Today we’d like to introduce you to Katy Avila.
Hi Katy, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I have walked a very winding, cyclical path to arrive where I am now as a musician, embodiment teacher and writer.
I wanted to be a singer for as long as I can remember. My father is a huge music lover, and I was raised on The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder and so many other brilliant artists. I also was in love with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera as a little girl and grew into loving artists like Regina Spektor and Fiona Apple. I sang in choir for over ten years, from elementary school into college, all the while learning how to play guitar and write my own music.
The expectations of a vocal performance major in college were absolutely soul-crushing. I lost a lot of confidence and ultimately felt very oppressed by the pressure to be a “perfect” singer. So I gave up music. As I was in college, I simultaneously realized that I was really good at English. I would enter a flow state when I wrote that felt really good. I’d also been writing poetry & lyrics since I was a teenager so it came very naturally. So I decided to study English, with no other real goals than to get a full-time job afterwards (because that is what the world says will make you happy, right?)
I graduated, got a full-time job at a university, and quickly became miserable. In my heart, I am an artist and need to express myself creatively to survive. So I applied for grad school in creative writing and was accepted to Antioch University in Los Angeles. I worked full-time while pursuing this degree, where I studied fiction & non-fiction.
As I wrote short story after short story and eventually drafted a memoir, I noticed a profound thing that happened – I had to encounter a lot of my own trauma on the page. Writing about my own story had me confront some of my deepest wounds, and I discovered the immense healing capacity of writing. It’s not that I healed myself through writing and therefore experience no pain, but there’s something about being vulnerable and sharing your experience through your art so that other people can see it and feel it and resonate with it. And then there is this web of connection that can hold you in your pain. You know that you are not alone.
After graduating, I got a job in Oakland, California teaching English at a high school for students 18 – 26 who didn’t graduate high school the first time. I really loved it and continued to witness how healing it was for people to tell & share their stories. But as I was working there, I felt a desire to get in deeper connection with my body.
This had always been a theme in my life – feeling disconnected from my body. Engaging in self-harm and eating disorders, drugs & addiction for most of my teens & twenties. I had been practicing yoga for a few years when I really felt called to dance. It felt like there was this suppressed spirit in my body that wanted to move me.
So I found a program in Oakland called Intuitive Body & Dance. It has changed my life. The founder, Stefana Serafina, has developed a whole philosophy of embodiment and the intelligence of what she calls the deep-body®. Not only did I find that expression & presence in my body that I was longing for, but supported me in again, working with trauma, emotions and patterns that were stuck in the body.
Through the programs at Intuitive Body & Dance, I actually found that I deeply, deeply longed to create music again. I kept having visions of myself on stage performing as I would move and dance. So alongside this embodiment journey, I began to learn bass and write music again, for the first time in years. I created a band, KATZROAR, with my boyfriend Rory Matthews, and we began playing live gigs and writing an album together.
When Stefana of Intuitive Body & Dance asked me if I would like to be trained as a facilitator in her embodiment methodology, I felt like I received very strong messages from the universe to say yes. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I knew that I wanted to cultivate an even deeper relationship to my body and hold spaces for others to experience the deep transformation that I had experienced through it.
I went through the embodiment facilitator training, and right after I completed it in February of 2020, the pandemic hit. My band and I were also about to play several live gigs right as everything shut down.
I was still teaching at the school in Oakland, though we went all online, and I quickly became aware of the potential for lay-offs and the school shutting down. I became very disenchanted with the school system through this. A lot of schools want to play the role of savior, as though they are “saving” the students when really the structure of the whole system is incredibly oppressive and damaging.
Within the first few months of the pandemic, I began teaching my first embodiment classes online, hoping that it would support people through the collective trauma we would all experience. I became very vocal about the oppression happening at the high school I was working at and got laid off in June of 2020 (maybe not a coincidence?). At that point, I was not only teaching my own embodiment work but working for my mentor Stefana at Intuitive Body & Dance as a project manager and assisting teacher. My band and I had also decided to record our album since live gigs were no longer happening. So it felt like the path revealed itself – I was now an entrepreneur and a working artist.
In the last year, I created four core programs for embodiment. I also recorded the debut album INVOCATION with my band KATZROAR, to be released this September 9th. And I’m currently working on a memoir called The Body is a Portal.
It has been a wild ride. Somehow I feel as though where I’ve ended up is completely unpredictable yet inevitable. I never saw it coming, yet I knew it all along. But I feel as though for the first time, I am living in MY fullest expression as a creative individual.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road. I feel I had to go through several evolutions and deaths & rebirths. I really had to give up music for a while to find my way back. I gave up writing for a while to find my way back. I had to give up my teaching career and trust a very unconventional path to teaching embodiment. It’s been scary at times, and I have found that it is in those periods of darkness where the light actually comes in.
And, I really had to lean into a lot of my own fears and wounding so that I could stop letting them control me. I can’t tell you enough how essential it was to work with my personal trauma. I had a lot of conditioning that I was broken, which led to me staying small, being disconnected from my body and my desires. It was my trauma and my fear that made me give up music and shrink myself again and again.
I had to look at these parts of myself that thought I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t important, that I didn’t matter, that I didn’t have anything to offer the world, that I was afraid of what others would think, and alchemize them. If I didn’t, they would have continued to hold me back from what I really wanted to do and who I really wanted to be in the world.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am known for teaching embodiment + astrology together. I’ve been into astrology for as long as I can remember (I’m a Scorpio, with a Leo moon and Sagittarius rising), and I find that the stars create a blueprint of our soul, a map from the cosmos of what we are destined to embody. I have created four programs: MoonBody, We Are Stardust, BODYCOSM, Body Meets Cosmos, and also offer one-on-one mentorship. In these offerings, I have guided transformative practices for moving with and embodying the archetypes, elements, planets, and astrological transits of the zodiac. The people in my courses learn how to live in connection with the magic & mystery of the universe and transform their emotions and experiences so that they can live in their fullest expression, as it’s written in the stars.
I’ve noticed a trend that a lot of people who take my group classes are right on the edge of making big changes in their life – creatively, emotionally, professionally, sexually, relationally. I feel that I act as a doula for this emergence. I am not a “healer” per say – everyone is their own healer. But I am in service to your transformation & your fullest expression, and this includes alchemizing the energetic/emotional patterns in the body that hold us back from becoming who we are and expanding the nervous system to hold & express the energy that wants to move us.
I’ve supported people in practicing their DJing, writing their novel, practicing tarot, writing music, quitting their jobs, communing with their ancestors, building their own businesses, writing letters to their parents, preparing for dates, filing for divorce, expressing their sexuality – all from a place of embodied, soulful knowing.
Who you are when you begin working with me is not who you are when it is over. Rather – you are MORE you, the true Self that is dying to emerge.
And, alongside this work, I am a musician with my band KATZROAR. Our first album INVOCATION will be released September 9th. In many ways, I feel my music & my band is doing the same thing as my embodiment programs; whether I am leading an embodiment group or performing music, I am using my voice, words & music to help people get into their bodies, move and connect with each other and spirit. Both create transformative containers that encourage expression.
KATZROAR is a trio with me on vocals & bass, Rory Matthews on guitar, and Phil Steinwebber on drums. Our music combines rich, poetic lyricism and stunning vocals with silky, atmospheric guitar and laid-back grooves to create a unique yet familiar tapestry of dreamy soul psychedelia.
My boyfriend Rory Matthews and I are inspired by artists such as Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple, Portishead and Khruangbin. Our sound also echoes the political and spiritual revolutionary tone of ‘60s and ‘70s rock icons like Fleetwood Mac and Jefferson Airplane and is greatly inspired by global music from Indian ragas to Nigerian rock. The result is a multi-genred musical offering that is vast, undefinable, yet uncanny and nostalgic.
Our debut album INVOCATION is an archetypal journey of dangerous relationships, magic & mystery, and the fight for justice. Using themes and imagery from the well-known Greek myth “The Odyssey,” the album explores the untold stories of the often-secondary female characters – the beast, the goddess, the witch. In a velvety, lush landscape of vocals, guitar, bass and drums, INVOCATION takes the listener on the intimate adventure of rediscovering one’s own inner power and the mythopoetic nature of the human experience. In this collaboration, we aim to create music that moves you, poetry that tells truth, art that alchemizes the light and the shadows.
And my writing is always a part of the mix. I am working on a memoir in verse and plan to go through the next round of edits during this November’s National Novel Writing Month.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
I encourage anyone who is finding their path to let go of the idea that things need to be linear. The path is a spiral. It’s okay to let your dreams die and allow new ones to emerge. Or to let your dreams die so that they can come surging back to life with new vigor. Learning to flow with the cycles of death & rebirth is essential to being present with your creation.
And also, let go of the idea that you have one identity or purpose. Sometimes I wonder – can I really be a musician, and an embodiment teacher, and a writer, and a teacher, and an astrologer, and a visual artist? And the answer is yes. You can be everything you want to be. And the more you live into these different expressions of yourself, the more you learn how they actually work together and feed each other. And you end up embodying a really unique blueprint and creating things that no one else can create.
You have to surrender to the universe and trust your gifts. Listen to your body and get really clear on what it means to follow your truth. No one else can tell you what that is – but you will know it by how it feels.
Pricing:
- $222/mo for a 6-month mentorship in embodying your fullest expression.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katyavila.com and www.katzroarband.com
- Instagram: @katy.cosm and @katzroar
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katzroar
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYjsvPcyqfPhCRXqi4XmoGA/featured
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/14kEabF9MiQJW37PNuLGgJ?si=hJP8RsMyQE2U5WC2kJ8kTg&dl_branch=1&nd=1
