Meet ISSA | Sound Healing | Anneli Virkhaus

From an early age, I experienced the world differently. I was deeply sensitive and intuitive, often feeling the emotions and energy of the people around me long before I had the language to understand what I was experiencing. I felt everything intensely, and for a long time I didn't know what to do with that sensitivity or how to feel at home in myself.

There were many years when I tried to escape what I was feeling rather than understand it. I struggled with addiction and anorexia, and underneath both was a much deeper search—for belonging, for peace, for identity, and for some way to feel comfortable being me. Those experiences became a profound part of my path. Healing wasn't something that happened all at once. It unfolded slowly, through years of looking inward, getting curious about myself, confronting the places where I was hurting, and learning new ways to meet myself with compassion instead of trying to escape.

Music was one of the first things that gave me a way through. Going to school for music therapy changed me in ways that reached far beyond becoming a Board-Certified Music Therapist. I began to understand music not simply as something beautiful to create, but as a way of connecting—to emotion, memory, the body, other people, and parts of ourselves that words sometimes cannot reach. Working with people through music taught me how powerful it can be to simply be present with another human being without needing to fix them.

At the same time, my own inner work continued. I found yoga and began exploring meditation, mantra, affirmations, mindfulness, energetic principles, and different spiritual traditions and philosophies. I became fascinated by the relationship between our thoughts, emotions, bodies, energy, and the ways we experience ourselves and the world around us. Over time, these practices stopped being things I was simply learning about and became ways I learned to live.

Yoga taught me to come back into my body. Mantra and music showed me how profoundly sound and vibration can shift our internal experience. Affirmations helped me recognize the stories I had been repeating about myself and begin choosing different ones. Spiritual study gave me new ways of understanding experiences I had felt intuitively since childhood. And my recovery taught me, again and again, how to stay present with myself rather than leave myself when things became uncomfortable.

None of this turned me into someone who never struggles. It made me someone who knows myself much more deeply. Over the years, the pieces that once seemed separate—music therapy, sound, yoga, spirituality, embodiment, energy work, meditation, creativity, and my own healing journey—began weaving themselves together. I started to understand that my sensitivity wasn't something I needed to get rid of. It was something I needed to learn how to listen to, ground, and work with. In many ways, music has been the thread running through all of it. It has been expression, refuge, connection, medicine, creativity, and a way home to myself.

My greatest teachers have been my own experiences—the beautiful ones and the painful ones. Recovery, music therapy, yoga, spiritual practice, and the people I've walked alongside have all deepened my understanding of myself and how I meet others. I am still learning, questioning, and becoming. I on't see myself as someone who heals others. I believe we each carry an innate wisdom within us; sometimes we simply need enough space and stillness to hear it.

My work today is about creating those environments—spaces where we can soften, listen, feel, connect, and remember ourselves. It is an honor to walk alongside others as they find their own way home through sound, presence, and authentic human connection. when I create a Soundscape Journey, sit with someone one-on-one, teach yoga, facilitate music therapy, or simply hold space for another person, I'm drawing from much more than a collection of trainings or modalities. I'm drawing from a life of learning what it means to come back into relationship with myself.