Ayla Réalta
Ayla Réalta has been training her voice in many genres for over 17 years. She believes that singing is the most vulnerable and healing form of expression, and as such, she has committed to honing this skill as a life long pursuit.
Ayla’s love of harmonies has led her to become a supportive vocalist on Sara Tone’s music, where she gleefully memorizes Sara’s syncopated, heart opening lyrics. Harmonic love has also led her to direct a choir called Earth Women, a wild woman ensemble that performs ancient songs of their Polish ancestry. Ayla offers private voice lessons out of her studio, where she also houses her Soxhlet extractor and makes medicinal mushroom extracts. Ayla’s original music is inspired by Earth Worship and her love of Fungi, and is featured in the seasonal events and concerts she throws for her local community.
Ayla’s vocal training has been under the guidance of New York City vocal coach Dr. Michael Warren and professional opera singer Ted Dougherty since she was 16 years old. She has been teaching singing in the Portland area and beyond for over 7 years. She believes that everyone has the potential to uncover their unique and powerful voice.
Ayla’s Fungi singing story
My world shifted in 2019 after the watching the film Fantastic Fungi, which effectively opened my eyes to the beauty and intelligence of this entire branch of life. Through this film, Fungi instilled new hope for the future of our Earth, and human’s relationship to nature. With their incredible resilience and ability to increase the immunity of the forests, and the immunity of human bodies, I felt a profound sense of Fungi reaching out to me in a way that I could not ignore.
Soon after becoming awakened to Fungi’s beauty and intelligence, I decided to cultivate medicinal species with a friend so that we could form more intimate relationships with them. We lovingly sang to them while we watched them grow. Successfully, fruiting several rounds of Reishi and Cordyceps, Ali Pullen and I began teaching mushroom cultivation courses. We wanted more people to have close access to these amazing beings.
Things shifted again when I realized that there is even more potent medicine in just listening to the spirits of specific species, and allowing them to enter my body on a metaphysical plain, and sing me. Cultivating this practice with my most magically devoted friend Alessandra, we noticed specific characters and messages coming from different species. I even had an experience where one species relaxed my jaw for me, which released and incredible outpouring of unrelated emotion. This experience has been more healing than any other form of Fungi medicine.
The combination of Fungi spirit and science is my current path. Connecting with the physical mushrooms, their functional medicine, and connecting to the magic, receiving the spirit of Fungi, has provided the most healing I have ever experienced. These incredible beings have helped me feel connected to nature, and thus myself, most profoundly.