Before that, I was angry and broken, struggling with many wounds. As a queer, non-binary, gender expansive Korean American adoptee, I have struggled to speak my truth, much less sing or make sound. Instead of imploding, I decided to start a punk band at age 30 and began the lifelong process of freeing my voice and sharing my story.

Along the way, I completed a 3-year movement-based expressive arts training program at Tamalpa Institute in 2014 that helped me re-inhabit my body and find home in it. I also completed Level 3 of the LoVetri Method in Somatic Voicework™ in 2019 that helped me with functional and technical aspects of the voice. I have also studied vocal improvisation and circle singing with Rhiannon, Bobby McFerrin, and Zuza Goncalves since 2019. In 2024, I became a Certified Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® after completing a 2-year training that released body tension so that my whole instrument can resonate more fully and focus the sound through my focus line.

I love learning, and it has been a natural progression to share the tools and practices that helped me free my voice with others. Some other modalities I draw on include: breath work, meditation/mindfulness, yoga, qigong and tai chi, somatics, drama therapy, improvisation, dance and movement, embodied storytelling, and sound healing. I am deeply informed by Buddhism having spent months living at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village and doing many mindfulness retreats, Barbara Ann Brennan’s energy and healing work in Hands of Light, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and Taoist and Yogic models of the body/chakras/qi. I have studied ancestral healing with Daniel Foor, shamanic journeying with The Way of the Shaman, and psychodrama and drama therapy with Armand Volkas.

I am on faculty at the Wheat Institute and co-teach an expressive arts course with Juli Rees called The Art of Solidarity. I also am a mindfulness and dharma teacher at Spirit Rock and East Bay Meditation Center. I teach Free Your Voice at conferences and universities around the world including Embodied in Color Conference, Mental Health at the Intersections, CIIS, UC Berkeley, and more. I currently perform a theater and music piece called A Thousand Mothers Collecting the Bones with my wife about our grief and healing journey after our son died by suicide four years ago.

I have spent most of my adult life healing around adoption trauma and estrangement from my adoptive mother. This has meant reconnecting with ancestors (of blood, spirit, land, and care), and re-parenting my inner child in parts work (internal family systems) with large doses of compassion practice to integrate all these parts. Psychotherapy and Buddhist practices around ways to end suffering underpin my work. I’ve journeyed through gender dysphoria and accepting/celebrating my sexuality after growing up in a very religious household. A large part of my journey has been coming into the healing gifts of the scapegoat (being exiled and having other people’s unprocessed shadows being projected onto me), which include having a healthy, intimate relationship with my own shadow, sensitivity, resilience, independence, empathy, strength, and wholeness.

In short, my path is finding belonging within my body, in community, with the world and with nature. Animism and shamanism have been instrumental in helping me come back into sacred relationship with all living beings. I am so grateful for all the teachers and guides and practices and support that have helped me on this journey.

As a vocal coach, expressive arts facilitator, ritual artist, writer, mindfulness teacher, and healer, I believe the body holds our deepest wisdom and healing. By learning to trust it and listen, I have been able to express my soul song. I love to create spaces where you can show up exactly as you are, and with my loving witnessing and tools/support, grow and transform. I specialize in working with people who want to explore freeing their voices and working on creating boundaries and safety; who need help parenting their own wounded children; who want to work on adoption/race/gender/sexual trauma; who would like to explore belonging and heal trauma around being exiled or being scapegoated; who want to reconnect with the sacred all around; and who want to make profound shifts in their lives (work with anxiety, depression, rage, frozen parts, etc) and come into their power. and wholeness.

I believe in the power of play and creativity to help free our inner children.

My mission is to help you free your voice and life. I am here to help you to connect more deeply with yourself and others in a playful, supportive space as you explore voice work, grief, ancestral healing, adoption wounds, creativity, music, sound healing, shadow and soul journey work, and more. Reach out if you want to sing and discover your own soul’s songs. I would be honored to guide and accompany you as you create a life aligned to your highest joy and creative expression!

I am here in this lifetime to sing, sound & speak my truth with confidence, and I would be delighted to join you on your journey of vocal (and life!) liberation, too. Let’s play!

In love and freedom, Phoenix Song

I have been performing since 2004 and was featured in San Francisco Magazine’s Best of the Bay for yoga music in 2009. As a Third Culture Kid who lived in Korea, Nepal, India, Liberia, Peru, and the SF Bay Area, my musical influences and style can best be described as world fusion, a hybrid of global eclectic sounds & beats. Performance highlights include:

• Chuncheon Mime Festival, Korea, 2006
• Border Out, Queer Arts Festival, SF, 2008
• Esalen Yoga and Music Festival, Big Sur, 2008
• SF International Arts Festival, 2009
• Wanderlust, Squaw Valley, 2009
• Empowering Women of Color Conference, Berkeley 2009
• Mixed, Blended & Whole, Queer Arts Festival, SF, 2012
• Grace Cathedral Labyrinth Yoga, since 2014
• Sowing and Sewing Solo Show, Stagewerx, SF, 2015
• San Francisco Pride Main Stage, 2017
• Buried Solo Show, Stagewerx, SF, 2018
• Reimagine Festival, SF Jazz, 2018
• Grace Cathedral Sound Bath, since 2020