ocean nayeh
MUSICIAN · SCIENTIST · EMBODIMENT COACH · NATURE MENTOR
I am a mother, musician, scientist, embodiment facilitator, nature mentor, massage therapist, and both student and teacher of connection and healing. I was raised and molded by the oceans of California, the temperate rainforest of Alaska, and the high mountain deserts of Colorado. My work in the world is to create spaces of healing, connection, empowerment, and creativity.
THE THREADS OF MY WORK
Many paths. One intention.
music
The music that flows through me is a genre of its own, a fusion of soulful folk, hip-hop, medicine, and roots. It is the poetry of my soul transformed into melody, the wisdom heard in the silent spaces of nature, and my alchemical process of turning darkens into light. They are my stories woven through lyrical rhythms, transmitting my prayers into a vibration for collective healing.
embody
My body has always been a doorway to healing. From a young age, I trained through gymnastics, surfing, snowboarding, dance and climbing. I learned technique and developed a deep relationship with movement, yet I came to understand that being skilled in the body is not the same as being free within it.
For me, embodiment has become a journey of releasing fear and learning to trust the wisdom that lives beneath the thinking mind. When fear and self-consciousness begin to fall away, the body can open. Movement becomes less about performing or controlling and more about listening—allowing creativity, intuition and the wisdom of creation to move through us.
The body and voice have been two gateways into this process for me. Technique gives them a greater vocabulary, but freedom allows them to become instruments for authentic expression. My work is about creating the safety to free these instruments from fear, develop them with care, and allow their inherent wisdom, creativity and capacity for healing to emerge.
nature
Nature is my teacher and inspiration for all that I do. The ocean was where I first felt her, in those silent moments between the waves. However, at that time, I did not consciously know the depth of our connection. I was still lost in my youth, in my thoughts, trying to fit in, be accepted, and find myself.
It wasn’t until I moved to Alaska, where I spent my days hiking and riding the big wild mountains, that I was able to hear her speak. It was here that I first started the process of understanding my connection with all things.
Later, in Colorado, I studied nature mentorship, survival skills, regenerative agriculture and wilderness therapy, and began to deepen my connection with nature and myself. When I moved to Austria, I founded and ran a nature connection school, where I began developing and teaching programs that bridge emotional education, creativity and nature connection.
science & Ecosystem
I have always been a scientist at heart — curious about how life works beneath the surface. I began university at fifteen, studying cellular biology, and later moved to Alaska to study marine biology. Then life carried me in another direction: motherhood, music, embodiment, spirituality and a long exploration of the inner world.
When my son developed schizophrenia, everything I believed about healing was challenged. I had come to trust deeply in emotional and spiritual transformation, but I began to see that sometimes we cannot reach the psychological or spiritual layers without also tending to the biology beneath them.
That journey brought me back to science — this time through the microbiome, metabolism, mitochondria and brain health. I became fascinated by the ways nutrition, microbes, cellular energy, the nervous system and environment can influence mental health, and by emerging approaches that are helping some people move toward recovery.
Today, my work lives at the meeting place of these worlds. Biology and spirit. Earth and sky. The physical body and the inner life. I believe healing asks us to understand both — to restore the conditions that allow the body and brain to function, while also tending to emotion, relationship, meaning and the deeper experience of being human.
ceremony
My first experience of ceremony came in the North, through a sweat lodge with the Kwanlin Dün people. It was life-changing and awakened in me a remembrance of something greater—a different way of being in relationship with the Earth, with community, and with spirit.
Later, while living in Colorado, I experienced my first vision quest: four days and nights fasting alone in nature. This practice continued to call me throughout the years and became one of the most powerful ways I learned to listen, to move through grief and difficult passages in my life, and to reconnect with what is essential.
Through these experiences, ceremony became much more than something I occasionally participated in. It became a way of bringing intention into how I live—into the food I eat, the water I drink, the way I fast, the way I relate to nature, and the way we gather in community.
Over time, my curiosity has also led me to look at these ancient practices through another lens: what is happening in the body when we fast, gather, grieve, sing, move, or spend extended time in nature? For me, the spiritual and biological perspectives do not need to be separate. They are different ways of exploring the same living relationship.
When my son developed schizophrenia, everything I believed about healing was challenged. I had come to trust deeply in emotional and spiritual transformation, but I began to see that sometimes we cannot reach the psychological or spiritual layers without also tending to the biology beneath them.
That journey brought me back to science — this time through the microbiome, metabolism, mitochondria and brain health. I became fascinated by the ways nutrition, microbes, cellular energy, the nervous system and environment can influence mental health, and by emerging approaches that are helping some people move toward recovery.
Today, my work lives at the meeting place of these worlds. Biology and spirit. Earth and sky. The physical body and the inner life. I believe healing asks us to understand both — to restore the conditions that allow the body and brain to function, while also tending to emotion, relationship, meaning and the deeper experience of being human.
connection and healing
In its essence, I believe all things are connected. This is the foundation of my work. My vision is to help create a sustainable, healthy, and beautiful world where all beings are honored for their unique gifts.
To achieve this, I believe we need to address healing on individual, collective, and planetary levels. We are not separate from the ecosystems around us—or from the ecosystems within us. Our health is intertwined with the health of the soil, water, air, plants, animals, microbes, and communities that sustain us.
Therefore, I engage in my work with the understanding that when an individual feels connected and whole, it ripples outward into the family, the community, and the collective. And as we restore our relationship with the living world, we participate in its healing as well—healing ourselves and the planet, one breath, one action at a time.
gratitude
I am grateful for the water that quenches my thirst, the earth that feeds me, the wind that cleanses me, and the fire that keeps me warm. For the mysteries of life and The One, called by many names. I am grateful to my ancestors for all their work, their pain, and joy that made it possible for me to live here now.
I am grateful to all Indigenous ancestors and wisdom that have helped me come home: to the Tataviam people, the Indigenous land caretakers where I grew up in California; the Tlingit and Haida people, the Indigenous land caretakers where I grew up in Alaska; the Arapaho and Utes, the Indigenous land caretakers of Colorado; and the Lakota Kwanlin Dün people, whose ceremonies and wisdom I have benefited from. I acknowledge that I benefit from your displacement and colonization.
I am grateful to my mother for her continual love and support, to my sons for teaching me about love, to all my teachers and their teachers, the shoulders whom I stand on, to my friends and community, and for the darkness and the light. I am grateful for this precious life.
EDUCATION & TRAINING
EDUCATION
A.S. Biology
College of the Canyons, Valencia, California
B.A. Marine Biology
University of Alaska, Juneau, Alaska
B.A. Traditional Eastern Arts
Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado
M.A. Somatic and Emotional Education
Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona
Licensed Massage Therapy Certificate
Boulder School of Massage Therapy, Boulder, Colorado
1,000-Hour Yoga Science and Teacher Training
Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado
ADDITIONAL TRAINING
Reiki — Levels 1 & 2
Valencia, California
Nature Mentoring
Featherlight Skills, Boulder, Colorado
African Dance
Boulder, Colorado
NeuroSculpting — Levels 1 & 2
Boulder, Colorado
Tending the Five Gates of Grief
Francis Weller, Washington
Permaculture Training
Naropa University