FACULTY
LEA GARNIER
As director of SAGE, Lea brings over 35 years of healing expertise in the healing arts field of sacred sound, art, yoga and Craniosacral therapy. A certified yoga instructor, she specializes in teaching the integration of SoundHealing and Sound Awareness (nada) in a yoga class setting. She has trained extensively in the ancient ways of sacred healing sound with curanderos from the Amazon and Sacred Valley of Peru. She has integrated their knowledge of ancient healing energies with the new scientific and contemporary studies from master teachers and mentors, such as Dr John Beaulieu, Silvia Nakkach, Don Conreaux, Diane Mandle, Tito LaRosa, and many other pioneers she has studied within the field of SoundHealing in the past 12 years.
In 2010, Lea co-founded the first East Coast Annual SoundHealing Intensive at Menla, NY. By creating a forum for pioneers of SoundHealing to share their knowledge, a platform was launched for in-depth studies that have contributed significantly to today's expansive and ever-growing field of sound practitioners worldwide. She now offers six SoundHealing training/retreat intensives a year in the lovely Catskill mountains of New York.
DON TITO LA ROSA
Ancient Andean wisdom teaches us that the earth was made while the creator sang. Thus, all beings are made of sound, rhythm and harmony. Tito is a sound healer, Andean musician, composer and recording artist. Through his concerts, flower ceremonies, and sound awareness classes, La Rosa helps reawaken our memories by weaving sounds into frequencies that open the heart and encourage the spirit to soar. La Rosa, a descendant of Quechua Indians of the Peruvian Andes, has spent more than a decade recovering, preserving, studying, and intuiting the ancestral music of Peru. Tito is a Curandero de Sonido – a sound healer. When performing rituals and ceremonies for healing, he enters into parallel worlds to bring forth a sound that elevates an individual's vibration and allows for healing and balance to occur.
He teaches sacred sound in a magical, experimental and experiential class - a journey through the acoustic universe of ancestral Peru. With him, you will explore the uses of the instruments and their applications to heal the body, mind, and spirit. Working with a variety of instruments such as whistling vessels, zamponas, bamboo flutes, patutos (conch shells), ceramic antaras, feathers, seeds, shakapas, bells, and drums, Tito makes you discover their uses in healing and their connection to the realm of spirit. A master in exploring how to use these instruments in ceremonies and rituals, his teachings are taught using the knowledge and principles of the Cosmovision of the Peruvian Andes. It is a powerful yet simple course on how to work shamanicly with sound. Its teachings apply to all of life.
Dr. John Beaulieu, N.D., Ph.D.
One of the foremost philosophers and major innovators in sound healing therapies. A world-renowned speaker, composer, pianist, and naturopathic doctor, Dr. Beaulieu has pioneered a technique called BioSonic Repatterning™), a natural method of healing and consciousness development using tuning forks and other sound modalities based on the sonic ratios inherent in nature. As the founder of BioSonic Enterprises, he has developed and distributed over 50 sound healing-related products, including tuning forks, instructional videos, audio programs, CDs and books. Dr. Beaulieu is the groundbreaking author of Human Tuning, Music and Sound in the Healing Arts and the composer of Calendula: A Suite for Pythagorean Tuning Forks, a CD designed to physically align your body and create a deep, relaxed awareness. He lectures and performs worldwide and conducts training seminars for practitioners in the healing arts.
GRAND GONG MASTER DON CONREAUX
Formerly known as Baba Don and Guru Jagat. Grand Gong Master Don was one of the five original Kundalini Yoga Teachers designated by Yogi Bhajan in 1969. Don also studied the gong writings of Dane Rudhyar. He established the Nanak Dwara Ashram Teacher Training 1970-1976 in Phoenix, Arizona. His first teacher as a Teenager in 1952 was Paramahansa Yogananda, receiving his Kriya Initiation in 1953.
Don originated: The Gong Yoga of Holistic Resonance, the title of Gong Master, Gong Therapy, The Gong Bath, The Gong Puja, and Songs and Concerts for Humanity.
He conducts Gong Master Training Internationally in the Way of the Gong. Don has continually produced Gong Masters in many countries; he has also conducted his Mysterious Tremendum Gong Consort and Sacred Tone Ensemble worldwide since 1969.
His Way of the Gong writings include: Gongs of Our Solar System, Magnum Opus of the Gong 1 & 2, Music of Wholeness, Gong Essays, Sacred Geometry of Starhenge, The Universal Chiometer, and The Kriya Kundalini Gong Yoga Manual MEM.
Today, past his 80th year, he continues to teach the art and science of Sacred Geometry and divination and designs World Peace Gong and Bell Gardens, of which there are now six established Internationally. All are dedicated to the coming first day of World Peace and Planetary Cooperation in a world without violence for our children of the New Millennium.
JOHN MEDESKI
Famed keyboardist John Medeski is not easily contained to a single project or genre; he is credited with over 300 works to date, most notable as one-third of the groundbreaking trio Medeski Martin & Wood. Medeski is a highly sought-after improviser, band leader, and producer whose projects range from work with John Zorn, The Word, Phil Lesh, Don Was, John Scofield, Susana Baca, Sean Lennon, Irma Thomas Blind Boys of Alabama, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and many more. Classically trained, Medeski grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, where, as a teenager, he played with Jaco Pastorius before heading north to attend the New England Conservatory. Please see his website for current projects.
Through Medeski’s lifelong focus on sound and music as a universal language of healing and transformation, he has cultivated a deep understanding of Ancient Shamanic Sound Traditions and Rituals and how to use sound as a healing modality. He has mastered many Indigenous sound tools and understands how to facilitate healing in private practice and group ceremony/soundbath settings. In this workshop immersion, he will share his perceptions of healing within the worlds he examines so closely.
SILVIA NAKKACH, M.A., MMT
Named by Utne Reader magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium, an award-winning composer, performer, former psychotherapist, and an internationally celebrated pioneer in sound, consciousness transformation, and music shamanism. She is the founding director of Vox Mundi School of the Voice, a worldwide project that has devoted more than 25 years to preserving sacred and Indigenous musical traditions, combining education, performance and spiritual service, with centres in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, India, and Japan. Silvia is also on the California Institute of Integral Studies faculty in San Francisco, where she has created and leads the world’s premier Certificate in Sound, Voice and Music Healing, established in a high academic institution. An internationally accredited specialist in cross-cultural music healing training, she has pioneered the integration of sacred sound with contemporary practices of music improvisation, and she has contributed an extensive body of vocal techniques that have become landmarks in the field of sound healing and music therapy, widely used in Palliative Care, Hospices, and Healthcare Centers worldwide. Nakkach's significant body of work has been integrated into an innovative curriculum of sound and vocal principles, theories, and applications called The Yoga of the Voice, available through the Vox Mundi Project programs, archives, and publications.
Her interest in indigenous music, cosmology, and spirituality has led her to collaborate with many traditional healers, modern mystics, and master teachers of the Indian and South American shamanic traditions. For 29 years, she studied Indian classical music and ragas under the direction of the late great master Ali Akbar Khan. As a community activator and educator, she travels worldwide, facilitating seminars and retreats and offering keynote presentations and concerts.
As a recording artist, she has released 10 CDs, including her thriving new albums, Medicine Melodies and In Love and Longing (in collaboration with David Darling). Nakkach’s latest book, Free Your Voice, is available through Sounds True publishers. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
PETER BLUM
A senior hypnosis instructor for the National Guild of Hypnotists has trained hundreds in the spiritual art of hypnosis. He has co-facilitated hypnosis and storytelling workshops with Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona (author of "Coyote Medicine"), and is an Adjunct faculty member of the Coyote Institute. Peter has served on the Board of Trustees of the Deep Listening Foundation, has taught at the Omega Institute and the Graduate Institute, and presented Sounds for Healing concerts and workshops at The Abode of the Message, Menla Retreat Center, and numerous yoga studios throughout the United States. A musician all of his life, Peter has studied music and sound healing with Dr. Karl Berger, Ustad Jamaluddin Bhartiya, Beautiful Painted Arrow (Joseph Rael), Pauline Oliveros, Fabian Mamman, John Beaulieu, and Don Conreaux. His six CDs in the "Sounds for Healing" series are perennial favorites as an adjunct to meditation, guided imagery, yoga, and massage.
"Voice is the first instrument, the one which every human learns to use to communicate. As students of the use of sound for healing, it is of primary importance that we study intentional use of vocal toning” — Peter Blum.
DAVID HYKES
Internationally renowned composer-singer, contemplative teacher, retreat leader, and harmonic pioneer David Hykes was born in Taos, New Mexico, in 1953. He founded Harmonic Chant, his "music of the spheres of being," in New York in 1975, and the Western world’s premier overtone ensemble, DAVID HYKES AND THE HARMONIC CHOIR. He has led contemplative spiritual retreats devoted to the Harmonic Presence teachings and practices since 1980. He has collaborated with HH the Dalai Lama, the Mind and Life Institute, the Gyuto and Gyume monks, Sister Marie Keyrouz, Smt. Sheila Dhar and the Nagi Gompa Nuns.
His landmark album, “Hearing Solar Winds,” initiated the worldwide renewal of interest in harmonic vocal music and healing and has sold over 300,000 copies. His 12 albums since have each vastly expanded the range of harmonic repertoire. He is also renowned for his “sacred cinema” soundtracks, including “Baraka,” “Travellers and Magicians,” “Meetings with Remarkable Men,” and most recently, “Transcendence” with Johnny Depp.
REBECCA SINGER
Rebecca Singer’s work of 25 years as a shamanic energy healer led her to live in the Cloud Forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica and to Mongolia to be with The Reindeer People. She received the “Singing Into Bone” Ceremony during her time with Shaman Saintsegset in Mongolia. This experience led her to embark on an extended trip to the northern mountains of Mongolia, where she met and stayed with the Reindeer People, a vanishing native people who still manifest the very roots of Siberian Shamanism in their cultural beliefs and practices. Rebecca is a shamanic healer, working with the power of the drum and her voice, she is teacher, writer, artist, mother, and world traveler who has done healing work internationally. She owns Shaman’s Eye, offering sessions, readings, apprenticeships, ceremonies and workshops.
DROR ASHUAH
Internationally recognized inspirational speaker, intuitive, and channel. He is the author of the book series Conversation with Angels (Epigraph/Monkfish Book Publishing Company), a collection of messages on spiritual awakening received by Dror from the Angelic (or spiritual) realm in preparation for this unprecedented time of global change.
Mr. Ashuah earned a Master’s in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. His extensive worldwide travels combined with studies in mysticism, astrology, Reiki, crystals, and Shamanism have all contributed to his understanding of the messages about human consciousness.
Dror’s powerful and inspirational workshops reach his audience in a profound and transformational manner. Dror relays a non-linear worldview about the nature of life on Earth and our greater purpose in the Universe: awakening to our divinity and understanding our spiritual role on this earthly journey.
GRANDMOTHER THREECROW
Barbara Threecrow, Tunka Hota Wiyan (Gray Stone Woman) is a mother, grandmother, author of Mending the Hoop, Four Sacred Shields Twelve Sacred Paths, an award-winning artist, healer and ceremonial leader in the Lakota tradition. She has created Core Methodology, a unique method of healing that guides clients into a deeper understanding of the dramatic effects of trauma during childhood. Click here for information on Core Methodology. Barbara's heritage is Irish; her Native American heritage is Nanticoke/Delaware. She was a long-time student of the late Lakota medicine man Wallace Black Elk.
She facilitates the Medicine Circle Way, an exploration of the Grandmothers' Earth Ways. Barbara created the Star/Indigo Children workshops presented at the Teachers Development Conference and leads spiritual journeys to Easter Island and Bogota, Colombia.
BAIRD HERSEY
A National Endowment for the Arts Composition Fellow, Baird is best known for his vocal ensemble, Prana. Hersey's composing is a unique blend of traditional Western vocal music and the music of India, Tibet, Mongolia, Bulgaria, and Georgia, strongly emphasising vocal harmonics. He has recorded 12 albums under his name and recorded or performed with Krishna Das, Wah!, Steve Smith (Journey), Doane Perry (Jethro Tull), Graham Parker, and Aine Minogue. He has received commissions from Harvard University, the New York State Council for the Arts, the New Mexico Council for the Arts, The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Sound and Light Spectacular, the Public Theater, Meet the Composer, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. He has given performances throughout the U.S. and Europe in such different settings as the Berlin Jazz Festival and MTV.
STEVE GORN
Steve’s bansuri is featured on the 2011 Grammy-winning recording, “Miho – Journey to the Mountain,” with Dhruba Ghosh, the Paul Winter Consort, and the Academy Award-winning Documentary film Born into Brothels. He has performed Indian Classical Music and new American Music on the bansuri bamboo flute in concerts and festivals worldwide. His gurus are the late bansuri master Sri Gour Goswami of Kolkata and Pt. Raghunath Seth of Mumbai, who he often accompanied in concert. His performance with Pandit Ravi Shankar’s disciple, Barun Kumar Pal, at Kolkata’s Rama Krishna Mission was televised throughout India. In 2013, he was awarded the Pandit Jasraj Rotary Club of Hyderabad Award for Cross Cultural Achievement.
His numerous recordings include Luminous Ragas, Rasika, with tabla by Samir Chatterjee, Illuminations, with Nepali bansuri wallah, Manose, the landmark Indian-Jazz fusion recording, Asian Journal, and Pranam a jugalbandi with Barun Kumar Pal playing hansaveena, and Samir Chatterjee, tabla.
NACHO ARIMANY
Before moving to New York in 2009, Nacho Arimany was chiefly known as one of Spain’s most sought-after Flamenco percussionists. He entered the world of Flamenco through the Spanish Dance and Flamenco Choreography Contest of Madrid, winning a prize for “Pa´dentro,” a martinete composed for Triazion danza. When asked to form a percussion group, he introduced to Flamenco the use of a gourd from Mali as a percussion instrument. Academies, tablaos, and baile were his schools for eight years. He collaborated with Joaquín Cortés, Gerardo Nuñez and Rocio Molina, along with many of Spain’s hottest Flamenco dancers and artists. As a child, age 6, had been classically trained as a pianist, and later on, he performed as vocal soloist with soprano diva Montserat Caballé and the Spanish National Orchestra at the opening act of the Spain National Auditorium with the World Premiere of “La Atlántida” by Manuel de Falla. He turned to percussion in his teens, and Flamenco was a break from the formalism of his early training. Arimany’s musical innovations have forked into another avenue where they are being applied to sound therapy and transformational processes. On this field his contribution is remarkable as he has entirely composed, performed and produced the music of inTime a 9CD rhythm-based music listening therapeutic method created to improve brain function, developed in collaboration with Sheila Allen and Advanced Brain Technologies. The official debut of inTime was held on February 9th 2014, at Rockefeller’s University, Caspary Hall, with a panel discussion with neuroscientists and therapists and a solo concert by Nacho Arimany.
OSCAR SANTILLAN, SOUND HEALER - ECUADORIAN LACHAK SHAMAN
Kuricharik, also Known as Oscar Santillan, comes from a family of seven generations of healers and musicians who have preserved the wisdom and music of their Quichua culture for centuries. It is part of the teaching of the elders of the Andes that now is the right time-space for them to share some of their traditions. Don Alverto Taxo is an essential teacher of Oscar. Their lineage centers on opening the heart and on the natural elements and bringing the natural world actively into our lives. Along with his family, they keep both the music and ancient wisdom of the Andes alive. He offers sound energy healings incorporating his handmade herbal incense, energetic plants, condor feather flute, and chanting. Performance with traditional instruments, some of which are sacred and date back thousands of years.
ANDREW STEED
Born in England in 1963, Andrew Steed studied Communication and Theater Arts in London as a young man. He has travelled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America, gathering stories and illuminating experiences. These journeys have taught Andrew how to connect and communicate effectively with people from all walks of life and on many levels. In 1996, Andrew established his creative, bardic storytelling style by speaking to people of all ages, leading corporate training seminars and facilitating soulful travel. His diverse and progressive healing practice is designed to empower people to remember themselves and communicate effectively with one another. His mission is to equip people to stand in their power, own their unique voice, and be phenomenal team players with exceptional interpersonal communication skills. Andrew’s ultimate goal is to help people be the authors of their own stories so they dance the depth of their own dreams.
Providing exceptional educational opportunities that people listen to and act upon, Andrew uses experiential learning and heart-to-heart stories to involve his audience in customized seminars and journeys.
DIÁNE MANDLE
Diáne Mandle is an internationally known Sound Healer, Teacher, Recording Artist with Sounds True, and Author based in San Diego. A frequent presenter at the Deepak Chopra Center, the Golden Door and Rancho la Puerta, she has been part of the Integrative Therapy Team at San Diego Cancer Center, has presented workshops for cancer patients and oncologists at Sharp and Scripps hospitals and developed and conducted a sound meditation program for incarcerated veterans with PTSD. Diane offers workshops and concerts internationally and operates the Tibetan Bowl Sound Healing School in southern California. She and healers like Dr. Wayne Dyer and John Grey are featured in the upcoming video series Tao- Living in Balance.
ANGEL DEER
Angel Deer (aka. Guillaume Gauthereau) is a shamanic practitioner, healer, sound healer, Shamanic Reiki Master, and Medicine Carrier. He has been working with plant medicine for over ten years and runs The Sanctuary a shamanic Healing Center in the Catskills (Callicoon, NY). He also runs a shamanic school and retreats in Peru and in the US. He has been practising and training with Shamans from Native American lineages and Peruvian Huachumeros and Ayahuacaeros for over a decade.
RICHARD RUDIS
An American practitioner of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, he was granted refuge in the Buddha from His Holiness Gyalwa Karmapa while in Tibet in 1996. his Holiness named him Karma Sonam Dorje (Meritorious Thunderbolt of the Kagyu School.)
He is often a featured presenter at International Conferences and is considered most knowledgeable in sacred sound healing, sound instruments from the Himalayas, and associated vibrational healing techniques. An associate of the Tibetan Sound Healing School of California, he teaches advanced sound therapy classes outlined in Buddhist teachings. Touring the western United States, Rudis presents a sacred sound concert under the trademarked term 'Gong Bath'; each experience is unique and rooted in Dharmic teachings. Using a gong tuned to the 'Aum' frequency and patterning his playing techniques on sacred geometry, his concerts are generally sold out. Profound self-awakening and life-altering experiences are commonly reported with each concert.
MITCH NUR
Mitch has spent nearly five decades as an Archaeomusicologist, Sacred Sound Researcher, Practitioner and Teacher. An authority on Sacred Sound instruments and applications as it pertains to ritual, ceremony, sound therapies, shamanic healing, meditation, and personal transformation. His engagement with the compassionate teachings of the East and his shamanic training give him a unique perspective among today's teachers. His Tibetan name is Menghak Rinchen, which means 'precious esoteric wisdom'. Referred to as the 'Indiana Jones of Sound Healing' by many of his colleagues, he is a member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
SCOTT WILLIAMS
Having worked for years as a successful Creative Director, Scott sought something with a deeper resonance. Liking the tone of sound baths, he decided to attend one at Sage Academy of Sound Energy in Woodstock, NY, on a whim. That experience was his big bang and first awakened him to the power of Sound. With a deeper understanding of what good vibes meant, he felt a strong need to go deeper and, in 2015, decided to train with Sage. Since then, he's been working with them regularly to spread sonal sunshine. He is now part of the Sage Sound Sangha and one of their senior teachers. In addition to bathing in Sound, he recently added bathing in Forests to his offerings. Practising as a Forest Therapy Guide has allowed him to work with new kinds of vibrational medicine and wisdom – that of nature. Much like Sound, it enables him to create more opportunities for people to meet themselves at the gate of their healing paths with the support of something greater. He divides his time between upstate and Brooklyn.
URSULA ORE
Ursula grew up in the Catskill Mountains. Her early life, beginning at age 3, through young adulthood, was dance, primarily ballet, which she continues to study in the present day. Growing up surrounded by the natural beauty of the Catskill Mountains fostered a deep connection to nature and spirituality. At age 15, she began to deepen her studies of yoga, meditation and paganism. Later, she volunteered at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in 2015-2018. At Omega, she studied different varieties of healing and spirituality. These included crystal healing, chakra clearing, herbalism, plant medicine, shamanism, and trance mediumship. At Omega, she was attuned to reiki level 3 by a reiki master. In 2019, she began a 2-year sound healing apprenticeship with Lea Garnier of Sage Academy of Sound and became a certified sound healer. She now offers her sound healings at Sage and in the Woodstock area.