Elizabeth has spent several decades studying traditional healing modalities, ceremony, and wild medicine with Native American elders in Canada, the US, and South America. She also works with music as a healing practice in retreat centers, hospitals and nursing homes, arts communities, drug rehabs, and community centers.

Retreats include traditional communal and private healing ceremonies (sweat lodges, talking circles and others), sometimes paired together with live concerts (harp and voice).

She has been organizing and hosting spiritual retreats throughout the Northeast for over 20 years, and has been leading ceremonial retreats throughout the Hudson Valley region for the last decade, including at Mettabee Farm and Arts Center, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (Cosm), Riverbank House, at many private homes/land throughout the region, as well as at the Omega Institute in 2025.

To learn more about retreats offered, please reach out through the contact page or email mamalamamusic@gmail.com.

Background:

Initially seeking out traditional earth-based ceremonies and spiritual teachings for her own personal healing, Elizabeth met her beloved lifelong teacher, Mi'qmac/Algonquin spiritual Elder Grandfather Albert Ward (1941-2021) at age seventeen. She then spent several decades traveling around the United States and Canada with Grandfather Albert and the vibrant community of people from all over the world that surrounded him—-praying and healing in the ‘sacred womb’ of the sweat lodge and other healing ceremonies, singing Mi’qmac traditional songs on a women’s drum at Pow Wows along the East Coast, learning about wild plants and foraged medicines, and organizing large spiritual gatherings/retreats for the benefit of the community.

Grandfather Albert (1941-2021: Mi’qmac, NB Canada, in the spiritual lineage of Grandfather Albert Lightning, Cree, Alberta) was a well-known, much-loved gifted healer and spiritual teacher who traveled extensively throughout the US, Mexico, and Canada for over 30 years sharing teachings and healing ceremony with people from all over the world. After studying with Grandfather Albert for over 20 years,  Elizabeth was given the teachings and spiritual preparations through her Elder to carry and continue with these ceremonial practices, leading sweat lodges, talking circles, and other traditional healing ceremonies. All ceremonies are conducted in a heart-centered and sacred manner, honoring the Mi’qmac traditions that Grandfather Albert came from and shared with us.

Elizabeth has been a student of harpist and ‘music thanatology’ pioneer Therese Schroeder-Sheker through the Chalice of Repose Project, studying within a Benedictine monastic community for a year of ‘Contemplative Musicianship’. Though she did not engage with formal studies of Music Thanatology (music for the dying), the lived practice of comforting those who are facing end of life with live bedside music became part of the path through Elizabeth’s ongoing work with Elders and music. She has been musically present with elders in nursing homes, hospitals, and private homes, bringing support to the bedside of those who are ill, comatose, or actively dying with live harp and vocal music for over a decade. She was blessed to be musically present at the bedside for the transition of her own grandparents and great-grandparents, and has nearly 20 years of lived experience working with music as a healing art within retreat centers, nursing homes, drug rehabilitation centers, traumatic brain injury recovery centers, arts communities, and in communities for people with special needs

Elizabeth has also been a student of composer/interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk, studying for 9 years through annual retreats at The Garrison Institute/NY, and through The House Foundation in Tribeca NY with Meredith Monk’s Vocal Ensemble, including Ellen Fisher, Tom Bogdan, Allison Easter, Katie Geissinger, Pablo Vela and Janis Brenner.