We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Duplessie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Matthew, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I believe my most meaningful (ongoing) project that I have worked on is my participation as a teacher and music producer on the meditation app Insight Timer. Insight Timer is an app anyone can download on their phones/smart devices to practice daily meditation, mindfulness exercises, and expand their sense of self through courses, workshops and guided practices.

I have been a part of the app’s growth since 2018 when I signed up to be a teacher. This opportunity has inspired me to create my first online course called The Power of Sound Healing with Voice, where I inspire and guide students to look to their voice as a source of power, creative potential and healing.

I currently have over 10,000 students worldwide, over 13,000 followers and over 1 million plays of my meditation music tracks.

This project has been meaningful for me, mostly because of the daily feedback that I get from my listeners, audience, and class participants.

The amount of and quality of comments I receive has been so powerful and touching, not only to affirm my path as a teacher and producer, but to reflect to me all of the beautiful healing that my words, ideas and music have inspired for others.

On those occasional days when I feel less connected to my self or my path, these comments ignite my spirit’s remembrance as to why I have come to this planet at this time, to transmit sacred sound for healing, guidance and inspiration.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My journey began over a decade ago when I moved to Savannah, Georgia to pursue a degree in Sound Design, as I wanted to learn how to make soundtracks for movies and film. I ended up graduating with a BA in Motion Media and a Minor in Sound (they only had one music class at my university), and thus began a decade long endeavor as a freelance creative designer (motion media, video editing, websites, image editing, branding and more).

Along the way, I started to see the results of the hours and days, sitting at my computer creating for my clients. My body was getting sore, I was getting headaches and eye-strain. I started to listen to my body and realize, I needed to find a sense of balance. I had dabbled in meditation and yoga here and there, but my journey was just beginning.

In 2014 I moved into a Healing Arts Center and began my exposure to all the various healing arts, ways to align, attune and balance our body, mind and spirit. It was here that I discovered a passion for Kundalini Yoga, and the following year in 2015, I sold everything I owned that didn’t fit in my minivan, and packed up for a one-month immersion to New Mexico to study Kundalini Yoga and become a yoga teacher. It was here that I discovered the power of my breath, the power of meditation, and the power of sound as healing tools that we can all access.

At the time my brother was living in California as an actor in Hollywood, so after my Kundalini Yoga training, I drove to California and ventured the west-coast on a 6-month road trip of travel, self-discovery, adventure, and self-awareness.

After a few months of travel, I was sensing the need to ground and digest my journey, so I rented an off-the-grid cabin in the mountains of Santa Cruz for two weeks so I could organize all of my newfound inspirations from my travels and training.

During my first four days I fasted on nothing but juice, water and tea, and had profound insights about my relationship to food and my body, and the imbalances I had created for much of my life. I had also time to focus my passions for sound and began my first true business as a passion which I named AudioSoul Healing.

AudioSoul Healing was the creative outlet for me to channel all of my wisdom I had learned about the body, breath, sound, the voice, and our creative human potential. I created a website, and started uploading the meditation tracks I was creating, along with insights I was discovering about the healing powers of sound.

Fast-forward almost 7 years later, and I am now teaching courses at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center about the healing powers of sound. Add to this my years experience as a producer and course teacher on the app I had mentioned called “Insight Timer”. I am also an Audio Visual Arts / Communications teacher at a middle school in Savannah where I weave my wisdoms of health, wellness, self-awareness and body/mind/spirit balance into my lesson plans.

I believe what sets me apart from others is the diversity of my offerings, as well as my ability to weave them together synergistically to help individuals “re-connect” to themselves most powerfully through their discovering their voice, exploring their self-expression, and through re-examining and re-wiring their self-beliefs.

I am most proud of my ability to help so many people, from my students each day, as well as countless other souls all around the world through my website and the meditation app.

I am truly grateful to have gone on my journey of self-discovery to shed my skin of old insecurities and limiting self-beliefs, to see the powerful, mature, and inspiring soul that I truly am.

And it all started by going within and uncovering the forgotten, ‘hidden/lost’ and denied parts of myself to retrieve my awareness of my natural and cultivated gifts to humanity.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me the most rewarding part of being an artist and creative is that I honor my intuition and am able to give it voice through the myriad of artistic expressions I have given myself permission to explore in my life’s journey.

One very common theme I discover in so many of my students and individuals I meet is how many share the common inner voice of self-doubt, self-sabotage, and self-critiquing.

I immediately am able to recognize when this voice is speaking through others, because I too allowed that voice to sabotage and limit me for so many years.

At some point I just began to question that voice and realize that I didn’t have to believe that I was unworthy, or not ‘good enough’, ‘talented enough’ or ‘experienced enough’ for my ideas or expressions to have value.

At this point in my life, being creative truly is my lifeblood. If I don’t create and express regularly, I get stressed out and sometimes even sick.

Some where along the way I heard the Eastern philosophy that ‘all dis-ease is the result of unexpressed emotion’, and this rung through me like a bell when I recalled how repressed, shy and self-conscious I was growing up.

Now my life makes sense, and my path is clear. It is to help others who share the same self-inflictions, to help reveal the power of self-expression, and to find my daily joy in creating for creativities sake, so that my ideas, my life-force, and my creative energy are able to flow through me and nourish and inspire those I love and those in my community to share their gifts as well.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

It has been my perspective through the human narrative that many people who consider themselves ‘non-creative’ look down upon those who choose creative paths. This is where I believe the term ‘starving artists’ has developed in our culture.

To me, this simple phrase struck through me and my family generations by the warnings that ‘you need to have a good job so you can succeed in life’. This idea that I couldn’t support myself by being an artist or creative was somewhat super-imposed over me through society and partially through some of my family values.

I was however also blessed with a family that recognized and encouraged my creativity at a young age, as this helped nurture my confidence in my possibilities to create for a living.

I do believe it is possible for society to support artist and creatives, as a recent trip to Canada showed me the vast difference in how cities like Toronto and Montreal provide an outspoken support to their creative communities, by realizing the significance and need for the arts in our human lives.

I believe this same mindset could be cultivated in more cities in the United States by creating not only an arts initiative but also a health and wealth initiative.

Where I feel these two sectors intersect is through self-expression.

As a collective, if we can all learn to value the power of individual and collective self-expression, I do believe we could help initiate a powerful healing and powerful transformation of our current way of living, which in it’s current state, seems to not truly benefit all.

This metaphorically could be rippled across all cultures as a message that ‘ your voice matters’ and ‘your ideas are valuable’.

It begins by listening to one another, by observing with open hearts, and having compassion for our differences and our struggles… as we all share the commonality of the human journey and of being denizens of our planet earth.

I believe seeing the world from these perspectives can help revitalize the arts and see what a powerful force it is in reminding us who we truly are as human beings.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.audiosoulhealing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audiosoulhealing/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattduplessie/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/audiosoulhealing
• Other: https://insighttimer.com/audiosoulhealing

Image Credits
Seated didgeridoo photos – Colin Grey Kneeling outdoor with mic & standing with didgeridoo / hat – Yanir Yankobitz Outdoors with white outfit / hanging instruments – Molly Hayden Kneeling gold suit with mic – Sunflowerz Photography