About Naaz Hosseini

“If your Self is a house with many rooms, finding your true voice allows you to claim all of them.”

Hi, I’m Naaz Hosseini, voice empowerment coach, soundshifter™, and psychotherapist.

On the surface, voice empowerment coaching is about helping you reclaim the power of your voice and create a commanding presence. But dig deeper, and you’ll find it’s about much more than that. It’s the freedom to be true to yourself and authentic with others.

What I’ve learned from doing voice empowerment work with different kinds of people, ranging from moms to community leaders to CEOs, is that connecting to your true voice allows you to not only step out and be heard in an audible sense, but also to break through whatever is keeping you stuck and small internally.

I feel so strongly about doing this work because I personally know what it means to “lose your voice.” That’s what happened to me as a child.

How I lost my voice and reclaimed it.

You could say I was born into music. Both my parents were professional opera singers, and I was immersed in music from the time I was in the womb.

I could read sheet music from the age of three. I sang every day, made up story-song-dances, and played the piano.

All was fine until the age of eleven, when I started to become self-conscious about singing in front of people. This got worse and worse, until by the time I hit puberty I was excessively shy about being heard not only while singing, but even speaking.

I learned to speak “sideways,” slipping comments into conversation obliquely.

Even though I was intimidated about speaking and singing, I was still very creative and always looking for ways to express myself. I pursued dancing, which I did professionally, because it allowed me to express myself without words.

My return to voice began in 1980, when world-renowned composer and vocalist, Meredith Monk came to my solo dance performance of William Dunas’ choreography at St. Marks Church in New York City. Afterward, she asked me to join her newly forming Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble. With her I completely broke out of the vocal cage I’d been locked inside, and felt free to make sound once again. I toured the United States and the world extensively, including Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo University, and numerous festivals throughout Europe.

I enjoyed my experiences working with Meredith, but I knew in my heart I was performing someone else’s work. I felt protected and veiled, and inside me a low rumble began to build…

I needed to find my own voice.

Even though the thought of it terrified me, I decided to rent a sound studio for an hour a week and record myself vocally improvising out of the silence, sometimes with my violin.

Within minutes of that first session, I had a breakthrough—I connected to my voice and immediately had the sensation of coming home.

I finally understood what it felt like to show up and be fully present to myself. It was a profound experience that changed me forever. It was also the beginning of my journey helping others to find and free their own true voices.

I began giving workshops and private sessions to those who wanted to know themselves more, who wanted to free their voices and who wanted to stand up and be heard. And that’s how Powerful Presence® was born.

I love helping and inspiring women artists, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders in their own unique journeys to free their self-expression, creativity, and personal effectiveness.

In addition to being a voice empowerment coach, I am trained in Internal Family Systems Therapy and I am also a Certified Gestalt Therapist. I am currently on the faculty of The Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training, where I train and supervise other therapists. I also served as a faculty member of Teachers College at Columbia University, where I supervised mental health counselors in the school’s two-year graduate program.

Other cool stuff I’ve done.

From 1996 through 2005 I had the honor of being a visiting faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero Summer Institute, where I taught mini-sessions demonstrating Multiple Intelligences, Teaching for Understanding, and The Arts to an international community of world-class educators, administrators, and business professionals.

In 1987 I created the Artistic Learning Method, which uses thinking shapes™ (body movement, gesture, and shapes) to explore and demonstrate thinking and understanding throughout the educational curriculum, particularly in literature, history, and science. This method was used to train hundreds of teachers and I subsequently modeled it  with thousands of their students, engaging Multiple Intelligences, inquiry, and personal perspectives in K−12 learning.

My transformative workshop, “The Power of Your True Voice,” has been offered at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training, the New York Open Center, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, and other venues nationwide. My meditative CD, SoundPath, is featured in “Dance Magazine Recommends.”

Whether psychotherapy, voice empowerment, or sound healing, my work is grounded in and cultivates authenticity, spontaneity, and flow.

To get started, sign up to receive my free book: Speak from Your Heart: Six Steps to Engage, Inspire, and Impact Your Audience.

Interested in working with me one-on-one? Schedule your free initial consult: Click HERE.

Photo credit: Lisa Levart LUSH Photography

© 2018 Naaz Hosseini