For retreat hosts & centres

One afternoon that gives your retreat's work a voice.

A single 90-minute somatic voice session, built around whatever you have been opening with your group — and placed in your schedule where they're ready for it. It doesn't compete with your programme. It takes what your programme has already surfaced and lets people sound it.

One session, not a residency No singing experience required No cost to your participants

Book a retreat collaboration call Watch a 70-second introduction

Led by Heather Schmid — certified Somatic Vocal Healing practitioner, GRAMMY voting member, and classically trained vocalist with a twenty-five-year international performance career.

In her own words

Voice is the window to the soul.

Before a retreat, most hosts want to know one thing that no description answers: what is this person like in a room?

Here is Heather on why the voice reaches what talking cannot — and why the practice begins by letting a voice be exactly as it is.

1 MIN 11 SEC

A moment from a recent podcast conversation.

Heather on being of service through the voice, and why that is the part of the work she protects.

14 SEC

Why hosts bring this in

By mid-week your group has opened something. Words don't always finish it.

You've spent days building trust and getting people to the edge of something real. Then comes the familiar problem: they can describe it perfectly and still not feel it move. Insight arrives, articulate and stuck.

Sound goes somewhere talking doesn't. This session takes the exact material your retreat has surfaced and gives the body a way to move it — then hands the group back to you, opened rather than diverted.

Heather Schmid seated on a rocky coastline at sunset, listening.

It works on your material

The session is shaped to your theme in advance. It deepens what you're teaching instead of introducing a competing modality mid-week.

It reaches the ones words missed

Every group has people who process fluently and shift nothing. Sound bypasses the part of them that has an answer ready.

It costs you one slot

An afternoon, a room, no equipment. Not a facilitator embedded in your week, and nothing to rebuild your schedule around.

Inside the session

Ninety minutes with a shape to it.

Every session moves through the same arc — activation, settling, depth, integration. It never ends on activation, because nobody should be sent back to your programme lit up and unfinished.

0–20 MIN

The sound of the moment

Hand on the heart, one question asked aloud, one sustained tone. No warm-up and no talking first — what people believe they need tends to stand directly in front of what would actually help. This is where the room learns that sounding is not singing, and that a soft sound is not a lesser one.

20–35 MIN

Settling

The group finds its footing together. Nobody is singled out, and anyone can hum, breathe, listen, or simply sit. This is also where I read the room and decide how far it can go.

35–70 MIN

The work

Beneath the first sound is another. This is where your retreat's theme becomes the material — what your group has been circling all week gets sounded rather than described. Held and named, never pushed toward resolution in front of a room.

70–90 MIN

Anchor

We return to the sound of the moment, so each person hears for themselves how far the ninety minutes travelled. They leave grounded, and with a simple practice they can repeat alone — which is usually what they tell you about weeks later.

Shaped to your retreat

Tell me what you're working on. That becomes the session.

We speak before the retreat, and the session is built around your theme. The structure above stays the same; what gets sounded changes entirely.

Grief & loss: Grief is a response to change, not only to death — and it sounds different from pain. Sounding gives it a form when words have run out.
Women's work: The voice is where silencing lives in the body. Sounding is where it stops.
Men's work: Most men arrive with one permitted sound. This session finds the others.
Plant medicine integration: Integration is where the work is won or lost. Sound gives the body a way to move what came up, rather than another way to explain it.
Yoga & embodiment: The breath is already the practice. Sounding is the breath given a voice and a direction.
Creativity & writing: Most creative blocks are a voice that learned it wasn't safe to be heard.
Trauma-informed work: Tonal sound is self-regulating — it keeps its own rhythm and doesn't force. Nothing opens further than the room can hold.
Sound healing: You already offer sound to your guests. This asks them to make it themselves — the receiving and the giving, complete.

What I can offer

One session is the offer. The rest is if you want it.

The signature session

The full arc, shaped to your theme. Best placed from the middle of your retreat onward, once your group has material to work with.

90 MIN · THE CORE OFFER

Shortened session

The same arc, compressed, where your schedule genuinely has no more room.

60 MIN

Opening or closing ceremony

A trained voice to open or seal your container. Offered alongside the session at no additional ask.

20–30 MIN

Private sessions

For guests who find something the group can't hold. Arranged through you, never sold from the front of the room.

BY ARRANGEMENT

A second session

For longer retreats: one to open the material, one to anchor it a few days later.

ON REQUEST

Placing it

Where it wants to sit in your week.

Day three onward. The session works on what your group has opened, so it needs them to have opened something. On day one there's nothing yet to sound.
Afternoon, or early evening. After a main session rather than before one — the group arrives already warm, and nothing is competing for their attention afterward.
Not the final hour of the retreat. Leave at least one of your own gatherings after it, so what surfaces has somewhere to land with you.
Your facilitator is welcome in the room. Two people holding a field is stronger than one, and you'll see exactly what your guests worked with.

Who's leading it

Heather Schmid

Two things had to come together for this work to exist: a methodology with real structure, and an ear trained over twenty-five years of listening for what a voice is doing underneath what it's saying.

Performance: Classically trained vocalist and international recording artist. Twenty-five years performing across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America.
Reach: A television series with CCTV in China reached an audience of more than 200 million. Cultural diplomacy work across several continents.
Recording: Voting member of the Recording Academy — the GRAMMY body.
Method: Certified Somatic Vocal Healing practitioner, leading group voice sessions in the method.
Film: Creator of Voice of the Earth, a feature documentary on sound, nature and what the earth has to say, and the Vibrational Journeys series, filmed in the Azores, Bimini and Brazil.
Teaching: Founder and Executive Director of Game Changers Network, a Massachusetts 501(c)(3), and its primary teaching artist — years of holding a room, not only a stage.
Speaking: Presenting at the 21st annual Sound Healing Conference, November 2026, by invitation of the Sound Healing Research Foundation.
Based: East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Available across New England, the United States and internationally.

Voice of the Earth

A feature documentary following an international recording artist to the Azores to explore sound and vibration. Official selection at the Boston Indie Film Festival, Toronto International Women's Film Festival, the Impact DOCS Awards and LA Indies, and an award winner at Nature Without Borders.

The methodology gives this work its structure and its safety. The performance career gives it an ear — twenty-five years of hearing the difference between a sound that is protecting something and a sound that is telling the truth. Your guests get both in the room at once.

For your guests

What participants are told.

Copy written for your sales page or pre-arrival email. Use it as it is, or change anything.

One afternoon of your retreat, you'll be invited into a guided sounding practice: breath, attention, and one sustained tone at a time. This is not singing, and there is nothing to perform. Your voice does not need to be trained, beautiful, strong, or even steady — the practice begins by letting it be exactly as it is. We use sound as a way to notice what is present, settle into the body, and make a little more space around what the week has opened. Some of it may feel quiet and grounding; some of it surprising, tender, or energising. You breathe, sound, listen, and notice. No musical ability is needed. Curiosity is enough to begin.

Safety and scope

What this is, and what it isn't.

Stated plainly, because the hosts worth working with ask.

Participation is invitational. Anyone can hum, breathe, listen, observe, or step out of the room. Nobody is singled out.
No experience of any kind is required, and the session adapts to different mobility, energy and comfort levels.
This is not medicine. Nothing here treats, cures or diagnoses anything. Where a guest is in care, the work sits alongside it — never in place of it.
This is not psychotherapy. Clinical and mental-health territory is work done alongside professionals, not instead of them.
Nothing is pushed to resolution in a group. In group work the role is to hold and to name, not to open something the room can't carry.
Referral is part of the practice. Where someone needs more than the container holds, they are referred on, quietly and quickly.
Your group comes back to you settled. The arc never ends on activation — that's structural, not a courtesy.

Logistics

What it asks of you.

Time: One 90-minute slot, plus fifteen minutes either side.
Group size: 6 to 30. Above 30, a second space-holder is needed.
Space: A room where sound won't carry into other programming. Circle seating or cushions.
Equipment: None. No sound system, no instruments.
Before the retreat: One call with you, so the session is built around your theme.
You receive: A run sheet, guest-facing copy for your marketing, and one point of contact throughout.

The exchange

A founding season, through 2027.

This session is being placed with a small number of retreats over the coming year, on founding terms.

No facilitator fee, and no cost to your participants.
I ask that travel and lodging be covered for the nights around the session, and for the option to offer private sessions to guests who want to go further — arranged through you.
If it lands well: a short testimonial, permission to use approved photography, and the first conversation about your next season.

After the founding season the session moves to a standard facilitator fee. Retreats placed now keep founding terms for their following year.

✧ Let's talk

If this resonates, book a call.

An hour to walk through the retreat you're building, what you're opening with your group, and where the session would sit. By the end we'll know the date, the shape of the ninety minutes, and what travel looks like on your side.

Prefer to write first? heatherannschmid@gmail.com · 617 680 2442
Tell me the dates, roughly how many guests, and what you're working on with them — I'll come back with a short proposal shaped to your programme.