Remember - The Frequency of Love (D)
Mahara McKay
Mahara McKay (1981) was born and raised in New Zealand, by a Swiss mother and a Maori father from the Ngati Toa tribe — the same tribe of the legendary warrior Te Rauparaha (who composed the Haka "Kamate").
Even as a little girl, Mahara was called an "old soul" by her elders. Her great-grandmother was a respected priestess and healer, and her father's brother was adopted by the Lakota, a Native American tribe. So it was no surprise that Mahara found her calling during her early thirties traveling the world.
During the years she lived in Switzerland, she lost touch with her spiritual roots, but when she left Switzerland for India, she found her way back to the source. Since then, she has been traveling the world, holding spaces for people to heal themselves through Tantric and Shamanic Arts.
Her gift is to help people transform heaviness into lightness, letting go of fears and inviting trust and love; cultivating sacred sexuality that is meaningful, healthy, and healing; going through life with an open heart authentically and honestly; learning from nature; and always finding the way back to stillness — back to Source.
Mahara's transformative group seminars, where people can honestly meet themselves and others in their true greatness, have been highly regarded by many people.
An intuitive vocal sound journey celebrated vulnerability, communal gratitude to Pachamama, and embodied freedom through collective singing, improvisation, and mindful breathwork. Participants explored fear, shame, and ego resistance in vocal expression, transforming these into joyful, heart-centered connection and oneness, emphasized via call-and-response chants, vocal loops, and eye contact. The process highlighted awareness as key to transcending limiting thoughts, inviting surrender, embodiment, self-trust, and cyclical courage in embracing creative uncertainty and authentic communal resonance. The event closed with soft toning, a poetic invocation of compassion and unity, and open invitations to deepen this practice.
"Speak your truth. And sometimes it's not pretty. But when we dare to speak up for what we believe in, it is true. Magic happens, connection happens, beauty happens. So keep sharing your vulnerability with each other and this softness."
Summary
- The session focuses on intuitive vocal expression, encouraging participants to embrace vulnerability and express their truth through sound without judgment. - Participants engage in warm-ups, freeform vocal jams, and group chants to explore and release emotional blocks, fostering connection and freedom. - Emphasis is placed on mindfulness of breath, softening tension, and trusting the unknown to deepen self-awareness and vocal freedom. - The facilitator highlights overcoming fear, shame, and self-criticism to unlock authentic self-expression and inner joy. - The event includes moments of gratitude, connection to nature, mutual support, and a call to sustain hope, courage, and continuous personal growth.
Article
The healing power of vulnerability: finding freedom through voice at Swiss wellness festival
Workshop transforms fear into connection through improvisational sound journey
In Kemptthal, Switzerland, dozens of participants gathered on a Thursday morning in September 2025, nervously eyeing each other as Mahara McKay prepared to lead them through something most had never attempted: publicly expressing their rawest, most vulnerable selves through sound alone.
What followed was a masterclass in confronting the inner critic, a collective journey that transformed self-consciousness into connection, fear into freedom, and silence into song.
Confronting the inner saboteur
"There's nothing we can hide. It's there right in front of us," McKay told participants at the opening of her workshop at the Heal Play Love Festival, setting the tone for what would be an unflinching examination of the thoughts that keep people small.
The session, part of McKay's broader "Remember" sound journey practice, invited participants to observe the mental chatter that arises when asked to do something as simple—yet terrifying—as sing in front of others. When McKay asked what thoughts emerged at the prospect of a solo performance, the answers came quickly: shame, not being good enough, fear of laughter, frustration, anger.
"Watch these thoughts," she instructed. "Ask yourself, if I dare to jump, if I dare to sound, what's the worst thing that can happen to me?"
The answer, she suggested, was merely that the ego might be bruised—a small price for breaking through the barriers that constrain authentic self-expression.
The frequency of gratitude
McKay, born in New Zealand to a Swiss mother and Maori father, draws deeply from both her indigenous heritage and her training in tantric and shamanic practices. This background was evident in how she framed the workshop's opening exercise: a call-and-response chant of gratitude to Pachamama, the earth mother.
The song emerged from McKay's own four-day vision quest in nature, during which she experienced profound gratitude for the endless giving of the earth. "She's just ongoing giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving endlessly. Love, love, love," McKay reflected.
The chant—"Yeah, Mama"—began tentatively, but as participants faced each other across the room, something shifted. The energy built as voices intertwined, bodies began moving, and strangers looked into each other's eyes whilst singing. The result was palpable: a wave of love that swept through the space.
"Can you guys feel this? Do you feel the love from each other? This frequency of love?" McKay asked, and the answer was written on every face.
Breaking through embarrassment
The workshop's centrepiece was a series of freestyle vocal jams where participants were invited to improvise without plan or preparation. For many, this represented their deepest fear.
"Embrace the embarrassment and nothing will shake you," McKay told them, offering what would become the session's unofficial motto.
When Daniel volunteered to take a solo whilst the group held the musical space around him, the tension was visible. Yet as he allowed himself to simply begin—without perfection, without plan—something shifted. His voice found freedom, and the group's support swelled around him.
"I feel free. I feel happy and like the nervousness is out of my system. Almost," he said afterwards, to enthusiastic applause.
Another participant, Tin, followed, and the pattern repeated: initial hesitation giving way to expression, fear transforming into joy.
The power of listening
Throughout the workshop, McKay emphasised that the magic of collective improvisation emerges not from individual brilliance but from deep listening.
"This is also the magic with conflict. This is the magic with politicians. If we would listen to each other, we could solve much, much more," she observed.
In the vocal jams, participants were instructed to find simple repetitive loops—a single vowel sound, a short melodic phrase—and then to listen, allowing their contributions to weave into the collective tapestry. When minds wandered into thinking about melody or technique, McKay urged them to drop back into feeling and trust.
Awareness as the path to freedom
As the workshop progressed into quieter, more meditative territory, McKay guided participants to notice where they held tension in their bodies and to deepen their relationship with breath. Each inhale became an act of self-love, each exhale a surrender.
But the deepest teaching came in her instruction on thought itself. "We cannot choose what we think. They come and go. This busy monkey mind up here, we cannot control it, but we can control how much energy or attention we want to give it," she explained.
When negative thoughts arise—the inner voices insisting we're not good enough, not talented enough, too embarrassing—the practice is to observe them, examine whether they serve growth or limitation, and consciously choose to let them go.
"That's the power of awareness," McKay said.
Hope stronger than fear
The workshop concluded with a gentle improvisation around phrases McKay had written: "Hope is stronger than fear, my friend" and "We stand as one and peace is power."
But before the final sounds, she read a poem that contextualised the personal work of vocal freedom within the larger struggles of the world:
"Beloved, the world is burning. And yet this fire is holy. Every scream is a secret mantra. Every wound a temple doorway," she read. "The broken body of the earth is also your body. The cries of children are the breath inside our lungs."
True freedom, she suggested, requires feeling it all—even the unbearable—because "only when we feel it all will the world remember itself as one radiant, endless heart."
The magic in your hands
As participants softly voiced their closing words—power, fire, expansion, abundance, freedom, joy, love—it was clear something had shifted in the room. What had begun as a gathering of self-conscious individuals had transformed into a community willing to be seen in their imperfection.
"The magic is in your hands, not in mine," McKay told them, a reminder that the techniques she offered were merely doorways. The real work—the courage to face fear, the willingness to be vulnerable, the choice to trust the unknown—belongs to each person alone.
For those who had entered the space that morning carrying the weight of self-judgment, McKay's message was both simple and revolutionary: your voice, exactly as it is, is enough. Permission to express it fully is yours to grant.
"Only you can get your freedom. You are in charge," she reminded them. In a world that often seems designed to keep people small, quiet, and afraid, that may be the most radical practice of all.
Part of Heal Play Love Festival