[Bright red background with white text reading: Blessing for a New Semester; May I be as compassionate as I am competent; as accountable as I am artistic; as present as I am prioritized; as adaptable as I am accurate; as curious as I am confident; and as playful as I am prepared.]

We are so excited about our first offering this Saturday! If you would like to participate in future events, dm me or @the.empowered.voice to be on our email list! ❤️🌈🌱

Sparking our imaginations for a new semester…🌱

Sign up today, link in bio. We would love to have you join our exploration! 🌱

Honor the teachers who taught us to create by holding up mirrors rather than manuals. Especially for me, Marvin Keenze, who, among many things, taught me that information is only useful if it stirs my imagination. 🌱 [bright pink background with white text reading: Follow up post: Deep gratitude and reverence for the linage of teachers who have been assuming wholeness for decades.]

Particularly in the Western classical tradition, it is often implicitly understood that the purpose of walking into a voice lesson is to get better, to be corrected, to be somehow different than we currently are—that voice work operates in the context of assumed deficiency. Our innate YES, and our access to pleasurable singing experiences can become shadowed by the perpetuation of normative sound expectations. 🌱 When participating in educational relationships that cultivate a power-with dynamic, singers instead learn that they can be active participants in an emergent, co-creative learning process. Two things can be true: even as I am learning, my voice, body, and breath are whole in this moment. Teachers embodying this approach help singers to recognize that what they are looking for already exists within them, and offer choice-based strategies towards acquiring needed skills—we shift toward a sustainable model of assumed wholeness. Let’s turn imagination into action and impact.

Excited to generate ideas with the YogaVoice community this Saturday! In our time together, we will define Pleasure Activism by centering the scholarship and practices of adrienne maree brown, Audre Lorde, and Kai Cheng Thom; explore how choice, joy, and boundaries can live and move in our bodies; and reframe voice pedagogy as a form of activism. [pastel rainbow background with headshot of Megan Durham in the center. Black text reads: 2022 Intensive Day 4, July 30, Live Online. Megan Durham, keynote. Pleasure Activism through voice work. Learn how use your voice to claim your resilience and joy!]

Thank you to Jonathan Price, Kathy Price, and Mark Moliterno for the unexpected opportunity to share with the Westminster Vocal Pedagogy Institute!