About Denise

Denise Mihalik

MM, CSHP, E-RYT500, YACEP, CYVT

Certified Sound Healing Practitioner, Certified YogaVoice®Teacher, Registered Yoga Teacher, Classical Singer, Master in Music, Kirtaniya, and Bhakta Yogi.

Born with a heart full of song, I spent my childhood belting The Sound of Music and dreaming of Broadway. But a prodigy I was not. As one of four children who did not make the fifth-grade choir, I remember hearing music flowing from the choir room while I sat in study hall, bored and confused.

In middle school my choir director wrote me off as “untalented.” With pursed lips and cold eyes, he told me not to bother auditioning for the award-winning high school choir. “You won’t make it,” he said.

His student teacher, however, saw potential in this 7th grade non-prodigy and secretly took me under her wing. I began voice lessons, and my Broadway dreams unexpectedly morphed toward the opera stage. I learned the art of discipline and practice and made slow but steady progress. Not only did I make the high school choir, but I also continued on to receive two music degrees—a BME in Music Education, summa cum laude, and an MM in Opera Performance.

As a chorister, I sang with Leonard Bernstein, the Vienna Philharmonic, was broadcast on Live from Lincoln Center, and recorded at Carnegie Hall. Major dreams were being fulfilled, and now, post grad-school, I was one of two mezzo-sopranos accepted into an opera touring program. My dream of being the leading lady was up and running.

But I was terrified.

I thought I had finally overcome the naysayers, but now, instead, they lived in my head. And they were loud. 

Each performance felt like a battle of life and death, and my love for singing was being strangled by (mostly) fictional fears.

Oddly enough, when our set truck collided with our van while enroute to a performance in the middle of Iowa, my life was catapulted in an unanticipated direction. 

I learned that singing with severe whiplash just hours after an accident, finishing the tour, and not being offered proper treatment, were not recommended choices. A year later, living in unbearable pain, I landed back in the ER, where the doctor flippantly told me I was getting old (I was 25) and prescribed more drugs. 

I refused. I knew there had to be a way to heal—not just mask the pain. 

Living in central North Carolina in the late 1990s, my choices seemed limited, but word of mouth led me to someone who was secretly teaching yoga in her home while also learning craniosacral therapy.

These new practices were both empowering and humbling. As a singer, I thought I understood the breath-voice connection, but I had been just scraping the surface. She taught me to move and breathe in expansive ways that released stored trauma on subtle levels. The debilitating headaches lessened, the naysayers in my head quieted, and my singing improved. 

I was finding my voice again. 

Even so, a few years later, I found myself screaming to be heard as I lost my father to addiction and mental illness, my husband to someone else, and my mother to an aggressive cancer. Although my voice could fill a huge auditorium, it still wasn’t enough to make a difference in my parents’ and husband’s lives.

My heart shut down. I was angry, helpless, and faithless. I lost my voice. I lost my career.

A friend gave me a copy of Eat, Pray, Love, and I surprisingly felt the call to retreat to an ashram. I booked a week at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram in Upstate NY, and while there, I practiced yoga and was exposed to formal meditation and group chanting. The silent meditations were dreadful, and the chanting was even more so. I almost fled out of discomfort, but something made me stay.

About mid-week, after surviving yet another silent meditation, something remarkable happened. As the chanting began, my frustration rose as I struggled with the unfamiliar melodies and the awkward Sanskrit. I fumbled through the booklet, anxious and lost, searching for a translation. 

I burst into tears. 

Suddenly, my racing mind grew quiet, and something familiar and comforting embraced me, something that had been strangled—love, music, divine connection. 

The shards piercing my heart disappeared. My anxiety melted away.

For the first time in a long time, I felt again. I felt the translation, felt the essence of the chant, and felt the love in the room. I felt safe. My heart burst open, and I began to sing again, just as I did as a child, simply for the love of music.

When the program ended, I walked down a tiny path that led to the frog pond. Standing on the small wooden bridge surrounded by water lilies and mosquitos, I sang my favorite opera aria. The frogs were a rapt audience. I wept because I was back.

When I returned home, I unplugged my TV, sat everyday in meditation, and began to research the healing power of sound. There was little information at that time, so I purchased a small singing bowl and began my own research on myself. I quickly learned that while I rang the bowl and sang OM, my mind was quiet and I felt a moment of peace.

I began traveling to India and Nepal in search of answers, teachers, and methods to deepen my understanding of healing and continue to open my heart. Not surprisingly, my answers came through sound. Sacred sound.  And through these sound healing practices that I’ve learned and developed, I was able to forgive, accept myself, and truly find my voice.

From opera to singing bowls, from stage-fright to safety, from heart-wrenching loss to heart-opening joy, I’ve learned a remarkable, divine language—the language of sacred sound.

I now know that my song can’t be stolen, but, just as my piano can fall out of tune, so, too, can I.

What we tune into matters

We all experience sound that harms:

—the discouraging words of a teacher, the desperate cries of a struggling family member, the screaming fictional voices in our head, a jack hammer.

And sound that heals:

—the soothing sound of a singing bowl, a transforming affirmation, shared laughter with a friend, a bird song, the ocean. 

Lower frequencies of fear, negativity, and stress are loud. They can easily drown out the still, small voice of hope, joy, and kindness. But even the tiniest light illuminates in a dark space, and divine sound rises above the bully. 

The embrace of light is indeed elevating, as are the sound tools to support these tumultuous times. I invite you to join me on this journey.

Tune in, tune up and feel nourished.

P.S. I invite you to read or listen to my debut novel, Journey to Sunyata - Mountains, Monsoons, and Magic, based on my life-challenging pilgrimage to Nepal.

The accompanying music, Light of Compassion, is also available.