We had the good fortune of connecting with Heather Christie and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heather, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Mind Body Music is based on the belief that everyone has creative genius; people just need the rights tools to be supported in accessing their unique brand of artistic excellence. Our mission is to help awaken a new era of creatively empowered humans, so that we are freed up to live in harmony with each other, the planet, and all living creatures. By tending to the innate creative expression in humans, we are also supporting the ecosystem of earth-human relations, and thus supporting a more positive future for all. Our programs are based on an integrative approach to artistic living through curriculums that combine expressive arts of dance/movement, singing/vocal expression, creative writing, drawing, and performing. We also give back to organizations like Womens Earth Alliance (WEA) and Tree Sisters with a percentage of every course sale, creating financial partnerships with women-led earth-based organizations.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I am honestly just starting on the road of being the CEO of my own business. I always knew I’d be entrepreneurial; I did it first with my music career for 8 years, learning the ropes of music production, booking, graphic design, collaboration, and all the others hats that come with the life of a music artist. I am so grateful that now all this experiential learning gets to come to fruition through sharing this wisdom with my students. I enjoy the process of personal evolution that comes along with being a mentor: the more I relate to my students and clients, the more they realize they are not alone; which is the goal! The goal is also to invoke an embodied sense of leadership within each student, which the creative arts have always been the most powerful vessel for in my own life. It’s about real-life, embodied, hands-on experience, mixed with lecture and inspiration. That’s why it’s called ‘mind-body’ music: it’s somatic learning that gets at the whole person, and creates holistic understanding which lasts a lifetime. This will always be at the basis of all our programs: a solid blend of education designed for both the mind, and the sensing body.
The third tenet we base our curricula on is community. Through a sense of belonging and togetherness, students are invested at a level that we could never force or manufacture. So through creating a blend of embodied leadership, community, and somatic-based learning, Mind Body Music is a small part of forging a new territory of empowerment and learning that creates lasting positive change.
I am most truly excited right now about the next couple of courses I get to offer: the creative expression course called ‘Visionary Vessel’, where women get to have a space to deepen their self-trust and open the gateways to their intuition through the expressive arts, and then ‘Source to Stream’, which is a hands-on music production course for those ready to become official Spotify artists!! We’re going to have 12 weeks together there, where we move from the ‘source’ of inspiration for a song to the ‘stream’ reality of being a music artist on all streaming platforms in just 12 weeks. Whew!! <3

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Firstly, I would take them to the Butcher’s Daughter: an all-vegetarian, locally based restaurant where I have been employed the past 3 years! It’s a place that comes together in community around quality food, drink, and experience, and has supported me so much in my own journey! That’s in Venice on Abbott Kinney, which is also a super fun place to walk around, see culture, and be near the ocean. I would also drive us up the coast through Malibu, and to one of my favorite areas to hike and play, Malibu Creek State Park. The Santa Monica mountains are really one of the big things that made me fall in love with LA, with their vast sage-brush open beauty.
Thirdly, I’d take us DTLA to the arts district! You can feel the sense of artistic excitement there, through the colorful art on the walls, and the creative people who are repurposing old warehouse spaces for all kinds of innovative things.

Lastly, we’d go to the top of Griffith Observatory, where you can get one of the best views of the city while being in it, and see the Hollywood sign which is part of what gives the city its famous magic.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d like to thank my first mentor, Sofiah Thom, for showing me the roots of entrepreneurship in an embodied way: we both came from a background of dance, and she fused dance with the healing arts to create a dance-yoga blend called ‘danyasa’, which I was certified in at age 21. I would also like to thank Anna and Daria Halprin for creating the school Tamalpa Institute, which has ushered through thousands of students to become more embodied, and served me greatly during my studies there. I would lastly like to thank my mom and grammy, for showing me what it was to be a strong woman for your time, and my mother especially for passing on to me the lineage of teaching.

Website: https://heathercsongs.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mindbody.music

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