The Soul of Singing: Finding Your Voice and the Courage to Be Heard | Julie Blue

Hello and welcome back to Magic in the Muck, a soul's compass for change. I'm Jennifer Nagel, and I'm so glad that you're here with me today. Today I have a very special guest. Well, all my guests are special, and this one I'm really been looking forward to. This conversation with Julie Blue. Julie is a singer, a songwriter, pianist, award-winning composer, transformational voice coach, and so much more. These are just some of the the tip of the iceberg. But I really experience her as someone who helps people to free their voices and discover their unique sound and expressing themselves with greater confidence. Julie's also the founder of Radiant Heart Song Circle and creator of Empower Your Voice, where singing, sound, breath, creativity, and community become pathways towards self-expression, connection, and transformation. What really drew me to this conversation with Julie is that her work goes far beyond learning how to sing. It touches something that I care deeply about too, and that's coming home to ourselves, finding the courage to listen inwardly, to loosen the old messages and expectations that have shaped us, and to allow more of who we really are to emerge, so it feels especially meaningful to be having this conversation as I'm returning to the podcast after several weeks away. So I think there's something fitting about finding my way back to the microphone with a conversation about finding our voice. So welcome, Julie, to Magic in the Muck. I'm really glad that you're here.

I'm so glad to be here with you. And you know, one thing I want you to know because I am particularly sensitive to voices is, you know we had this wonderful conversation before, and we just could not get off. Like we were like, okay, I'll talk to you for 20 minutes, and two hours later we were like, okay, we should probably go. I should probably feed the kids. And part of what it is is you have such a wonderful voice. The vibration of your voice comes across the phone lines, across the you know the transmissions, and it goes right into my heart.

Thank you, Julie. I was receiving that right into my heart too, as you were saying that. So much of your work is about helping people to liberate their voices. So I'd love to begin with you. What has your own journey been with liberating your voice? Right question.

You know, the first thing that came to my mind when you said that is that adage of teach what you most need to learn, and the top layer is the the singing, and that I always wanted to sing. I always heard music in my head. It's such a natural thing for me, and entering in through the gateway of of just singing, you know, especially when you have training or you go to university, it becomes something that is competitive, and something that is measurable and something that is right or wrong or good, or bad, and as as soon as I started that pathway around training, it completely changed the way I expressed and the way I looked at myself. And what this journey has been for me is is coming home to who I really am, and taking all that I've learned to elevate my expression and contribute to others, and also unlearning a lot of the parts that says you need to sound like this, or even deeper than that. At least what I learned in childhood as a middle child-that I needed to be nice, and I needed to be good. And if I was upset or angry, I was a bad child. And I think many of us have taken those messages in to modulate ourselves out of our own authentic expression, and how did that impact your voice? That always be nice, but I wonder what that does to the voice, even when you said be nice. The way I was listening, own a voice. I does that, yeah, because there's a. I can feel it, and I was speaking with a a dear friend yesterday who was talking about some of her challenges in relationship and why she needed to leave the current one she's in, and she lamented the lack of real honesty, and yet as she spoke about some of the things she needed to say, she said, but it wasn't nice. And so, clearly, to get to the magic and the muck, we need to go beyond nice. And for me, it's really been about how do I express authentically and still stay kind, because it's one thing to say, "Oh, I'm going to lay my truth on you, and you're a blah blah blah blah blah. I just no,

that's that's not where I want to go. But yet, I'm only going to tell you what I think you want to hear, because if I was actually honest, you wouldn't like me anymore, or you'd leave me. And you can hear how as soon as I started to speak, that I lost my essential connection. Now, if I hop over to singing, how does what does this have to do with singing and vocal technique? Well, how I have come, what I've developed to to teach singing is it's less about I know, and you don't know, and I'm going to teach you, and I'll tell you if you've got it right or wrong. And it's more about remember who you are, remember how you breathed. You came in, unless you were sick or had some problems with your lungs. You came in. We all came in breathing fully. It's just nobody taught us. We our little bellies. Look at a baby, a little belly baby expands out, and you can even see the the bottom of the ribs expanding, and and the breath is part of who we are. And we opened up the little hinge on our little jaws, and we let it loose. And the thing is, a baby never goes hoarse. I used to go, "Oh, couldn't you just go hoarse already? I gotta sleep never because they're using perfect vocal technique. So we came in with it. And further to that, when the baby cried, when you cried, when I cried, when my your children cried, they're saying I'm lonely, I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm scared. It is essential communication. If they didn't cry, they couldn't survive. It's how you knew what they need, and that's really the inquiry: is is what started to get cut off as we started to many of us, particularly women, as far as I can see, at least this woman, as we started to to modulate ourselves and moderate ourselves to live within the systems around us, we started to cut off from some of the essential part of our nature.

I love what you're saying because I never even really thought about that before. How perfectly authentic our voices are when we come into this world, and when you said how babies don't go horse, I'm like, you're right, they don't go horse, which means like you said, they have perfectly formed everything. Their whole physiology is an instrument for their voice.

I love that. Yes.

So, Julie, what helped you to find your way back to your voice?

If I just for a moment, if I let go of music and I just go, my voice, my authentic voice. What brought me back to my authentic voice? You know, even just in recent years, I've been having epiphanies about seeing how deeply my programming of being a people pleaser has influenced everything in my life. You know, it took like it took me to 50 to go. I couldn't even see that lens because it was so integrated in me, and what brought me to it, I went through loss and heartbreak, and needed to experience myself through the darkest of loss, to say, "Oh, all those times when I withheld what I really wanted to say, when I did not speak what was actually truth for me, because I wanted that love so badly, and then when it's gone, and there you are with yourself, I got, I had to see. Oh, this is how I actually feel. And what became even deeper to that is when we don't express authentically, when we withhold parts of. Ourself, and I'm not talking about being mean or manipulative or bitchy. We we we've moved beyond that. I'm talking about speaking your truth in a way that is kind and respectful and well timed. This is part of the wisdom, you know. But when we withhold that, we're not in an authentic relationship, and we can't really feel that love that we're we're really wanting from someone else.

Talk about finding magic in the muck. What I loved about our conversation last time was you shared with me, you know, your own journey to the bottom of the mud pie, coming back up again. To me, that means you understand it without that deep level of shadow. We we don't we cannot rise. We don't have the understanding, and perhaps that's what compassion is. You know, until you go through whatever it is, you can think you understand, but only when go through it can you, oh, that's what being in chronic pain is, or oh, that's what the loss of someone who I deeply love is. Oh, that's when I really appreciate those moments of reprieve from the pain, or from the muck, or from the from the grief, and when we see, we can't really appreciate the light if we don't know what that we need. The darkness and light coexist together, and finding those moments of grace. My book, you know, Magic in the Muck: Finding Grace in Chaos, even when we're in the midst of the muck. That there are so many miracles abounding if we stop to like hone our our awareness to what's all around us, even when we're in our pain and suffering. That there is,

yes, absolutely. Now, if I were to take your question of how did you come home to your voice, I answered that in a very personal way, in terms of becoming aware of how much in my personal relationships I was coming from wanting to please the other person, and also not setting clear boundaries, you're really learning about when I'm clear on my boundaries. So let's go back to the idea of the baby and how we all came in, and from my years of training as a singer, and I took all kinds of different training. I wanted to understand how opera singers generated their tone. I went through studying jazz, and I'm coming from being a piano player, so that's my supporting instrument of, and follow the voice in the piano, and then I traveled all over and lived places and learned languages and all of that, and all of that brought me to developing my own technique that I can share with people, and it's called authentic vocal activation, or AVA. And what it is is a series of very simple steps that brings you right into your body. Do you want me to tell you what they are?

I would love for you to tell us what they are.

Okay, so the first thing is attention on the bottom of your feet. Now, if you were to stand up for a moment, because I'd, you know, if I was working with you, you'd be standing up. I'll go put your attention on the bottom of your feet, and imagine, if you will, let's use three roots coming out the bottom of your feet. How do you feel? What energy does that bring into you? Grounded. That's it. So it all comes from that feeling grounded. And furthermore, when you're standing with a group of others, and we all do that. There's this feeling like standing in a grove of trees, whereas if you're one tree and a big wind comes, you're knocked over. When you're in a grove, you are protected. You are connected. You you can relax. So from the ground, and you pull up the energy from the earth in through your feet and up into your knees, and I invite you to, for a moment, tighten your knees, clench your knees, lock your knees. How does that feel? Not good. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And soften your knees. You're not doing a plie, but your knees are soft. How does that feel? Oh yeah, grounding free, great. Yeah, it puts you into flow state, and so we bring that energy up through the hips. Now, if I was working with women, I'd be talking about. Through that womb space, feeling the creativity, feeling the the potential to birth life, whether that's a baby or a garden or a conversation or a a song or a painting or a you know whatever it is that's inside you and and bringing you into your belly and just below your belly button and I invite you to take a breath, but this time through your nose, in through your nose, and feeling your belly expand, just like you did when you were a baby. Nothing you have to learn, simply inviting your body to relax enough to let it happen. And so, take a breath in through your nose, feel your belly just expand, and then side out with a. So we've got this grounding coming from the the earth that's supporting us up through the feet and the

softened knees and the open hips and feeling the belly expand. And as the belly expands, you bring your awareness to your ribs and those intercostal muscles that wire your ribs together, and you can feel how, when you expand, yeah, your back expands. You are you are bagpipes, and these are your bellows expanding. And now we're going to hop up to the top of the head and take four fingers on either side of your hand and tap the top of your head and see these magic words. Bless the sound. Will you say it with me? Here we go. Bless the sound. And as you say, bless the sound. You're going to imagine light pouring in for you, chakra people. You know, for the crown chakra. You you don't have to be a chakra person, just through the top of your head because you're you're pulling in from nature how we how we sustain from light, and as you pull this light in, you're letting it come right down from your body, and also bless the sound lifts you out of the dimension where you're constantly judging yourself and everybody, and it's exhausting, and so it means you can make a little squeaky sound, or you can make a big roar, and all of it's good. You're just blessing all of it, and so that makes you want to go ah, relax further because you don't have to try. And as you come down from your head and you bring that light down, and we take, we'll take time with that. But for now, we're just going to come right into the jaw. Now, the jaw is a key. The jaw to the singer is like the knees to the dancer. And as soon as you start, I have people put your hands on your jaw, let your jaw open. The jaw is the chamber for sound. So, if people take one thing away from me, and it's the ability to shape the vowels in your jaw, they become better singers instantly. Not just better singers, but easier singers, because that's my jam to make singing easy. So, release the jaw, relax the jaw.

Now we're coming down from the jaw through the throat, and you're imagining that this light is still coming. And the throat now is like a flute. It's nothing's pushing from the throat. And whenever you feel a tightness in your throat or the pushing from your throat, pour in compassion, pour in light, and say you have to push it. Anything hurts at any time. Just stop, lay out, take some breaths, and you're coming down into your heart, and here's where we meet the grounding energy from the ground and the light energy from the sky, and we meet in your heart. And I get, I begin at that point a series of sounds and openings that are easy, humming, opening the hum, tapping, opening your body, and then beginning to make that heart sound to others, and suddenly when you're making it to someone else, and you're sending that love as though that other person needs it. This is not about you anymore. You're out of your head. You're out of. Is it right? Is it good? Is it bad? In, I'm just going to transmit this sound. All I need to remember to do is to let my belly expand when I breathe, and to leave the space when I teach ah. There's two fingers. That's how wide the eye is.

Whoa.

Ah, and the tongue is relaxed, and out comes the sound, and immediately this group, whether they're strangers or they're sun together, sings, and you can feel the light in the room increase, and that's the movement of Ava, or a authentic vocal activation.

That is so beautiful, Julie, and thank you for sharing that with me and with the listeners. I hope the listeners were following along because my goodness, I really feel that in my whole body, and it's so beautiful how you know this connection with Earth and with. Heavens and and with bless the sound. I love that, and it's so beautiful. What you just took us through in this beautiful way of setting our bodies, our instruments for sound to come with ease and connection and flow, and like going back to the infant, getting our jaws relaxed and open for that pure sound to come out without judgment.

Yes, yes.

You know, you work with so many people, and there's a lot of people who come to believe, and I don't believe this, but a lot of people believe that they can't sing, or they shouldn't sing, or they're afraid to let themselves be heard. So when you hear somebody say, "I can't sing, what do you think might really be going on underneath that for them? I mean, it could be different for anybody, but what's going on underneath that message of "I can't sing" Alam.

I want you to think about. I'm going to answer you, but first, I want you to think about something that you couldn't do and you now can do. What's that thing? The first thing that comes to your mind. You couldn't do it, and you actually thought, "Boy, I can't do that. And then, but now you can do it. Public speaking, sure. And what did it take for you to go from "Oh, I can't public speak" to now you you can do this. You can do it, and it's probably fun for you. What did it take?

It took courage. It took being. It did take being pushed, like something I had to do. As did you hear my voice there? I had to do, and and it took yeah, it took overcoming a lot of nerves and anxiety. So rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. It took a lot of that.

You had to practice.

Had to practice. I go right back to I don't know what grade I was in. It was in elementary school, and I needed to public speak at a debate. And and I'm being true confession here. The first time I was supposed to prepare for a debate, I faked being sick and stayed home from school that day. I was, and it wasn't the debate so much that I was afraid of. It was the unknown of what questions were people going to ask me. Was I going to be prepared for the answer? And so I stayed home. And so it wasn't until the next time where I really needed it was a lot of self-talk. Actually, that that that it's going to be okay. So yeah, what did it take? It took practice. It took a lot of personal growth, really, to be okay. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I

you could have said something like, you know what didn't you know how to do that you now know how to do like something like driving I didn't know how to drive and then I learned how to do it I learned the steps and I repeated the steps until I didn't have to think about them

not knowing how to play piano right and then you learn the scales you learn the notes and then you learn how to create music or you learn how to read music, and yet it takes learning very and being very more focused learning.

But I'm really glad you said that about public speaking because what your you know grade seven self didn't know yet is how to make yourself safe. I think if you really look at it, what is the biggest fear about singing? And and I work with this at the song circles. We we always each week we have a different theme or a a different conversation, and and one of them is the inner critic. How do you dance with your inner critic? And when you actually get below the surface, even of people who appear very, very confident and successful, there's an inner critic there. The Dalai Lama spoke about his inner critic. It seems to be a human condition. So if I were to put those conversations together, your grade seven self-guess you're about 12 or 13, and who who was scared, but you practiced it, you practiced it, you went over and over again, you talked to yourself, and you said, you know what, it's going to be okay, and even if you're scared, go do it, right? You learned that you could do something that you're scared, and you know, if I were to put those together with, okay, well, here's how we're going to practice singing, right? And and now you off the beginning, you're not doing it by yourself. You're in a grove of trees, and you've got all the cells around you, and you're part of it. And slowly, it becomes easier. And the other piece is here's some tools to practice. You don't go to the gym once and come out, you know, with muscles. This is a practice that you go back to, and so I've made all these wonderful tools. And you know, if people want, if you're listening to this and you're like, "What did you say? Let me write that down. Like I mean, if you want this, I have several tools that I I give away. They're they're free and they're gifts, and and and one of them, maybe this is the entrance point, is called making singing easy. Beautiful, and I go right through that authentic vocal activation, and I think it's three videos and one and one little song, and

you go through it. And the thing that's that's fun, the thing that makes it easy, is you don't do it once and go, "Okay, I'm going to perform it. Can't really get all, you know. You go, "Okay, if I really want to do this, you know. The other thing your grade seven self had was determination because you could have opted out, but part of you went. You're going to do this. You need to do this, and when you said had to, where did had to come? Was it like you're going to fail if you don't do it? It was an eternal thing.

It was the the teacher expectation had to.

Okay.

So and the first time, like the the part of me that was scared, did run the first time and stayed home from school and was. But then the then other parts of me came along and said, "Now, now, doing well in school was important to me for that. And so, so then I showed up for myself. But yeah, but the first time, the scared part won the first time,

and that's the part to me where we've just had enough of learning through shame. Thank you very much, but I'm done with that, and it's so important to me, you know. It's in the it's under the radiant heart song circle umbrella. It's it's for women, and women come and and right off the top, it's like anything that does not feel right for you to do, you're going to lay out of. And I even get them going, no, no, no, no, no. And so when you're when you have your nose and you have your boundaries, you're safe. And you said no the first time. I'm not ready. And then you probably practiced a little more after that. Absolutely, Ken did it.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I love how you just saying that. No, no, no, no. It's because that there's something again, bringing it back to music and the song, and how you know. And we, I think we need to have several conversations, Julie, because there is so many, so much more that I do want us to talk about with the listeners too, for the listeners to hear and learn from you and from what we talk about. But what what did I want to say about that? There's something medicinal about the song, you know, chanting, singing. I sing. You know, okay. Here's another disclosure in my household. I sing everything. My son and I. We my my husband calls my son Andrew Lloyd Webber, and I'm Andrea Lloyd Webber because we just everything's a musical, and I think life should be a musical. And so, but there's something around bringing the voice, the singing voice into it, that's a balm, or it changes the energy in the room. Oh, let's go there. Yeah. Okay. Well. Okay. So I'm just going to read a little song in. Let's stay with the idea of Becky singing easy. And so, what I love about what I just heard with you and your son is, you've made it easy. Pass me the potatoes, no, no, no, no, they're all for me. Pass me, no, no, pass me the potatoes. They're mine. They're mine. They're mine. They're give them, give them mine, mine. You know, like you, you make it fun. You make it easy.

You don't take it too serious, and it's freaking beautiful.

It is. It really is, and I love it. And yeah, the nutty nagles. But anyway,

hey, I have one boy, and he was-he's such a musical little beast that absolutely, and music is the way. It's it's our big connection point. I want to tell you the song that I include and share with people, and the story of it. Would that be okay? That would be awesome. Yes, I was asked to come in to an organization that supports immigrant women, and to bring in the voice piece, and you know what I've learned over all of these years is I go by tools up my and my tricks up my sleeve, but I just I just go in with this desire to serve, and I listen, and then whatever comes next, and so I'm listening to the stories of. These women, you know, I moved here from. I moved here from Korea, and you know, my husband died on the Ananda, and and I've got four children, and and now I'm I'm just on the job market, and I'm looking to find a job, and I'm I'm in a temporary place, and and I'm listening to these stories, and and and and blown away by the resourcefulness of these women, and many of whom with their children, and you know thinking about where I want to complain about my life, and and what it would be like, especially as a mom, when you have a little kid, to be in a new country learning a language, and so I'm listening all to all this, and I ask them, you know, we open our voice, the stuff we talked about, we make sounds. They're having fun. I teach them a couple things. I've brought drums and shakers. You know, we're doing this thing, and then I ask them, what could, what could you, what could I leave you with today that would be really significant for you? What do you want? And they say we want our own song. We want you say you can write songs about anything. We want a song about us. I'm like, okay, let's go there. What? Give me some words of what you want to sing, because you know when you sing these words, you vibrate the words and you feel the words. So we're talking about something that literally is a vibration of your cells. Tell me, what do

you need in your life? And let's-I'm going to just take these words, give me like one minute, and I'll sing them out. We'll have a song together. Like, no, you can't. I'm like, oh yeah, I can't. Come on. So they say words like confident. I want to be more confident. And one woman says, "This is is so hard for me. You know, I want to be strong. I need to be strong. And you know, another one. She gives me the the line. She just says, "Ah, some days I just don't feel like I'm ready for this world. I'm like, "Oh, you've given me the hook. Thank you very much. What else? And you know, the the real bottom line with all of them. I think there was about 30 women. Is I'm in a new place and I want to be happy. I want to be happy. Some of them came from persecution, and you know. And when I think about how far it is for you know some of my sisters around the planet, it it breaks my heart. Still, women are not safe. They're not afforded the same opportunities, and I'm listening to all this. And here's these brave women who've done whatever it is they needed to do to get to Canada, and that's another place where I am so grateful. Oh my goodness, to live in Canada. So they're just like, yeah, we just we want to be happy. And now they look at me like, you said a minute. Come on. I'm like, okay, this is how it goes. And I, you're on, on it through line by line. Just like you know, if anybody wants to hang with me and learn these simple things I'm talking about, and learn this little song. This is how it goes: I am strong, I

am confident, I am ready for the world. I bring my joy, I shine my light. I am ready for the world. That's it. So beautiful, and the birthing of that song, the collaborative vibration of the group and the words and the feeling, and I love that the challenge. Okay, one minute you're on.

Wow, how did they respond? Well, well, you see, when I teach, I teach in a call and response. So we did one line at a time, and the next line, and then I go back. That's time for the first. So I really take my time in teaching it, so you really know it. Then we say the words, and then the next thing is how I remember words. Because sometimes, you know, when I used to perform a lot, I had to learn a lot of things really fast, and I learned them by kinesthetically by feeling it so strong. What's the gesture? What's the feeling? So within maybe it was 10 minutes or 15 minutes, everybody had the words, had the melody. It's a simple melody. Put it right in the key for everybody to sing, and they're doing the words. And we just start singing it, and they started to get really joyful. I started hug each other. I started to light up, and then I opened it up because I think I had yes, I had a piano there, and so you're not on the spot. You don't have to do anything, but if anybody wants to sing this, and so you can really claim your voice, you just wave your hand and it'll be your turn. A whole bunch of them, my turn, and they sang it out and heard their voice. Everybody cheered, and it was triumphant. Oh, what a beautiful healing container

that you co-create with with the people who come to your programs. Thank you so much for sharing that. There is so much more, and I love you know. So for the listeners, Julie and I have already talked about doing a series because there's just so much richness in. I get a lot of joy and richness in what we're talking about here. So there will be more, but for now, Julie, for people who are listening and thinking, "I want more of this. What's the best place for them to find you and learn about your music and your song circles? And

well, you know what I'd I'd really like to do, if it's okay with you, is I'd really like to offer. I'll give you a link to this little mini course, making singing easy, and then whoever wants to go, oh, I want to do that, and this is you know, this is just for you. I think there's maybe two little short videos and the track to the song, and even to this day, I use this song when it's time at the song circles for people to step out and do solos, and the same thing happens every time, where people, you know, I and I always say to them, you don't have to sing it alone. If it's your turn as you're going around the circle, and you're you want to sing it, but you're just not ready to sing alone. You know, grab the people beside you, and someone will go. I'll sing it, but with the whole group. Okay, no, I'll sing it by myself. And it's just somehow it's got this energy that says I'm strong and and I'm courageous, and this is I'm going to be who I am in this world, and it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be good, because the more I do it, and the more I relax, the better it gets, and the more joy I have, and the more light I can generate. And that's really what I'm here to do: is generate my own light and invite other people to come into being a grove of trees with me, and are being in water with me, or wherever it is in nature, where where we can get joyous and generate the kind of light that that sustains us, because there's a lot of challenge and a lot of darkness, and I think that's our job is to not be brought down by that, and for that we need each other, and we need to go deep within ourselves to express what's there. So I'm going to send you a link to this particular giveaway, and if anybody wants it, you just take it. And how you can find me? My name is Julie Blue, as you've said, Jennifer, and go to julieblue.com, and and you can find out all about me and all about my shenanigans,

and that's all going to go into the show notes. I love how you mentioned trees and water because I know you also you also do retreats and you're doing this beautiful retreat in Mexico in February in the water. Oh, not just any water, but do you want to say a little bit about that now? I know we can talk about that.

I would love to, and and I'll be succinct in that I love Mexico. My relationship with Mexico started the the year after I graduated from Musik University, and I ended up in this historical city called the San Miller Dayende, and I ended up playing the breaks for a jazz band, and then I ended up being invited to go to Mexico City and find a jazz band. But traveling through Mexico brought me to the part of Mexico that I absolutely love, which is the area between Cancun and Tulum, where there's hundreds, literally, of cenotes. And for those of you who who might not know what a cenote is, that whole area is made from limestone, and water has had its way with the limestone, and made underground rivers and underground caves and open pools, and this is the land of the Mayans, and and and the land of incredible ruins. And to the Mayans, these cenotes were sacred, and to me, they're still sacred. So every year I go there in February, and around. Valentine's Day because it's a time to give so much love to yourself, to get out of the cold and the gray, and go to the sun. and And I've picked a beautiful retreat center where we're so well taken care of, and it's in Dos Ojos Park. Dos Ojos means two eyes, and one of the most beautiful cenotes in the world is dos ojos. What the retreat is about is we sing and we chant and we hum and we take time in nature and we in the mornings we dance and in the afternoons we rest and we create and we swim and you can walk to the cenotes. There's a big pool where we are, and part of the practice is what happens when I let my body fully relax in water, and I begin to hum and make sound. What happens when I do that with others? And it's really about a profound healing that starts to move out any of the old beliefs that have stopped you from expressing yourself fully, from being authentically who you are, and what happens is it opens up these creative pathways, and the women start to hear and create their own songs, and there's

fires, and there's a temascal, which is a Mayan sweat, and there's so many rituals and celebrations. And as I've spoken of before, you're never put on the spot in me to do anything. There's tons of laughter, and it's called singing water. And if this calls you, there's still a few spaces left.

Beautiful, Julie. I I love your passion and your light and what you are bringing into this world. And thank you. So all of this is going to go in the show notes. So thank you for being on the show, Julie. And until next time, take care.