Melinda Gardiner is a Registered Nurse and Certified Music Practitioner (CMP)® , with over 50 years of study, teaching and work in integrative healing and medicine.
From 1969 to 1977, Melinda was a senior student of Michio and Aveline Kushi studying, and then teaching traditional Japanese healing, food preparation and arts.
From 1980 to 1999, Melinda studied The Therapeutic Touch extensively with Dolores Krieger, RN, PhD and Dora Kunz. She has taught Therapeutic Touch at various venues, including Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson, NY, and created the modality of Unitative Listening, based on the process of Therapeutic Touch, for the Music for Healing & Transition Program in the training of Certified Music Practitioners.
As the Treatment Coordinator in the Medical Office at Camphill Village, Copake, NY, from 1984 to 2004, Melinda was part of an integrative medicine practice using the indications of Anthroposophical medicine for a community of about 230 people.
She completed Level I and Level II Sound and Tone Training with Don Campbell at the Institute for Music, Health and Education in 1993-1994, studied the traditional use of sound during her apprenticeship from 1980 to 1996 with Native American elder OhShinnah Fast Wolf, and intensively studied Gregorian chant with Father Columba Kelly at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey in Indiana in 2002.
As a clinician, singer and harper, Melinda has been offering therapeutic music to patients in many settings since 1990. She became a Certified Music Practitioner in 1998.
Melinda is a liturgical musician and cantor at Our Lady of Hope Church, Copake Falls, NY since 1984.
She is the co-author of two books: Shadows of the Living Light and Five Songs for Therapeutic Musicians.
Melinda founded Nemeton Productions, and between 1987 and 2015 produced over 70 concerts and workshops featuring recognized masters of traditional Scottish, Irish and American folk music.
She was an Executive Board member or the Executive Director for the Music for Healing and Transition Program, Inc.(MHTP), a national 501c3 educational organization, from 1998 to 2017, and remains a faculty member of MHTP. Melinda was one of the founders of the National Standards Board for Therapeutic Musicians, and a Board member until 2017.
Currently Melinda is dedicated to learning Gaeilge (Irish) and studying sean nós singing, as well as continuing to offer webinars, retreats and therapeutic and liturgical music.