Hi, I’m Elissa.

I believe the best learning environments include room to:

Be ourselves
Be with and transform shame
Offer compassion to ourselves and others
Approach life with humor and joy

I love teaching teachers. I find it a great privilege to hold space for others, and an absolute joy to hold space for the space-holders. I believe as teacher we need to immerse ourselves in the type of learning environments we are trying to create. I’ve designed this program to be cultivating a joyful, compassionate environment as it is about learning. Welcome!

There are no grades in this program, and I strongly dislike vague or hidden benchmarks. Successful completion will consist of:

I run this program with a great deal spaciousness.

There are amazing models, systems, techniques, and exercises that I will share with you! (You have access to all of them in the prerequisite courses.) Though you'll learn many things, I’m not going to dictate how you teach. You’re invited to incorporate your learning into your teaching and/or personal practice,  and combine it with other methodologies you’ve studied or developed yourself. You’ll certainly learn new things in our container. But more than anything else, I hope the Instructor Program gives you a space to integrate all that you’ve learned and continue to learn, and gives you confidence in your voice as a teacher.

I believe that the biggest gift I can offer as a teacher is to attend to my students’ humanity first and let any curriculum or plans follow after that.

In an ideal world, we put:

PEOPLE FIRST, AND CURRICULUM SECOND.

To speak to all this from another angle, I’m an advocate for shedding our “shoulds.” For centuries, the Westernized approach to vocal training has been about having a voice that sounds “good” or “right.” I believe there is no one way that your voice should sound. There is no one way that your body should move. There is no one way you should hold space for others when you teach. Our group will be a space to explore with compassion and curiosity. This means that as a cohort, we will do our best to create an environment that is safe, comfortable, and connected.

I’m interested in de-throning the idea of expertise and experts.

Not in the sense that experts don’t exist, but in the sense that we are all our own greatest experts on ourselves.

The paradox of our container is that we will all hold the space together, and yet I will lead and facilitate. I take the responsibility of leadership very seriously. I will come with proposed agreements that we can build on together. I will be clear about guidelines and assignments. I will address breaches of our agreements, especially if our container becomes unsafe or uncomfortable for any member. I ask that you come to me if you have a question or concern, and I commit that I will slow down to hear you, discuss, grow, and learn together. Room for imperfection will be part of what I encourage us all to grant to each other, and I will also invite us to come back to the table to converse and be accountable.

Business training is left out of so many voice coaching programs.

We are building an artistic business/ a career teaching deep, powerful voice practices in a capitalist society. This is hard! We will talk about it and the realities of how we structure our time and work, so we can support ourselves and our families. Throughout the program, we will talk bluntly and often about the realities of teaching in a profitable way. This will be addressed in group sessions, and it will also be a big part of what we work on in our 1-1 coaching sessions together.

• Catherine Fitzmaurice (I did my first voice certification in Fitzmaurice Voicework®)
• Knight-Thompson Speechwork
• Kristin Linklater
• Patsy Rodenburg (in Authentic Voice Academy, you’ll learn how much I love the Second Circle)
• Arthur Lessac
• Betty Moulton, my mentor at the University of Alberta
• Vibrant Voice Technique, another voice coaching business that I run with founder David Ley

• Deb Dana (Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Anchored)
• Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger)