ANNA GRABNER, VMTR, MA (born in Austria, living in Portugal) is a singer and psychologist who combines creative and therapeutic work through VMT. After training in South Africa in 2012, she moved to Portugal where she offers individual sesssions and groups, in-person and on-line, and facilitates retreats and workshops indoors and in nature. Her fascination for vocal improvisation has led her to participate in and facilitate a capella groups where people can connect through simple meditative song, and to collaborate with massage and music therapists offering Healing Sound Massage. Since becoming a mother, she has accompanied women in exploring their maternal voice in relation to their changing body to help them feel more empowered for labour and postpartum recovery. She also co-organies sisterhood circles, inviting women to reflect on self-care and share and express themselves through song and dance. She provides a safe playground for creative self-expression, encouraging individuals to awaken their innate vocal wisdom to connect with their deepest self.

ANNE MAARMAN, VMTR, Pastoral Counselor and former nurse (S. Africa) focuses on helping stroke patients and those recovering from long Covid, using VMT principles and practices. Through singing, massage and breathing together, she helps patients to fight their way back to health through the long emotional and spiritual as well as physical process of coming out of a coma or other significant state of illness to find themselves again. Anne works alongside other therapists to provide safety to her clients and support to their families, assisting them through the depression that comes with experiencing a stroke or other protracted and profound illness. Aside from her work as a pastor and a VMT practitioner with both individuals and groups, Anne is a highly sought motivational speaker.

BEN VAN RENSBURG, VMTR, Certified Addictions Counsellor (Cape Town, S. Africa) found VMT and felt it was made for him. Starting to use aspects of it in his work at a residential addictions clinic where it was soon incorporated into the regular program in two weekly groups, as well as in his work with individual patients, he also assisted on the second VMT Training in South Africa and established and maintained his own practice. His untimely death in his early 40s left a big hole, as he was greatly loved by all who knew him.

BONISWA KAMBA, Rev., VMTR (Port Elizabeth, South Africa) is a mother of three grown daughters and two sons. As a Reverend, Boniswa currently ministers at Ntabakandoda Circuit at Kwa-Komani District in the Eastern Cape under the leadership of UMCOSA (the United Methodist Church of Southern Africa). She is a qualified counsellor and trainer who has worked for 13 years in the diocese of the Port Elizabeth Anglican Church, helping people to develop life skills and providing therapeutic counselling to traumatized women and children. Between 2009 and 2012, Boniswa worked with WAWA (Women Against Women Abuse) providing counselling to victims of gender-based violence and human trafficking, and in 2014 began working with small groups and individuals focusing on developing and strengthening family bonds. Boniswa trained in VMT in Oudtshoorn South Africa, qualifying as a registered professional practitioner in 2013. She is dedicated to the work of VMT and has stablished the registered not-for-profit organization Voice Movement Therapy Eastern Cape (VMTEC) endorsed by the National Department of Social Development. Boniswa was invited to Parliament to present a statement on the challenges faced by communities in the Eastern Cape and was instrumental in submitting the Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill, incorporating several key VMT principles. Boni  also works with the Department of Transport, facilitating VMT-based workshops on depression and stress and anger in the workplace, and volunteers at the Educational Support Services Trust in collaboration with the Health Department, promoting good health within communities, with a focus on children pre-birth to 19 years, also using VMT principles.

CHRISTINE ISHERWOOD, VMTR, REAT, M.A, (UK/USA) singer/songwriter, directs and teaches the Voice Movement Therapy Training Program, works with individual clients, conducts workshops and trainings internationally, and supervises VMT students and practitioners. She has been engaged in teaching Voice Movement Therapy internationally for more than twenty years in the UK, the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She trained and then taught with founder of VMT Paul Newham in London in the mid 1990s. In partnership with Anne Brownell, she co-taught the Norma Canner Foundation Training for many years and is now its Director. She also founded the first VMT Training Program in Beijing, China under the auspices of Apollo Education and Consulting. Prior to VMT, she earned a degree in Cultural Studies at the University of East London, UK, a Diploma as an Assertiveness Training Teacher with the Redwood Women’s Training Organization, did a two-year training in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychotherapy, and studied therapeutic healing with noted eclectic healers. She has over thirty years’ experience working with street homeless people in Central London; as a mental health counsellor in the fields of addiction, domestic abuse, sexuality and gender; as a group facilitator and trainer, and as a VMT practitioner with those seeking to transform themselves through the voice. A founding director and member of the IAVMT, her MA is in Clinical Mental Health Counselling and she holds a Certificate in Traumatic Stress Studies. Christine has written and performed in political musicals, toured the UK and Europe with theatre groups and bands, and recorded as a pop singer. She has lectured and taught at Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA); the Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts (WAAPA); and has been adjunct faculty at the Creative Integrative Expressive Arts Therapy Training Program (CREATE), Toronto, Canada. Christine continues to commit herself to an intensive exploration of VMT and the voice, to write and to learn. She currently lives in Boston, MA.

CAROL GRIMES, VMTR (UK) is a British singer, songwriter, poet, blogger, teacher, and author of a memoire, The Singer’s Tale. Beginning as a busker on the streets, she came to public attention when she joined the band Delivery  and recorded an album with them before departing on a solo career and creating an extremely large discography of her own. After performing and recording in the UK, USA, Sweden, Jura and Poland, she became angry at the injustice, cruelty and poverty she witnessed around her and became an activist. The first musician to step up for Rock Against Racism, she sang also for striking miners, the fire service, and refugee centers. For many years, she conducted the Sing for Joy Choir for people with Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions. She toured with Orlando Gough’s The Shout for 12 years; has performed at the Royal Albert Hall as well as Ronnie Scott’s and many other well-known jazz clubs; conducted workshops for teens with behavior disorders for the Prince’s Trust; taught rock, pop, soul, blues and jazz at the City Lit in Central London; and loves to write.

EVA HAIDL, VMTR (Austria) is a singer, songwriter and musician who studied Jazz at the University of Performing Arts in Graz as well as at the Guildhall School for Music and Drama in London. Eva’s search for authenticity as a singer and voice teacher led her to the VMT training in America in 2004 and to work with patients at the Jules Thorn Mental Health Day Care Centre in London in her practice year, becoming a certified VMT practitioner in 2007. Invited by Anne Brownell and Christine Isherwood to be the first apprentice teacher on the VMT training, then located on Martha’s Vineyard, MA, she served for three years as a director for the IAVMT. In her private practice as a teacher of singing, she encourages personal expression through the voice. Eva has been working with beginners and professional singers of all ages for over 15 years. For the past 6 years she has focused extensively on leading group workshops in VMT and Gospel and World Music in Austria, Germany and Italy and has recently taught at the Drama Department of the Vienna Music University for the Max Reinhardt Seminar.

GERTRUIDA DOWSE, VMTR, BA(hons), SW, Dipl. Play-Therapy and Marriage Counselling and Preparation S. Africa) is a Life and Wellness Coach in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, offering both online and actual therapy sessions for individuals, couples and groups. She is also a formal Mediator and works with clients to confront and reconcile differences, using VMT to help them become more aware of their own feelings in order to understand the other person better and find a meeting point for cooperation. Gertruida is a former director and trainer of FAMSA Karoo, an affiliate for ICAS, LifeAssist Metropolitan, and a network provider for Universal Care, focusing on Employment Wellness programs and trainings and supporting professionals to cope with stress, anger and life demands. Outside the office, Gertruida loves to work in her garden and walk in the fields. She particularly enjoys entertaining others with her husband Steven in their cosy home.

HELEN WHITE, CPRP, VMTR (Canada) has been a mental health professional for over twenty years, working primarily with people with major mental illness. Helen’s passion for psychiatric rehabilitation led her to begin her training in Voice Movement Therapy in 2008. She has witnessed VMT’s ability to empower a person through their voice, resulting in greater self-confidence and self-esteem. Helen is a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner using VMT in her clinical practice. She has presented her  expressive arts initiative, Voice Studio—group work that she has done with persons with psychiatric disability—at several psychiatric rehabilitation conferences. In her private life, Helen enjoys voice coaching, and singing and dancing in her community, as well as working with individual VMT clients. She lives in Ottawa, Canada, and has two daughters and four grandchildren.

IRENE KESSLER, MA, PhD (FL, USA, born in NYC) was an opera singer for many years, performing minor roles at the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and Teatro Principal in Barcelona, Spain. Becoming increasingly interested in the use of voice in therapy, she earned her MA, moved to Boca Raton, FL and became an eating disorders specialist at Glenbeigh Hospital. Completing her PhD in 1997 while also qualifying in VMT with Paul Newham and Anne Brownell in Somerville, MA, she went on to work at the Radar Institute and the Renfrew Center. In practice for over 30 years, she also sang in a local quartet that performed opera, operetta and Broadway tunes, continuing to sing until her death a few years ago.

JULIA NORTON. VMTR (San Francisco Bay area, California) is a singer, actor, and voice coach with over 25 years’ experience teaching people how to enjoy a free and healthy voice. Born in the UK, she has been singing her whole life and teaching groups to sing since she was 18. Always compelled to understand more about the emotional story behind a singer’s experience, she discovered Voice Movement Therapy in 1998 and studied for two years before qualifying as a registered practitioner and moving to San Francisco in 2000. Since then, she has composed music for theatre & circus, directed, and produced an award-winning album, Lullaby Island, performed jazz and musical theatre, and trained as a voice actor. She was a teaching artist for the San Francisco Opera Guild and Summer Conservatory and has presented at conferences around the world, teaching therapists, dancers, and expressive artists how to use their voices to free their emotions and creative talents, and was a former director of the International Association for Voice Movement Therapy. In 2018 she won a Voice Arts Award for her role in Disney’s Star Wars game Jedi Challenges and launched her popular podcast, “Dark and Twisty Tales,” available on iTunes.  She currently divides her time between teaching, acting, singing and “getting up to stuff” with her family and noisy terrier. Julia is passionate about helping people discover a free, connected, and healthy voice.

LERINA VAN RENSBURG, VMTR, SDCSA (Pretoria, S. Africa) Postgraduate Education Certificate (Unisa), Level 6 Teachers Licentiate and Vocal and Theory Gr. 8 (Rockschool), Vocal Gr. 8 (Trinity), Music Theory Gr. 6 (Trinity), Performance Certificates in Folk Singing and Vocals (JAM), Digital Music Production (Emendy), Short Course in Management and Marketing for the Music Industry (Pretoria, S. Africa) has been entertaining audiences from a young age. Her teaching experience ranges from London-based schools such as CHIMS (Courtney House Instrumental Music School in th UK) and heading up the Music Department of Pretoria-East Primary. In 2005, Lerina founded Vibrience Music Notes where she has not only been teaching Vocals and Guitar but also steering the music academy into a flourishing business. In 2016, she launched a second music school, Ovie-Vibz, with 14 teachers in its employ and still growing. Lerina’s teaching philosophy is based on exploring voice and enabling every student to have the freedom to express themselves through their voice and to experience it it fully. Lerina has recently designed and built a hall close to Pretoria especially for VMT trainings. The next Foundation Training will take place in 2024 at her VoiceBox where she will not only organize all the logistics but assist in the Training itself.

MALI SASTRI, VMTR (USA), singer-songwriter and band leader, is a Registered Voice Movement Therapy practitioner based in Boston, MA. She trained with founder Paul Newham, Anne Brownell and Christine Isherwood in London, UK from 1999–2001. For the past eleven years, Mali has worked with individuals and groups, primarily in the Boston area and since 2012, has been part of the music education program at Tunefoolery, a Boston non-profit for musicians in mental health recovery. Mali’s work rides the edge between artistic and therapeutic practice, with an emphasis on breath and the song-as-container. Performing often with her band Jaggery, she is a singer, songwriter, composer, performer, and artist/practitioner—a forever student and lover of voice.

MELANIE HARROLD, VMTR, Certified Body Psychotherapist (UK), worked as a professional singer/songwriter, recording artist, band member, and touring musician for twenty years and currently performs and tours with the group, Daphne’s Flight.  For the last ten years she has been teaching singing while engaged in extensive experiential research into the connections between vocal expression, movement and psychotherapeutic process. She trained in Voice Movement Therapy in 1993 with founder Paul Newham and has been a regular guest teacher on subsequent trainings with Anne Brownell in the US and S. Africa, and has taught at the Apollo School in Beijing, China. As well as practicing as a Body Psychotherapist, she teaches singing to large groups, works with individuals from her home, and leads therapeutically based voice workshops around the country and abroad, also teaching voice and movement with The National Youth Theatre and The Circus Space, and has run a twice-weekly singing class at the Hornimans Museum in London. She is a founding director of the IAVMT

NNOKUBONGA CORDELIA MATHOLE, VMTR (Port Elizabeth, S. Africa) completed her experiential training in Oudtshoorn, S. Africa in 2012 and qualified as a professional practitioner soon after. Her background includes advanced administrative skills in asset-based citizen-led development, soccer cinema screening programs, and program development and communication with funders. Training in VMT was a new departure from her business work and led to her involvement in action-based programs on Gender Based Violence (GBV) and its connection to HIV/Aids in young people. Nokubonga has also established her own NGO, VMT South Africa, and works individually and with groups. A mother of 4 children, she has recently moved back from the small town of Peddie to Port Elizabeth where she is extending her NGO services, focusing her VMT work on GBV and HIV/Aids. As a domestic violence survivor herself, she actively encourages storytelling and songwriting. She is passionate about women who have incurred emotional problems from great suffering and is eager to engage them in the transitional process of gaining greater control of their lives.

SEBASTIANA BLACK, VMTR, Dip. BACP, MSCT (UK) is an integrative arts counsellor, a Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, and a singer-songwriter. She facilitates workshops and retreats in Norwich and in the Czech Republic, works with drama and dance movement therapy students at the Universities of East Anglia and Derby, and conducts a private practice. She finds that vocal expression in an attentive, non-judgmental atmosphere encourages clients to give voice to and transform trauma, increasing self-regulation, creativity and wisdom. Sebastiana also co-facilitates Mindfulness and Nature retreats with her partner Rob, nourishing a deeper intimacy with the natural world. She sang in the award-winning short film Malka, loves bringing world music to audiences with her ceilidh and concert band Zaramo, and has recorded two albums including original songs with her duet, Fire Doves.

SOPHIE MARTIN, MA, VMTR (Australia) has worked as a Voice Movement Therapy Practitioner since completing her qualification in 2010. She holds a Masters in Creative Arts focusing on the healing of trauma through voice and theatre. Her passion and belief in the power of the voice to transform and heal has taken  her to work in many places with people living “on the edge” in terms of physical and/or emotional survival: a major slum in Nairobi, a detention camp on Nauru, under-served aboriginal communities in Darwin, and young people who self-harm in Sydney about which she wrote the first study about VMT and therapeutic work published in a psychological journal. From remote communities to major cities, Sophie has worked to empower people by helping them find their actual physical as well as their metaphorical voice. Sophie lives in Perth and holds workshops and individual sessions online and in person. In 2020, she became the mother of a baby girl which made her passionate about working with other mothers and children on attachment and gentle parenting through voice and song.

TRACY STARREVELD, VMTR, (UK) is a UK-based certified proofreader and copyeditor. She trained in VMT on Martha’s Vineyard in 2002 and did her internship at a school in Vermont, including working imaginatively and effectively with young child with selective mutism. Always fascinated by people’s stories and with a background in creative performance and personal growth, Tracy specializes in supporting creatives, coaches, therapists, bodyworkers, teachers and health practitioners to more effectively express themselves through their written content. Whether that be through web copy, social media posts, newsletters, blogs or e-books, she helps her clients tell their own unique stories through concise and compelling copy that communicates exactly who they are and what they do. Having formally qualified with Chapterhouse Publishing and setting up her own business, she continues to  express herself, as well, through audible blog stories: anecdotal pieces focused on personal growth and well-being.

TRISH WATTS, VMTR, singer-songwriter (Australia) believes passionately that ‘Every life can SING!’ She was pelted into her own life by the singing of the village church choir and instilled with a dream that singing was a way of life & a medicine for all. Trish trained with the Norma Canner Foundation Training, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, USA and has a private practice in Sydney, Australia. Her love of travel and different cultures led her to facilitate VMT workshops and courses in India, Cambodia & New Zealand and,  closer to home, to offer vocal programs to Afghani and Iranian women as a volunteer for STARTTS (Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture & Trauma Survivors) in Sydney. Trish co-founded Willow Publishing & is a successful songwriter and recording artist with over 10 CD collections of original work. She has a Diploma in Music Education & is an accredited Singing & Piano teacher with the NSW Conservatorium of Music. Directing a capella choirs is part of her life-blood. Choirs include Colla Voce, a vocal multi-cultural ensemble; the Sydney and Cambodian Threshold Choirs (singers who sing beside bedsides in palliative care and recovery); & the Music Arts School Community Choir of Phnom Penh. She sang with the woman’s Crocus Quartet and Café of the Gate of Salvation Gospel Choir. For the past 40 years, Trish has worked as a freelance artist, workshop & retreat facilitator, affording her the freedom of a creative path. She has a strong grounding in sacred, spirited communal song. Her winding path has taken her around Australia and overseas to the UK, Europe, USA, India, South Africa, NZ. More recently, Trish lived in Phnom Penh, 2015-17 & co-founded Cambodia Sings, a not for profit organization to “rekindle the love of singing for all Cambodians.” She is a trained InterPlay facilitator (an improvisation-based community arts practice) and co-founded InterPlay Australia over 25 years ago. Anchored in the bedrock of play! her VMT work combines its essence with a deeply spiritual sensibility.

VERONICA PHILLIPS, VMTR. BACP (London, UK) has a background in teaching dance, drama, and special needs. She trained in VMT with founder Paul Newham in1998-2000 and then in integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy. Combining the two, Veronica’s work can emphasize moving fully into the expressive, creative self-development path of VMT or into the more analytically attuned relational psychotherapy, her focus emerging from the client’s wishes and needs, the two disciplines meeting in attention to breath and body. Veronica is also a trained Supervisor through CSTD (Centre for Supervision and Team Development). Her work with VMT, both individual and group, invites anyone to seek out, explore, and express their unique, authentic self and develop true autonomy. Workshops include Singing for the Timid and Terrified and Stories for Self-Exploration and Transformation, influenced by subtle energy work and shamanic practices. Integrated into her work is a sound knowledge and personal experience of emotional/developmental trauma, as well as the experience of and empathy with the shock, destabilization and deep grief of sudden trauma. Much of her understanding is based on a clear awareness of attachment needs and generational and ancestral constellation work.