JOIA WOOD
DANCE • SONG • STORY
Sound, Movement, and Restorative Storytelling™
Unlock the power of Intentional Presence
EXPERIENTIAL HEALING
+ JOY
THROUGH
SOUND,
MOVEMENT,
+ STORY
So much can be distilled down to your state of Presence. How fully you are here. In this moment. How deeply you are listening. To yourself. And to others. And how consciously you receive, move with, and share energies into the narrative whole.
Hi! I'm Joia. I'm a vocalist, dancer, and Restorative Storyteller™.
I created DanceSongStory to offer a calm, gentle, and encouraging space for you to deepen into and direct your Presence with more clarity, containment, and confidence. Observe your Being with wonder and awe. Discover and delight in the unique and subtle qualities of your precious voice and body, and become more playful with your vocality and physical expression.
My work is to share, nurture, and celebrate the power of conscious and intentional Presencing to co-create a world filled with stories of radical curiosity, wonder, and joy.”
- Joia
OFFERINGS
Access Radical Healing Through Sound, Movement, and Restorative Storytelling™ Practices
FEATURED CLASSES -
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From 25 US dollars
DANCE, SING, PLAY CIRCLES FOR INFANTS + CHILDREN
Mindful, musical, and full of play, Joia's children's classes are tailored to encourage even our youngest beings to connect to their physical bodies, their active listening centers, and their imaginative cores—empowering them with their own toolkits for self-awareness, self-regulation, and joy.
STORY TREE NATURE PLAY
Join us for a heart-opening journey of imaginative play. You and your child will embark on a mindful adventure, fostering creativity, emotional connection, and a deep love for the natural world through mindful nature play, earth-based crafts, and gentle, restorative movement in a beautiful, natural setting.
INTENTIONAL PRESENCING MENTORSHIP
For those ready to engage in deeper self-exploration and realization. Use integrated voice, gesture, and embodied Presence in a safe and supportive container. Utilizing tools of Restorative Storytelling™, creative play, and guided, intuitive sound and movement to tap into blockages and find areas of release.
INTUITIVE + ECSTATIC DANCE
Embodied Presencing and community connection through shared movement and music experiences. Ecstatic dance can facilitate emotional release, mindful awareness, and a deeper connection to one's body and inner self. Dancing in community is an empowering and transformative practice that nourishes the mind, body, and spirit.
SONG CIRCLES
Song circles are safe and sacred spaces where voices are free to intertwine in communal harmony. Encouraging creativity and collaboration as individuals in trusting community, song circles forge bonds of kinship through the spirit of collaboration and the possibilities inherent in openness.
RESTORATIVE STORYTELLING™ CIRCLES
Restorative Storytelling™ circles kindle imagination, sparking creativity as each tale unfolds, inviting all to contribute their unique threads to the communal fabric of shared experience. Through these circles, we find ourselves reflected in the stories of others, discovering new perspectives and deeper truths that resonate across time and space.
INDIVIDUAL EMBODIED VOICE + MOVEMENT MENTORING
Discover deeper comfort, balance, and harmony in your own body and voice through 1:1 guidance and support with Joia. Each session is carefully crafted to your individual needs and narrative to allow you to gently explore your unique expression of embodied Presence.
About Joia
Delving Into Integrated Practice With The Integrated Practitioner
"Joia Wood has one of those miraculous voices which can bowl you over even at its most delicate whisper, and lull you even at its stormiest torrent. A true siren who will capture you with the effortlessness with which her voice can express every facet of the human heart." - Danny Schmidt
“Two times in my long history of listening to music have I been stopped in my tracks by a female background vocal: Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In the Sky (Clare Torry) and the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter (Merry Clayton)...This year, I heard track stopper number three: ...the ear-shredding and amazingly sensitive voice of Joia Wood.” - Frank Gutch Jr.
“One of the best female vocalists in the region.” - C’ville Weekly
Born into a musical family, Joia Wood sang before she spoke and danced before she walked. Her parents were devotees of Paramahansa Yogananda and her formative years were spent attending Self Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, CA. Meditation, devotion, and the pursuit of Sacred knowledge have always been an integral part of her being.
As a child she performed at Universal Studios and appeared as a young dancer on Disney’s Mousercise program. She has learned from a number of remarkable teachers including, Suhaila Salimpour, Miki Liszt, and Mira Betz, and was a founding member of Charlottesville’s Fire in the Belly Dance Troupe.
Joia entered the Charlottesville, VA music scene in the late ‘90s and performed regularly for several years, drawing a loyal and dedicated fan base. She contributed backing vocals to the albums and performances of numerous fellow Charlottesville musicians including Amos Gilkey, Brady Earnhart, Monticello Road, and Shannon Worrell, and opened for Brian Vander Ark at the Gravity Lounge. She is perhaps best known for her haunting vocal work with Danny Schmidt.
During this season of musical exploration and performance, Joia entered into a deeply human chapter of both love and grief, giving birth to a son and experiencing the transcendent transformation into motherhood, and then, navigating his loss at 10 months due to an extremely rare congenital heart defect. Along this path of experience—birthing, loving, reveling in, and losing a child—Joia gained deep and foundational insight into the power of remaining fully engaged in the present moment and the need to nourish the capacity to hold both the sweetness and the sorrow essential to human survival. She turned again to song for healing and, the following year, she recorded and released a live album of her own works, Live from the Gravity Lounge.
Some years later, after the birth of her amazing daughter, she turned her energies to focus on early childhood education and non-profit work where she flourished until the 2020 lock-downs. Joia’s journey of the pandemic season included a serious early bout with the virus, during which she recentered her deep need and passion for music and dance, and, like so many, was called to revisit her relationship with her spiritual practices. In an era of many changes, this reconnection to self brought many waves of reprioritization: shakeups, breakups, and serious re-containment of her own Presence. Singing began to shift in her awareness and she began to understand and embrace the full power and impact of her voice and to refine her presentation of vocal work to reflect this new understanding.
In 2022, Joia began training with Master Storyteller, David Sewell-McCann of Sparkle Stories and How to Story and is now a Certified Restorative Storytelling™ Practitioner , weaving the amazing and transformative power of narrative into the vital and all-inclusive work of being alive. Her unique interdisciplinary approach to vocal and sound work, movement and presence work, and intergenerational narrative work makes available an expansive toolkit for accessing our highest and best selves.
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