We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abigail Earthshine Fischer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Abigail, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Pre-covid I was making 95% of my income from classical singing. But something was not quite in alignment. A question kept coming in: “why, all this? What’s the point?” Many of the productions I did were very dark, but didn’t seem to address the heart of the problem, really respond to the darkness, or offer what could be done about it. It really irked me, especially since I was often premiering big new operatic works (and still do when it aligns!). I was offering sound meditation locally, and this felt much more connected to spirit and to my purpose in the some ways, at least in the depth of the offering, but it didn’t really make much money-wise.
I turned 40, and cried in front of my surprised friends. I felt like I had wasted my time, not pursued what really lit me up. I was imagining curating a consciousness festival as my greatest joy, and yet, I didn’t even know where to begin.
Then pandemic hit, and everyone hit the pressure ceiling, and I suddenly felt very calm and lit up with purpose, even though I lost all my income. I thrived in this context, as I’d accumulated so many tools to sit with discomfort and challenge. I immediately started streaming online sound meditation, with the expert audio help of my husband at the time, Jason Slayden. This became my new business, A Big AUM.
But as time went on, I realized I knew nothing about business, and what I was offering was not financially sustainable at the time, and of course I had to decide how to focus my energy. As things started opening up again, how do I focus my energy? On the healing arts, which was relatively new for me, and stay a business owner without really any business acumen, or pursue a performing career, which I had been established in for 20 years?
It was a risk, that felt more like a trust fall. I had developed this inner knowing inside my body, that KNEW the path, even if it seemed totally wyld and wyrd! Jason and I moved to Arizona, and there was something in me that knew for sure I would morph officially into an entrepreneur.
Music hasn’t left me this whole time. I’m actually creating original musical healing experiences, which include breathwork, ecstatic dance, sound healing, and voice activation. And I hold “permission to emerge” trance open vocal jams, which are super fun, and also healing. But the motivation for the music has completely shifted. Music with the intention to assist healing. Not that all music isn’t inherently that, but the intentionality of the experience is very devoted to healing. I live in Sedona now, and the healing energy is deep here. I’ve had to learn a lot about business and rebirth myself in the process. For now, writing music takes a second priority, as I step into creating a financially sustainable business.
Is it worth it? If we shed layers in order to be closer to our true self, is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY, it’s worth every challenge and every pain, to find the deepest JOY!
Abigail, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a Musical Medicine Woman and classically-trained opera singer, a trauma-informed breathwork and voice activation therapist, a sound healer, a catalyst for true self emergence, and creator of original musical healing experiences. After 20 years in the classical music industry, I founded A Big AUM in direct response to the need for more wellness support during the pandemic, and began streaming sound meditation onto YouTube and creating awakening awareness programs. Since pandemic I feel I have honed into my deepest offering, which is my one-on-one coaching/mentorship program for True Voice Emergence. I also enjoy holding space for group Breath and Voice activation experiences, sound healing, and “Permission to Emerge” trance open vocal jams, all of which basically bring up the same issues on different levels. I work foundationally with people experiencing a shutdown voice, fear of judgment or challenge speaking up, and work with them to heal patterns of people-pleasing or codependency. I do this by supporting the cultivation of healthy boundaries, holding a safe container to heal deep feelings of unworthiness, establishing rituals to use the voice with strength and confidence, and ultimately find more play, ease and joyful celebration through authentic expression. Trained as a classical singer and cellist, I now create original musical healing experiences, that combine the healing modalities of ecstatic dance, breathwork, sound healing, and voice activation, to create an intentional healing experience as well as creative and satisfying performance spectacle.
As a classical singer, I have performed worldwide with companies such as Los Angeles Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Beijing Music Festival, at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and am currently recording an original album with multiple-Grammy-nominated drummer Will Clipman. I come from a family of classical musicians, so it would have been so much easier to stay only in that field. I’m really proud of how I have managed to transition into a totally different self-made career, different from my family’s solid musical inheritance, and learn how to be a business owner of a financially thriving business totally on my own. I have completely transformed my mindset on awakening consciousness, including sending so much love to all those places in me that felt unworthy to chart this totally unique life, and setting clearer and healthier boundaries for myself, so I can hold more deeply intimate safe nurturing space with myself and others, and deeply connect to my own sense of purpose and creation of the life of my dreams. I am really actively creating my life now, not only with my clients and programs, but also hosting new musical creations that help me and others connect more deeply to purpose, joy, and interconnectivity. I am releasing daily what holds me back from being my best self and truly present and stepping up in service more and more, and this is deeply fulfilling.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Last year, I saw a vision of offering two monthly memberships that merged music and healing in two different ways: one that was a performance, utilizing my vast opera training skills, and merging them with my sound healing skills, and the other one more focused on healing through breathwork and voice activation, with live improvised/channeled shamanic medicine music. I spent a month clarifying the offers, and marketed to both my healing contacts and my classical music contacts. I was sure it was going to work, especially since I’d had this vision and it felt good. NO ONE bought it! I still don’t know why, though I have some thoughts about it. I just went back to marketing to my ideal client, and I’m sure I’ll get insight at some point as to why those two programs didn’t land.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
As I’ve progressed into the depth of healing I’ve done for myself and offering to hold that space for others, I think I had thought it would get easier in the practical realms and more towards love and light, into the higher realms. Especially since moving to Sedona, I see so many people up in the clouds and not grounded, I have learned that my shamanic path needs to be quite grounded, not only with spiritual grounding like shadow work and being cautious of spiritual bipassing, but also in terms of the practicality of daily business tasks, in laying really grounded financial structures in place, and being very practical on a daily basis. Deep integration with both sides has been super eye-opening. Both doing regular earth rituals to connect spiritually to the land, integrating spiritual insight with earthly material ritual, and also just showing up to get daily business actions done in the material world. As I activate more of my healing abilities and open my energetic field, it is needed to become just as much grounded in the practical, maybe even more so, to balance. I continue to learn this lesson and its depth daily, that brings immense humility for the immeasurable depth of life.
Contact Info:
- Website: abigaum.com
- Instagram: @earthshineabigail
- Facebook: Abigail Earthshine Fischer or @abigailearthshine
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/abigailearthshine
- Youtube: @abigailearthshine
- Other: breathwork music on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/abigail-abigaum/tracks classical music at abigailfischer.com and on spotify under Abby or Abigail Fischer