7 minute read
Feature Story: Katie Underwood
Katie Underwood
The Path to Purpose
by Christina Watt
There’s no doubt that former popstar, Katie Underwood, has achieved a perfect blend of passion and purpose to deliver a sublime musical experience for all who attend her powerful sound healing events. Katie incorporates vocal toning, guided meditation and healing sounds to induce a deep meditative state, promoting relaxation and healing.
Katie, who now runs Underwood Healing, shares her story with us this month, giving us an insight into her musical career in the Australian pop scene and explaining how she left it all behind to focus on her own unique style of healing through sound.
To me, music is an enigma. It has the uncanny ability to connect intimately with our inner world and our emotions – to congratulate our achievements, soothe our grief and heighten our experiences of love, joy and everything in between. I have discovered that it also has another purpose –to help our body heal.
Recently I attended one of Katie’s sound journey meditation events. From the moment I relaxed under my blanket, I became immersed in sound. Waves of sound that were oscillating in, around and through my body, gently extracting all of my thoughts, leaving my focus solely on Katie’s ethereal vocal toning interspersed with the instruments that seemed to bind with her voice in order to create some sort of sacred union. This culminated in an incredibly powerful experience of self-awareness and a deep sense of calm and wellness in every cell of my body.
Sound healing involves using instruments and the voice to resonate deeply with a person’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy bodies to encourage healing, release and rest. Vocal toning utilises the voice to harmonise and balance the cells and energetic pathways of the body. By using rhythm and frequency, we can entrain our brainwaves to slow our normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to alpha (relaxed consciousness), theta (meditative and/or creative state) and delta (sleep; deep healing).
The passion that Katie has for her craft is evident during her events. She fully immerses herself in her work and uses her voice to become the bridge between participant and sound, seeming to traverse the ether to achieve the vocal tones required for that particular group.
“My journey into meditation began in my late 20’s when I started therapy.”
She is vibrant and energetic and genuinely happy to converse with people after her events. Having read numerous reviews of these events it is obvious that Katie thoroughly enjoys her work and this is reflected in the praise her events receive. Her reviewers are in agreement that she is, “Wonderfully kind and gentle.” Incredibly talented.” “Makes everyone feel so comfortable,” and “has the most amazing voice”.
As pop music and sound healing are worlds apart, I was curious to know more about the journey that had brought Katie to express her musical talent in such a beautiful manner, and in the process, help others to find a sense of healing and empowerment.
So where did it all begin? Music has always been an important part of Katie’s life. As she explains, “I started randomly singing as soon as I could talk, started classical piano lessons at six and then school choir at nine. By age eleven I was invited to sing with three different choirs in Adelaide and I chose the Adelaide Girls’ Choir which I sang with for about five years.” Katie adds, “I felt a strong calling to continue my musical education but at the advice of my parents I chose another path and, from the ages of nine to fifteen, I aspired to be a physiotherapist.”
Katie’s love of singing never waned, and after moving to Melbourne from Adelaide, she discovered Jazz and was mentored by Charlie Rook. They began performing in their jazz-swing band called Corduroy Lounge. Although becoming a pop star was never part of the original plan, an opportunity arose in October 1999 for Katie to audition for the TV reality show, Popstars, along with over two thousand other singers. Katie thought it would be a good experience, “I never planned to be in a pop group - I wasn’t particularly a fan of the genre but it seemed like a good opportunity to at least audition for it. Actually getting accepted to be in it was a huge surprise!”
“My mission is to reach as many people as I can to inspire them to embrace meditation and sound.”
The all-girl band Bardot was the final result of Popstars. The group achieved massive success in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, with more than double-platinum sales for their debut album and singles. They had a No. 1 hit with the song “Poison” and performed at the 2000 ARIA Awards. Katie left the group in 2001. In 2002 Katie returned to the music scene with Australian dance act Disco Montego. They had a hit with the song ‘Beautiful’. The song was certified gold, peaked at No. 9 on the ARIA pop charts and held the No.1 spot on the ARIA Club chart for twelve weeks. Katie won an APRA award for ‘Beautiful’ in 2003. Katie’s association with Disco Montego continued with the follow up single ‘Magic’ which also featured on their Top 20 album, ‘Disco Montego’. Katie’s first solo single ‘Danger’ earned her another APRA nomination in 2004.
Katie’s interest in meditation began to develop as a self-help mechanism. She explains, “My journey into meditation began in my late 20’s when I started therapy. I was motivated by a deep unhappiness in my marriage and my professional music career at that point and I fell into depression.”
“My depression peaked when I realised I no longer wanted to be in my marriage and I became suddenly unemployed in 2006. There were multiple things going on in my life at that time. My music career in the pop realm had been really jarring and had come to an abrupt end and I had also been put through the ringer by the media. The unfortunate thing about gearing your life around music performance is that it’s combined with a lot of isolation as you are often on the road. If you are signed to a record label often artists are chronically overworked. There is no such thing as a day off – the day off is that you sleep on the bus on the way to the next gig.
“Once my career was over I then fell into a really strong relationship with alcohol and pot.”
The other obvious enabler in the industry is the artists ‘Rider’. The rider is basically a bucket of alcohol that the promotor or the venue provides for you before you start work. Even if you don’t drink when you go into the industry it becomes very much a part of the norm. The drinking before the gig and celebrating with a drink after the gig and before you know it you don’t remember the last day you didn’t have a drink.”
“Once my career was over I then fell into a really strong relationship with alcohol and pot – this was not good for me. Depression affects people differently and I had my lightbulb moment about six months after I had fallen into my hole and I realised I wasn’t singing anymore. Singing is such an integral part of who I am and that was my “aha” moment to realise that I was depressed. That was when I began my journey of recovery. This led me to seek out help in the form of rehab, psychological support and health and fitness. This included meditation, improved nutrition, fitness and art therapy. I was totally inspired by this process of transformation and all of the therapists and the impact they were having on me and I thought, wow, I want to be like them! It motivated my own journey into training as a healing practitioner - starting with massage and then progressing into reiki, meditation teaching and sound healing.”
“That small flicker evolved into the vibrant passion I have for it now as a teacher myself. The integration of sound into my healing practice was a natural one - combining my past talents with my new interest in helping others.
From the beginning of my training in sound healing, vocal toning was always of particular interest to me. I began by singing with one crystal bowl that I found to be especially resonant and healing and also singing while drumming. Over time I began to combine both instrumental and vocal elements together.”
This new passion for healing led Katie to become a certified Meditation Teacher and obtain a Diploma in Sound Healing Therapy, Certificate in Traditional Tibetan Sound Healing,
