That psychology is not the sole purveyor of the integrative process;
- That we ignore the desire for what five hundred years of “enlightenment” has failed to provide at our own peril.
The Psychological Definition of the Integrative Process
Bathje et al offer this working definition of integration:
“Integration is a process in which a person revisits and actively engages in making sense of, working through, translating, and processing the content of their psychedelic experience. Through intentional effort and supportive practices, this process allows one to gradually capture and incorporate the emergent lessons and insights into their lives, thus moving toward greater balance and wholeness, both internally (mind, body, and spirit) and externally (lifestyle, social relations, and the natural world).”
While there are no problems with this definition per se, it doesn’t go far enough to truly embody the numinous or psychedelic experience. Why? Because it is, by design, based on (mostly) the best psychological research available to date, it must systematically ignore the many thousands of years of evidence external to psychology!
Missing, for example, is the inclusion of any practices such as the indigenous “vision quest,” mythological “heroic journey,” or modern “ego death” that have inspired seekers since before the common era in their search for spiritual responses to physical issues. These kinds of quests are essential to the work of integration since they illustrate – often dramatically – precisely how the process can work. How can a proposed definition of integration from a psychedelic experience fail so profoundly to mention the spiritual “quest” aspects of the experience? And what more maligned and banal word for numinous or psychedelic awareness could be chosen than “content?”
This intentional ignorance of the fundamental spiritual nature of a numinous, psychedelic, or even day-to-day experience of heightened awareness is part of the very reason people are so hungry to have one! With compassion, we understand that spirituality is a separate domain from psychology, but would it not be at the very least responsible for psychology to admit its limits, state them clearly, and offer us extra-scientific encouragement in this direction? A common term for such resultant spiritual insights these days is “downloads.” While clumsy, the term at least admits to inspiration and information that appears to come from without and deflects debate about its source. At the very least, it is somewhat more adroit than “content.”
The implication of effort and practice is apt. The integrative process takes work, and one ought to carry that implication into the numinous psychedelic journey even during preparation for it. The evidence seems to indicate that one could truly approach any self-awareness endeavor in a similar way, whether that is recovering from trauma or addiction (the domain of psychology), or seeking a greater connection with one’s purpose and meaning (the domain of religion). These are non-psychedelic examples of integrative processes that seek to “incorporate…emergent lessons and insights” in a desired to move “toward greater balance and wholeness,” whether that leads to sobriety or to a deeper understanding of one’s God.
Strangely, for psychologists, the authors of this condensed definition have failed entirely to mention the importance of relationship within integration. “Social relations” shows some awareness of the potential, but it comes nowhere near the indigenous appreciation for the interconnectedness of all beings, nor does it acknowledge in any way that the fundamental purpose of the psychedelic process itself is communal, not dualistically self-based and individual. While the individual person may gain individual insight, an integrative process that ignores the crucial requirement to benefit the group from one’s personal experience is insufficient and precludes the wider “unity” consciousness from its rightful place in the process.
Finally, the working definition here makes no mention of one of the most commonly articulated and anciently powerful words known to humankind: love, expressed most concisely as “lovingkindness.” Without judgment, can an experience of numinous or ineffable “content” exist devoid of love? Even the most terrifying psychedelic “bad trips” integrate through love, and evidence for this exists in thousands of years of literature and ancient philosophy, to say nothing of poetry, spiritual writing, sacred music, and indigenous wisdom as well as the growing anecdotal evidence available today. It feels patently irresponsible to define an integrative process without incorporating this vital word.
For the purposes of psychology, it’s wise to leave well enough alone. The caveat is that psychologically-based integration will by definition miss the very opportunities to help those most in need, leaving journeyers unsatisfied and as spiritually hungry as before the psychological integrative process. Please understand that this is not an indictment of every psychologist, but an attempt to expose the limits of professional psychological thinking as they exist within the very Western mindset that the authors of this definition first admit and then decline to transform.
A More Holistically Complete Definition
We propose this definition of integration, which avoids some of the shortcomings of the one offered above:
“Integration is one’s intentional, purpose-based engagement with the remembered aspects of a numinous or psychedelic experience in order to make sense of, work through, translate, and process those aspects so that they can be used practically to one’s benefit in daily life. Often, this can mean that one is guided to use either newly learned or deeply embodied mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical practices to explore and support aspects of one’s improved connectivity with others, one’s understanding of the universal timeless nature of all existence, and one’s approach to the ineffable nature of lovingkindness itself. Ongoing results of this process can include more satisfying internal balance and wholeness, improved lifestyle and social relations, and increased respect for the natural world.”
While it isn’t perfect, we believe this holistic definition offers a more durable invitation to those of us caught between the earth and the boat. It brings both the ineffable and the practical into the process. It incorporates existing practices and welcomes new ones. It offers external guidance alongside the process without becoming hardwired into it. Finally, it offers evidentiary results that can be understood and measured.
Most importantly, this holistic definition of integration is non-exclusionary. It functions at any level of awareness to encourage movement towards improvement. It welcomes relationships, spiritual awareness, and love with practical understanding. It invites the engagement of practices that, perhaps, must be “disintegrated” to free one for improved awareness. Most importantly, it positions objective results properly: as positive evidence of the improvement of consciousness, rather than as symptoms to be treated by medicine. This helps align our holistic definition of integration with most of the indigenous wisdom and many of the ancient healing practices known in the world.
For these very reasons, it seems logical to expect that The Professional will find many things wrong with our proposed definition. To those who find themselves challenged by this, we observe that Psychology itself most needs to “disintegrate limiting mental structures, then orient and adjust toward new, more authentic, and integrated ways of being that may be unknown.”
Let us turn now to the arguments proposed earlier, taken in order from macro to micro.
The Argument of Willful Ignorance
We have proposed that civilization ignores a desire for what five hundred years of “enlightenment” have failed to provide. We mean, in the most sincere sense, that the lesson of history has failed to teach us the most necessary truth about enlightenment. More than the consilience of the sciences, we have collectively failed to feed our spiritual hunger by integrating it within consilience, setting up a conflict of beliefs that may ruin everything.
If we look back over the advances in knowledge we can easily see how “improved” things have become since the Dark Ages. Technology is fascinating. Quantum gravity is compelling. The minute and maximal observations of our universe fascinate and enamor us. The scale and acceleration of information is staggering. However, at the same time, we have not yet done an equally admirable job of caring for one another, nor have we been skilled custodians of the rock we ride on. As these existential issues escalate, opportunities also abound, and many opportunists are rushing to meet them. At the same time, these issues have begun to paralyze things, from individual people to entire economies.
One proponent of artificial intelligence (AI), Dr Kim Solez of the University of Alberta, puts this in pithy perspective:
“I don’t worry that AI won’t give us the best answers. What I worry about is that we will refuse to use them.”
Dr Solez hits the nail hardest with this observation. Will we both want and be able to implement the answers that can fix things? One very big issue here is how we have demeaned much of the purpose of so many people’s lives, such that hopelessness, poverty, hunger, and social inequity have escalated profoundly in spite of civilization’s rich accomplishments.
One cannot begin to answer that question without consideration of the meaning-giving and meaning-supportive institutions that animate much of civilization’s collective purpose. In simple terms, if God is dead, what has replaced God? Technology? Science? Money? Materialism? Drugs? Trauma? Addiction? War? It’s a decent question, and if it had a compelling answer, perhaps there would be less interest in the numinous or psychedelic experience as a kind of emergency entrance toward what’s missing. Instead of a rush toward religion, for example, there’s a rush toward the psychedelic experience. That ought to tell us something about the results of both religion and psychedelic experience and how badly people want them.
Are we collectively hungry for a more durable sense of connection to one another? The evidence from both professional and pop psychology when it comes to mending or strengthening relationships is compelling. The explosion of me-centered social media content is understood by some as a cry for help – for meaning, not more meme-ing – and yet it feeds a truly morbid compunction many of us have that isn’t being fed any other way. The devolution of relationships is the opposite of what a psychedelic journey offers, and journeyers are, we suspect, ready to pivot.
That change, perhaps a third Enlightenment, won’t come as the result of AI, but it will come as more and more of us become aware of how unsustainable our pathway has become. The awareness will push back on the institutions, agencies, and organizations that we have entrusted with policy-making, with caring for our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health and safety. The transformation of all of that is guaranteed as is the re-emergence of a better and more durable structure that supports what some call “indigenous reciprocity,” some call “the commons,” and yet others call (and have called) love.
This is all highly theoretical, we know, but it is nothing more than a statement of what many seekers already believe, and has support at some of the highest levels of scientific and spiritual thought. It would be a mistake to ignore this trend in the integrative process.
As we peek over the cliff of artificial intelligence, this is the lesson of our post-modern moment: does our present “civilization consciousness” help us step off what we have assumed is solid ground and onto the boat that will carry us forward? If not, we must leave that tired old consciousness behind and carry only the memory of what it brought to us to keep us from regression in the future. The step off the land and onto the boat illustrates integration at its most macro and is a courageous step away from willful ignorance.
The Argument Against Psychology
Psychology doesn’t have an exclusive on the process of integration. While there are those of us who will be more comfortable integrating with guidance by a licensed psychotherapist or clinical social worker, it seems clear that, from our holistic definition of integration, the trade of comfort in the protocol for potential transformation is a poor one, a wasted opportunity. Many people will, of course, benefit from the psychedelic experience and guidance in the hands of a skilled psychotherapist, but the invitation to embrace the spiritual aspects of a numinous experience or psychedelic journey may go largely unaddressed within the licensed professions.
Not all psychologists are immune to the spiritual experience, of course. Robert A Johnson, a devout Episcopalian and renowned psychologist, has written widely on the numinous experience, relationships, dreams, joy, and transformation. His short books are inspirational and well-grounded in psychoanalytic practice, and the most salient of them to mention here is “Owning Your Own Shadow – Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche,” which is a spiritually-informed deep dive into the Jungian shadow journey. In this short book, Johnson makes a modern interdisciplinary case for “shadow work” that welcomes both the psyche and the soul – a case that we feel is essential to good integrative practice.
Those psychologists who are willing to bend the boundaries of their profession have exciting work waiting for them. Regulatory associations will balk at the suggestion that this extra-psychological work is urgently needed, but the explosion of extra-psychological certifications, particularly in the area of psychedelic-informed therapy, supports this assertion, and there is no shortage of demand for it!
Traditional psychology, like many of the sciences, continues to evolve in light of new evidence. Either it must, or it must become irrelevant. We argue here not for its demise, but for its transformation. One bright light is the movement towards interdisciplinary practice, which is enlivening all the “hard” sciences. Music and Art Therapy represent a combination of psychology with guided creative work. Interdisciplinary Chaplaincy programs combine psychology and religion. Neuroscience and psychology come together around musicology and philosophy in search of durable methods of finding and sustaining meaning and health. It’s not a good time to be myopically exclusionary.
We encourage Bathje et al to continue to stay open to the possibilities, especially when it comes to the process of integration, and to find partnerships with practitioners and those with profound experience who are committed to end states that psychology also envisions for the numinous and psychedelic experience. Their paper includes a list of more than 100 extra-psychological modalities that are in current use in integration; we encourage a deeper collaboration around these potentialities. More about this in the summary below.
The Argument FOR Western Culture
Bathje et al observe kindly that, thanks to our imbedded mindset, Westerners need perhaps more tender loving care than other cultures when it comes to integration, and we agree. Where we disagree is in the assumption that Western cultures do not have the built-in ability to deal with a numinous or psychedelic experience, with or without integration, without the support of psychology.
The anecdotal evidence pre-dating modern civilization shows that even the most average humanoids respond very deeply to holistic stimuli. Those whose observations found publication in epic poetry, wisdom literature, song or musical composition, fine art, and literature are the ones we know of, but these leaders would not have risen to popularity without an audience. For the moment, since the allegation is towards Westerners, we will leave the similar ancient influences and their acolytes of the East aside, but one could make a similar observation about those cultures while also acknowledging that Eastern philosophies have made perhaps further progress in shifting their weight towards the boat than we Westerners.
What the argument against Western culture misses so profoundly is that there is a technology, familiar to everyone today, that works holistically and simultaneously on the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects of one’s being instead of compartmentalizing those aspects such that one particular discipline works with the mind, another with the heart, a third with the spirit, and yet another with the body. This ancient technology welcomes all four aspects together as a whole and unites them in pursuit of whole-ness. The tip of this iceberg is represented by what as come to be known as “The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Study” playlist, and yes, you guessed it: this ancient technology is music.
Thanks to research in music therapy, it has become widely understood that the “best” music for each one of us – meaning the music likely to have the most impact on us when heard – is music that we already love. The reason Johns Hopkins stays at the tip of the musical playlist iceberg is their dedication to protocol in willing defiance of the research. For the best possible effect, each psilocybin study participant would be permitted to select their preferred music (or none at all), but Johns Hopkins was more interested in the consistency of protocol-based results than in maximizing the benefits of the psychedelic experience for study participants. One potential risk of that choice was that study participants could have unanticipated reactions to selections in the defined music playlist. That is, one participant might enjoy the same piece of music that negatively triggered someone else. Ah well; that’s why we have research.
Our point here is that, in the integration process, we miss an opportunity if we selectively engage only, say, the mental and emotional aspects of integration, and exclude or miss the physical and spiritual. In the sense that the Western mind may operate from a different paradigm than the Eastern one, we agree. However, once all aspects of being are engaged – mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual – these cultural biases begin to dissolve. In this example, the Johns Hopkins playlist also tramples on cultural differences that might appear in music, and chooses a narrower focus that might be described as restricted to merely mental and emotional aspects of the psychedelic journey; even in this realm, negative triggering is possible.
Psychedelics themselves are a full-MEPS experience. Therefore, ought not the integration of that experience also reach into all four aspects of being? For example, if in the integration process, one has connected a particular piece of music with a desire for bringing a “download” into real-life practice, that music can unlock a holistic connection with that person’s mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual (MEPS) engagement and immersion in the process. Clearly, the most powerful music in this situation would not be music that is culturally insensitive or triggering. How does this work? The question is apt and the answer is too big to cover here. We refer you, dear Reader, to a library of how-to on the subject, featuring the modern collected works of Dr Oliver Sacks, neuroscientist and psychologist Daniel Leviton, musicologist Ted Gioia, and the far-back-shelf works of Homer, the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, as well as the journals of many well-known composers, including modern rock stars. But we digress…
The point is that music is a full-MEPS evidence-based integration technology widely available that is basically free, safe, effective, and doesn’t require a huge learning curve to master and deploy. Because the music that any given client/patient loves is the best music to use, music as a MEPS tool is also immediately culturally adapted and customized for each person.
So we respectfully beg to differ with those who believe Westerners don’t have the chops to integrate effectively from a numinous or psychedelic experience. Westerns have been integrating with ritual music experiences quite successfully for a long, long time, thank you very much. In fact, it happens ceremonially, just like the best psychedelic experiences. Ted Gioia explains this better than anyone:
“What happens when you combine words and music in a particularly charged setting where some kind of transcendence is pursued (and sometimes actually achieved)? We have a word for this intersection: it’s called a ritual. But other people might describe it as a rock concert, or a rave, or a visit to a jazz club.”
In Praise of The Same Study We’ve Been Criticizing
To “steel man” ( as opposed to “straw man”) the paper for which we’ve offered such criticism, we want to acknowledge that the authors, in spite of some shortcomings, do acknowledge the constraints of their profession when it comes to the potential for integration and the various modalities that might support it, particularly their favorable nod towards indigenous ceremonial practices.
One of the most useful aspects of the paper is an illustration, replicated nearby, that offers a “synthesized model of integration” that we feel is quite useful.
Synthesized model of integration: The hexagon reflects six interconnected domains of existence, with the more personal ones toward the center. The outer ring reflects continuums on which integration activities can be placed. The goal is a balance of integration activities addressing all domains of living.
We would also like to include this quote as a tip of the hat to the authors for their understanding and acknowledgment of the numinous or psychedelic experience:
“Contrary to common belief, rather than doing the healing for us, psychedelics may give us an experience of and orientation toward wholeness, along with an insight into the barriers and misalignments that will need to be addressed to continue toward or maintain wholeness.”
Summarizing Integration
It seems helpful to summarize what we know of the various modalities that might come into use during the process of integration and to offer some perspective on the popular uses for these modalities. Why? Pictures and all that help, yes, but more importantly we want to offer an invitation.
That is, let us invite psychologists and other practitioners towards a more spiritually-informed practice of the craft. That is, let us invite religious pastors, ministers, and chaplains to extend themselves into connection with psychological tools that can be easily learned and put to use, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). And let’s encourage everyone toward a more skillful practice of spirituality.
Finally, to really find common ground, might we consider the underlying aspects of being that are at work in the integration process more closely? You’ve seen them before: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual (MEPS). We believe that the potential for any given integration tool or modality can be assessed based on its ability to tick all four of the MEPS boxes. For example, the primary purpose of yoga is to quiet the body, whereas the primary purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind. Combining yoga and meditation, as they are meant to be used, offers a more holistic MEPS tool than using one or the other alone. Similarly, psychology operates on the mental and emotional aspects and not at all on the physical.
The numinous or psychedelic journey itself engages all aspects of MEPS. Integrating the “content” of that experience most successfully must, therefore, be a full-MEPS process as well.
The nearby non-exhaustive chart gives a snapshot perspective on how a few of the more popular integration tools or modalities stack up in relationship to their perceived, popular connection with mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual (MEPS) affective aspects. For ease of use, we’ve cataloged the modalities according to their popular use: break/fix, expanded awareness, and hybrid (both break-fix and expanded awareness).
This chart is non-judgmental and non-exclusionary! While we understand that spiritual, expanded awareness can take place in psychotherapy for a broken relationship, for example, the intervention of psychoanalysis in a relationship is popularly understood as a mental/emotional one.
We’ve already mentioned the aspects of yoga and meditation which, when combined, are a more fully-realized MEPS tool when yoga is used primarily for exercise and meditation for calming the being.
The irony of the psychedelic experience, of course, is that in the hands of a skilled shaman/practitioner or experienced journeyer, it is itself a full-MEPS integration tool.
The full-MEPS integration process practiced by Musimorphic is listed last in the chart for completeness.
Working together, if we do this right, we could turn the whole chart green. How? By offering journeyers a wider perspective on what the various modalities can do, we free journeyers to incorporate a more holistic vision of the possibilities in the numinous or psychedelic journey.
Conclusion
We have offered a conversation about the challenge of describing the process of integrating “content” from a numinous or psychedelic journey and proposed a more holistic definition of that process. We advocated for a pathway towards integration that is grounded in Western culture but that more fully incorporates an awareness of and movement toward the spiritual and communal. We supported this invitation both with modern scientific research and historical inference and offered examples of the misdirection in modern practice that do not lead us toward goodness and holism.
Finally, we encouraged the integration community toward a more collaborative approach, measured in specific underlying aspects of being-ness, that could serve to strengthen public perception of the processes currently in use to bring results and awareness from the numinous or psychedelic journey into a more unified pan-egoic connection in real life. This full-MEPS invitation, considered carefully and with curiosity, could be at the foundation of all practices and modalities, from spiritual and shamanic to scientific and clinical. That is, below the operational methods of psychology and perhaps fundamental to them could there be universal tools that function on the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects of being, tools that are shared by all integration practitioners and essential to the success of the integration process itself? We believe that the answer is yes.
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Bill Protzmann’s first book, “More Than Human – The Value Of Cultivating The Human Spirit In Your Organization,” became an international Amazon best-seller in the business and spirituality categories when it was released on the day of the 2017 total solar eclipse.
For his groundbreaking work developing music as a modality for self-care, the National Council for Behavioral Healthcare honored Bill with an Inspiring Hope award, the industry equivalent of winning an Oscar.
In 2011, Bill formed Music Care Inc, the for-profit corporation that supports his teaching, speaking, performing, and publishing, and launched the Musimorphic™ brand in 2022. He lives in North San Diego County, California with his wife, California plein-air artist Rebecca Noelle. Each month, you may find him leading a public sing-along in Balboa Park.