The Mindful Voice is a free and collaborative resource for singers and voice professionals who are seeking to integrate mindfulness into their training and their artistic lives.
Created by Dr. Autumn West, and developed in collaboration with leading voice and mindfulness practitioners, The Mindful Voice offers practical tools to develop focus, body awareness, creativity and artistic identity, and career resilience, while addressing challenges such as performance-related anxiety and critical self-evaluation.
Jon Kabatt Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention to the present moment intentionally, non-judgmentally, and with an attitude of acceptance.”
The skill of mindfulness is cultivated through two branches: formal practice, or the time we take out of our day to practice using the tool of meditation, and second, informal practice, or the way in which we allow the practice and teachings of mindfulness to spill into aspects of our life, informing our mindset and our attitude.
What is Mindfulness?
About The Mindful Voice
The Mindful Voice was developed to explore and advance the integration of mindfulness within the training and professional lives of singers.
The skill of mindfulness supports focus, performance preparation, and well-being, and is particularly relevant to singers, who navigate a complex intersection of physical coordination, artistic expression, evaluation, and psychological demand. This platform offers structured, applicable tools for use in practice, rehearsal, performance, and teaching, with a focus on attention, body awareness, performance anxiety, creativity, and career resilience.
The project is supported by Oklahoma City University’s annual Presidential Faculty and Student Fellowship, awarded for the academic year 2025-2026.
The first step in the fellowship involved a survey of 112 singers, which was created to inform the development of resources, and now also serves as a self-assessment tool. Learn more on the Research page.
Visit the Resources section to explore our Mindfulness Training System, which includes guided meditations, videos, reflection prompts, and applied drills and exercises.
About Dr. Autumn West
Dr. Autumn West is a lyric soprano, educator, and researcher. Hailed as “clear and precise, with extraordinary detail and elevation” (The Oklahoman), she has performed with organizations including Cincinnati Opera, Grant Park Music Festival, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Canterbury Voices, Painted Sky Opera, and the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin.
West serves as Associate Professor of Voice at the Wanda Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University and is on the faculty of Interlochen Arts Camp. Her students perform on Broadway, on national tours, and with opera companies across the country, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, and San Diego Opera. In 2025, she was named a Recognized Vocologist by the Pan American Vocology Association, a distinction held by fewer than 70 professionals worldwide.
Her research explores the application of mindfulness within vocal training and performance, with presentations at regional and national conferences including NATS and MTEA. Her current project, Mindfulness for Singers, investigates how mindfulness practices can support both vocal development and the well-being of singers.
As an educator, West employs a collaborative, student-centered pedagogy that emphasizes agency, critical awareness, and individualized development. She works alongside students to demystify vocal function, build sustainable technique, and cultivate an integrated artistic identity. Her teaching also prioritizes the development of non-judgmental awareness, resilience, creativity, and trust, drawing on mindfulness as a framework for supporting both performance and personal growth.
In addition to her artistic and pedagogical work, West is an active advocate for equity in the arts. She has served as faculty advisor for OCU CARE and on multiple diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and was awarded Oklahoma City University’s Faculty Award for Distinguished Service in 2021.
West holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, with doctoral specializations in vocal pedagogy and arts administration.
Collaborators
Praised for her “beautifully clear, light lyric soprano” (Ludwig Van), Canadian soprano Sara Schabas’ work reimagines the classical canon with playfulness, collaboration, deeply felt performances, and the centering of unheard voices of the past and present. An avid interpreter of new music, she collaborates regularly with composers including James Rolfe, Amy Brandon, Alex Weiser, and Cecilia Livingston, for whom she premiered Singing Only Softly, garnering two Dora Award nominations, and Maxime Goulet, for whom she created the title role in The Flight of the Hummingbird for Pacific Opera Victoria and Vancouver Opera.
Schabas has performed as a soloist in opera and concert with organizations including Théâtre Lyrichorégra for a nine-city tour of mainland China, Thirteen Strings, the Grand Philharmonic Choir, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Tapestry Opera, the Little Opera Company of Winnipeg, the Bach-Elgar Choir, and Soundstreams. Her awards have included the Wirth Vocal Prize, the Hnatyshyn Award for Vocal Performance, District Winner with the Metropolitan Opera, Singing Stars of Tomorrow’s Career Blueprint, and the Eckhardt-Grammaté Competition.
While maintaining an active singing career, she is editor of Art Song Canada magazine, a doctoral candidate at McGill University, an instructor at the Desautels School of Music at the University of Manitoba, and a yoga instructor specializing in parasympathetic nervous system activation and holistic wellness.
Jessica Livdahl is a musician and performer hailing from Fargo, North Dakota. She holds a MM in Opera Performance from Oklahoma City University, and a BM in Vocal Performance from North Dakota State University. She has performed in featured roles with OCU Opera, NDSU Opera, and the Opera Seme Festival, and as a member of the chorus with Fargo-Moorhead Opera and Painted Sky Opera. She has also performed as a soloist with the NDSU Concert Choir. Favorite projects include Stravinsky’s Les Noces (Soprano Soloist), Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (Pamina), and Puccini’s Turandot (Chorus). Jessica is passionate about performing art song as well, and has presented the works of Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Larsen, and others in recital. When she is not singing, Jessica can be found hiking with her partner, reading fantasy novels, or learning how to roller skate.
Having performed regularly for over a decade with opera companies and orchestras in the United States and abroad, John Lindsey brings a thorough understanding of high-level musicianship, stagecraft, healthy and sustainable vocal technique, and professional singing experience to his students.
Throughout his performance career, Professor Lindsey sang many of the most challenging works in the tenor repertoire, including works by Wagner, Strauss, Puccini, Verdi, and Bizet, along with multiple world-premiere or national performances with major companies in the United States and abroad.
His scholarship and research focus on nonviolent communication, compassion, and trauma informed pedagogy practices. He has trained and worked as a meditation instructor, crisis counselor, and hospice volunteer, and holds multiple certifications in trauma sensitive meditation and mindfulness, as well as trauma informed higher education.
Professor Lindsey received a BM in Voice Performance from Colorado State University and an MM in Voice Performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Voice at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Research
Overview
In Fall 2025, a survey was developed to assess a core characteristic of mindfulness as it relates to singers’ experiences. The survey was based on existing standardized mindfulness trait scales such as the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and adapted to the specific experiences of singers.
The survey yielded 112 responses from singers and voice teachers from ages 18-65, and across a range of training levels and professional contexts.
The Survey
The survey was designed to assess mindfulness traits across the following domains:
Focus and Attention
Body Awareness
Collaborative Relationships
Performance-Related Anxiety and Self-Evaluative Processes
Creativity, Expression, and Flow
Career Resilience
Mindful Practices and Inner Awareness
It aimed to identify areas in which singers experience the greatest strengths, as well as the largest challenges, to assist the development of practical resources to train mindfulness.
Take our Survey!
A condensed version of the survey disseminated in Fall of 2025 is available as a mindfulness self-evaluation tool, linked here.
Key Findings
The highest scoring domains by mean across all populations were, perhaps unsurprisingly, Body Awareness and Collaborative Relationships. These are strengths for singers. The lowest scoring domains by mean were Performance-Related Anxiety and Self-Evaluative Processes, and Career Resilience. These are the areas that offer the most opportunity for growth.
The lowest scoring survey questions in the results (indicative of the lowest mindfulness trait scores) relate to self-judgment, comparison, and external evaluation. The item “I feel a constant need to prove myself” yielded the lowest mean score (M = 2.30 out of 5), followed by “I judge myself harshly when I make mistakes” (M = 2.34 out of 5) and “I worry excessively about what others think of my performance” (M = 2.55 out of 5).
Items related to physical/physiological and psychological activation before performance also had low mean mindfulness trait scores, including the questions “I experience a heightened nervous system before performance” (M = 2.65) and “I feel consumed by anxiety before high-stakes performances” (M = 2.81).
Finally, our data shows a statistically significant correlation between advancing careers and higher mindfulness. Professional Singers and Voice Teachers were assessed at meaningfully higher mindfulness trait scores than training and pre-professional singers. There is not yet sufficient evidence as to the cause of this correlation, though much meaning could be derived.
Dissemination
The work of Dr. Autumn West surrounding the intersection of Mindfulness and the Voice has been presented in a variety of academic and professional contexts, including:
Artist Series, Texoma Regional Conference of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS)
Artist Series, Oklahoma District NATS Conference
Lecture, National Musical Theatre Educators Alliance (MTEA) Conference
Upcoming Presentations of The Mindful Voice:
Poster Presentation, National NATS Conference
Continued Research
This project and its research remains ongoing. Future phases of research are expected to include qualitative studies that will expand our data to include more specific lived experiences of singers, as well as the development of more resources.
The Mindful Voice is an evolving and collaborative resource. We welcome engagement from both those who use, and those who wish to contribute to our work.
If you are using these materials in your own practice, teaching, or performance preparation, we would love your feedback! Insight into how these tools are experienced in real contexts is invaluable to the continued development of our resources and work.
The Mindful Voice is a space for interdisciplinary exchange, so we also invite and welcome inquiries from voice teachers, performers, researchers, and mindfulness practitioners who may be interested in contributing resources to our training program or collaborating.