HeART of Healing Team

Heart of Healing Artists and Creative Facilitators co-create relational spaces for creativity, renewal, and connection. Their practices cultivate presence, agency, dignity, and trauma-informed co-regulation, supporting personal and collective wellbeing through creative expression, mindfulness, nature-based practices, and social-ecological healing.

Molly Jane Sturges (Program Lead, Artist Facilitator) is a healing-centered composer-performer, artistic director, educator, facilitator, and integrative health researcher who has worked for over 30 years at the intersections of spirituality, community healing, music/sound, participatory arts, activism, and science. She is a senior researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School and serves as faculty and program lead at the Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing. A United States Artists Fellow in Music, Molly is the founder of Waking The Oracle and many other multiarts based initiatives focused on collective and ecological wellbeing. A devoted student and teacher of meditation and yoga for more than 35 years, Molly is committed to supporting the integration between inner and outer liberation, and to nurturing earthbased, compassionate, and healing ways of being together as we co-create our positive futures.  ____________________________________________________________________________________

Advika Daryani (Program Student Assistant) is a psychology student exploring the spaces where science, soul, and story meet. Her South Asian roots shape how she understands healing—as something deeply personal yet shared, a bridge between cultures and inner worlds.

She’s passionate about reimagining wellbeing through creativity and accessibility, always looking for ways to help people feel seen, safe, and connected. A lover of nature and its quiet wisdom, having previously worked with research on nature therapy, she continues to find clarity in long treks, ocean air, and pages of her journal. When she’s not studying, researching or writing, she’s listening to music, traveling, or chasing a feeling of peace that feels like home.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Maria Arriola (Artist Facilitator) is a composer currently studying with Matt Rahaim at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She has created text scores and multimedia compositions that explore sincerity within surrealism, often giving performers the opportunity to make 'beautiful decisions' in her open-form pieces. Outside of composing, she was a cohort member of the Minneapolis-based dance-liberation project Don't You Feel It Too?, and currently serves as an administrative team member for the UMN New Music Ensemble and as a creative member and performer in the UMN Bakken Center's community-arts-healing project, Waking the Oracle.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Vanessa Hoff (Artist Facilitator) is an artist, teacher, and researcher, shaped by over 20 years within the vibrant tapestry of community and educational settings. She invites critical thought and wild imagination as vessels for dreaming what could be. Guided by empathy, her practice listens deeply—honoring curiosity, layered expression, and the power of meaningful exchange. With a heart attuned to collaboration and the beauty of the unknown, she tends to spaces where growth unfolds, fluid and alive, where wonder takes root and possibility blooms. 

She is a doctoral candidate in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, where her arts-based research weaves together narrative inquiry, embodied and somatic ways of knowing, the fleeting nature of experience, and the layered complexities of intersectional, multimodal expression.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Ada Lia Tzab Poot (Webinar Music Team) is the first classical harpist from Yucatán, Mexico. She is currently working toward a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Harp Performance at the University of Minnesota, studying with Professor Kathy Kienzle. Ada is also a current member and co-founder of the ensemble Son de Cuerdas. Before coming to the U.S. she obtained the Perfectionnement and Excellence diplomas at the Conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison in France. Ada has performed as a soloist, in chamber groups, and with orchestras in Mexico, Belize, France, and the United States.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Satish Jayaraj (Artist Facilitator) is an author, a worldbuilder, a podcaster, a creative life coach, an innovative event planner and a generally positive dude. He is the author of two fantasy books The Secret of the Zipacna Dragons, and Legacy of the Crow which takes place in his imagined world of Adijari. He is the co-host of the 'Not Your Mother's Mahabharata,' where he tells the story of the East-Indian epic casually and comedically. He is proud to be a cog in other creative's adventures through his Imagination Life Coaching business. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Garrett Obrycki (G) (Artist Facilitator) ’s life has always been inseparable from music. Trained at the Eastman School of Music, their early career as a performer gradually expanded into facilitation and creative inquiry. a transformative encounter with Lisa Feldman Barrett’s how emotions are made led to graduate study at Harvard, where g began exploring how art, emotion, and power intertwine. Across work in the U.S., Italy, and Costa Rica, g has cultivated spaces that invite collective reflection and embodied transformation. Now based in the Twin Cities and pursuing a master of social work at the University of Minnesota, g’s practice begins within—metabolizing lived experience, connection, and theory as pathways toward reimagining the systems we inhabit and the worlds we might heal into.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Cherolyn Kay Fischer (Webinar Music Team) is a water protector, parent, poet, and musician. She plays music to share joy, deepen her connections to others, and make sense of the upside-down world we live in. Cherolyn has Anishinaabe and European heritage and lives in Minneapolis, MN.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Maja Radovanlija (Webinar Music Team) was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), in 1975. She studied classical guitar for almost 20 years in Eastern Europe, Vienna and Bloomington, IN. Along the way, Maja collaborated with musicians in a variety of genres and became interested in improvised music through Balkan traditional music, jazz, intuitive free improv, and experimental music. Some of the projects and ensembles Maja works with on regular bases are Musika Medica, Szilard Mezéi ensemble, Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Ensemble Studio6, MM Guitar duo, Linda Chatterton-MRadovanlija guitar/flute duo, and Satu Jiwa improvised music collective. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Matt Radovanlija (Webinar Music Team) is a composer, improviser, and vocalist, grounded in the Gwalior lineage of Hindustani music. His work includes analog synthesis, voice, raga music, event scores, and electroacoustic compositions for new instruments. Recent compositions have been featured at the Wakpa Triennial, Drone Not Drones, and The Great Beyond festival. His current project, Improvising Relationality, experiments with ways of being both together and apart, in empathic intimacy and vulnerable alterity, exploring the relational play of mutual dependence and mutual freedom.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Rebecca Merblum (Webinar Music Team) is a cellist, driven by the interwoven nature of the artistic process. This began to unfold during her Target Center Residency at the Weisman Museum- Cello Conversations. The final panel ‘What Do You Hear’ has served as a thread for her consistent curiosities around the practice of listening as it relates to proximity and advocacy. This has been reflected in Rebecca’s work with MacPhail’s Global Music Initiative, her Co Director position of the Kenya International Chamber Music Festival, collaborative efforts with artists of all disciplines, and as a guest with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. Rebecca was recognized for the breadth of her work with a 2022-2023 McKnight Fellowship Grant. 

Waking the Oracle Ensemble members help lead and create  immersive, participatory experiences that blend the creative arts to foster community connection, wellbeing, and shared meaning. These experiences are designed to cultivate compassionate listening, reflection, and creative expression that deepen connection to self, others, and the planet. Through facilitated circles, sonic activations, and collaborative arts-based practices, the Ensemble supports wisdom sharing and collective healing in response to challenging times.

Molly Jane Sturges is a healing-centered composer-performer, artistic director, educator, facilitator, and integrative health researcher who has worked for over 30 years at the intersections of spirituality, community healing, music/sound, participatory arts, activism, and science. She is a senior researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School and serves as faculty and program lead at the Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing. A United States Artists Fellow in Music, Molly is the founder of Waking The Oracle and many other multiarts based initiatives focused on collective and ecological wellbeing. A devoted student and teacher of meditation and yoga for more than 35 years, Molly is committed to supporting the integration between inner and outer liberation, and to nurturing earthbased, compassionate, and healing ways of being together as we co-create our positive futures.  _______________________________________________________________________________________

Maria Arriola is a composer currently studying with Matt Rahaim at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She has created text scores and multimedia compositions that explore sincerity within surrealism, often giving performers the opportunity to make 'beautiful decisions' in her open-form pieces. Outside of composing, she was a cohort member of the Minneapolis-based dance-liberation project Don't You Feel It Too?, and currently serves as an administrative team member for the UMN New Music Ensemble and as a creative member and performer in the UMN Bakken Center's community-arts-healing project, Waking the Oracle.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Vanessa Hoff is an artist, teacher, and researcher, shaped by over 20 years within the vibrant tapestry of community and educational settings. She invites critical thought and wild imagination as vessels for dreaming what could be. Guided by empathy, her practice listens deeply—honoring curiosity, layered expression, and the power of meaningful exchange. With a heart attuned to collaboration and the beauty of the unknown, she tends to spaces where growth unfolds, fluid and alive, where wonder takes root and possibility blooms. 

She is a doctoral candidate in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, where her arts-based research weaves together narrative inquiry, embodied and somatic ways of knowing, the fleeting nature of experience, and the layered complexities of intersectional, multimodal expression.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Satish Jayaraj is an author, a worldbuilder, a podcaster, a creative life coach, an innovative event planner and a generally positive dude. He is the author of two fantasy books The Secret of the Zipacna Dragons, and Legacy of the Crow which takes place in his imagined world of Adijari. He is the co-host of the 'Not Your Mother's Mahabharata,' where he tells the story of the East-Indian epic casually and comedically. He is proud to be a cog in other creative's adventures through his Imagination Life Coaching business. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Advika Daryani (Program Student Assistant) is a psychology student exploring the spaces where science, soul, and story meet. Her South Asian roots shape how she understands healing—as something deeply personal yet shared, a bridge between cultures and inner worlds.

She’s passionate about reimagining wellbeing through creativity and accessibility, always looking for ways to help people feel seen, safe, and connected. A lover of nature and its quiet wisdom, having previously worked with research on nature therapy, she continues to find clarity in long treks, ocean air, and pages of her journal. When she’s not studying, researching or writing, she’s listening to music, traveling, or chasing a feeling of peace that feels like home.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Garrett Obrycki (G)’s life has always been inseparable from music. Trained at the Eastman School of Music, their early career as a performer gradually expanded into facilitation and creative inquiry. a transformative encounter with Lisa Feldman Barrett’s how emotions are made led to graduate study at Harvard, where g began exploring how art, emotion, and power intertwine. Across work in the U.S., Italy, and Costa Rica, g has cultivated spaces that invite collective reflection and embodied transformation. Now based in the Twin Cities and pursuing a master of social work at the University of Minnesota, g’s practice begins within—metabolizing lived experience, connection, and theory as pathways toward reimagining the systems we inhabit and the worlds we might heal into.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Michael Duffy is a composer, performer, and multidisciplinary artist living in Minneapolis. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Matt Rahaim is a composer, improviser, and vocalist, grounded in the Gwalior lineage of Hindustani music. His work includes analog synthesis, voice, raga music, event scores, and electroacoustic compositions for new instruments. Recent compositions have been featured at the Wakpa Triennial, Drone Not Drones, and The Great Beyond festival. His current project, Improvising Relationality, experiments with ways of being both together and apart, in empathic intimacy and vulnerable alterity, exploring the relational play of mutual dependence and mutual freedom.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lauren Reed is a Black-American dancer, creative, and scholar born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a recent graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine with degrees in Dance (B.A.) and Africana Studies (B.A.). She completed her thesis entitled “Rest & Resistance: Dance as Protest, Pearl Primus, and Black Women Claiming Our Deserved Rest”. She is currently based in St. Paul, Mni Sota and works as an independent artist.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Brandon Sisneros received a B.A. in Radio/TV/Film from Cal State Fullerton before moving to MPLS. He has been working in and around Open Eye Theatre since 2008 and as Technical Director since 2016, constructing sets and props, rigging special effects, running sound and lights, and stage managing. He has built sets for the Learning Fairy 1 & 2, Nothing is Something, The Red Shoes (2017 & 2021), The Beldenville Troll, Constance in the Darkness, The Longest Night, and Bug Girl and Order of Wolf on The Bakken Museum's rooftop. He has provided technical support for Toy Theater After Dark, Fusebox, Sweet Songs and Flying Objects, and many other rentals and guest artists. Outside of Open Eye, he has worked with Mixed Blood Theatre Company, The Ritz Theater, New Native Theatre, Circus Juventas, BareBones Puppets Performers, Full Moon Puppet Show, and Southside Battletrain Projects. In addition to theatre, he enjoys the outdoors, seasonal harvests, and gardening.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Chance York is known as a yoga and mindfulness instructor, rapper, and host of the TPT/PBS award winning series, "Outside Chance."  He is a facilitator for the Mindful Mondays program at the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing and leads workshops for the Bakken Center's community partners and organizations. He serves as the director of Peace In Practice, and he’s currently attending Brown University’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher Training.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Violeta was born in Puerto Rico and was found in a trash can with her siblings. She made it to DC around the start of COVID and ended up devoting her substantial healing powers to the many humans in need around her. Many people identify her as a dog but fawns and cats also come to mind when encountering her. She really enjoys riding around on a bicycle. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lyla & Autumn York are Minneapolis-born dancers and choreographers. They are passionate about music and movement though several modalities including Afrobeats, cheerleading, show choir, and ballet.