Silvia Nakkach

Exploring the generative voice as a source of medicine, this session opens a rich field of melodic traditions and acoustic nuance. With Silvia’s refined approach, participants are invited into the ecstatic, shamanic, and contemplative dimensions of the voice through the luminous beauty of Icaros, Afro-Brazilian Orixà invocations, and the ragas of India. The music-making is supported by indigenous instruments, Crystal Tone bowls, and inspiring new ways to work with the harmonic resonance of the sruti box.

Silvia was among the first music psychotherapists to introduce the sruti box into the field, along with Nada yoga and sound healing in the early 1980s. This session offers a mystical and liberating experience of the voice as tone magic, creating space to expand vocal expression and access the deep healing power of sound. It also invites a heightened sensitivity to the subtle body and mind, while reconnecting with the human blueprint of joy.

A Grammy®-nominated composer, interdisciplinary vocal artist, educator, author, academic consultant, Hindustani raga musician, experimental new music performer, embodied improviser, and recording artist, Silvia brings a rare breadth of experience to her work. She is a former clinical psychotherapist and an internationally accredited specialist in transcultural sound and music therapies, including music in shamanic practices.

For many years, she served on the faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she created the first certificate program in Sound, Voice, and Music in the Healing Arts at a major academic institution. She also teaches the Metaphysics of Sonic Resonance in East-West Psychology and Contemplative Asian and Transcultural Studies at CIIS, and serves as a mentor at the university’s Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research.

Silvia is the Founding Director of the International Vox Mundi School of Sound and the Voice, with training certificates in Japan, Brazil, South Korea, and throughout the United States. She is also core faculty at the Sedona Sound Healing Institute. Beyond her academic and professional work, she has dedicated more than 40 years to Classical North Indian Raga Music, studying under the late Maestro Ali Akbar Khan and other great living masters of the Dhrupad chant tradition, and currently under the direction of Pt. Uday Bhawalkar.

She has released sixteen CD albums, contributed to several scholarly books, and authored Free Your Voice, published by Sounds True.