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) often paired together with a live evening concert (harp and voice) and accompanied by special musical guests.

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 Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (Cosm), Riverbank House Men’s Spiritual Retreat and Drug Rehab, Mettabee Farm and Arts Center, and at many private homes/land throughout the region.

Elizabeth performs live in concert annually at spiritual retreat centers including The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies (NY) Kripalu Yoga Center (MA), Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), Sadhana Yoga Center, and others.

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 community Pow Wows, learning about wild plants and 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 invited to receive 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 also been a student of world-renowned harpist and ‘music thanatology’ pioneer Therese Shroeder-Sheker through the Chalice of Repose Project, studying in a ‘Contemplative Musicianship’, with a deep interest in the practice of Music Thanatology (music for the dying). For the last decade, Elizabeth has been musically present with elders in nursing homes, hospitals, and at home by bringing support and comfort to the bedside of those who are actively dying with sung prayers via live harp and vocal music. 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, arts communities, nursing homes, drug rehabilitation centers, traumatic brain injury recovery centers, and in communities for people with special needs.