Bio

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I BELIEVE THAT:

Healthier humans are able to teach differently.

Healthier singers make more authentic art which the world needs now more than ever.

Your voice is a gift for you to treasure and enjoy however you want.

The liberation of a voice is inextricably linked to the liberation of a spirit, and this is my highest gift of service to the universe.

I love you and everything you do and I want to help.

I’ve got a lot of fancy training (a doctorate in voice, certification in Somatic Experiencing, a yoga teaching certificate, a LOT of Alexander Technique, and values-based business) and I bring it all to hold space for you to be everything you are in our work together.

Read more below if you wanna get real fancy about it.


 

My Work

That’s how I got curious about trauma.

My singing changed dramatically when I understood that what I was pursuing was a whole body activity. I practiced yoga and even completed yoga teacher training, I used dance, improvised movement, and eventually Alexander Technique to help me investigate patterns and habits that were inhibiting my freest sound. I first encountered the word trauma in relation to performing artists in Betsy Polatin’s Alexander Technique class at Boston University. I got curious about how this might affect singers specifically; if Alexander could help us look at our patterns and make more intentional choices, could trauma healing take us to the root of where those habits originated? From there, I started the six-year journey to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, certified to help people make sense of traumatic experiences, and my book Trauma and the Voice was born. For you!

Not just trauma informed,

trauma trained

As of January 2024, I’m fully certified in Somatic Experiencing, the trauma healing work developed by psychologist Peter Levine, Ph.D. My training started in 2018, and so far has led me into deeper exploration including Attachment Theory, Emotional Intelligence, and the neurological research emerging around self-compassion. 

My experience teaching public school music has also played a huge part in making this research real and applicable. My high school students were so fixated on compulsive overachieving as a way of life that they didn’t even know what they liked and didn’t like anymore. All of that was secondary to taking the hardest classes and getting involved in tons of extracurricular activities that would “look good” when they applied to colleges. When I began to teach at the university level, I could see exactly how that mindset inadequately prepared students to take the deep dive into becoming expressive artists; their experience in school did not encourage them to form strong opinions. They were fixated on the right answer. 

This led me to the work of school researcher Denise Pope, who founded Challenge Success through the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. The mission of Challenge Success is to partner with schools and communities to implement research-based strategies that foster student well-being and de-emphasize grades and test scores. The students we teach at universities have different needs than we did a generation ago. Collected date shows us that they are less resilient, less emotionally expressive, and less creative (and this was before the pandemic!). Some teachers just shake their heads at this and complain about the students, but there are real reasons why things are so hard for our students, and there are real strategies that teachers can employ to help anyone tap into self-trust, creativity, and expression.

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