About
I’m Francie La Flow
I lost my voice for a year and a half. Everything I teach came out of finding it again.
Founder of Pure Flow Yoga. Creator of the Vocal Flow Method.
Voice healer, somatic guide, bhakti musician and retreat leader, based between Ubud, Bali and Koh Phangan, Thailand.
The story underneath all of it
My voice went first, and I had no idea why
In 2016 something happened to me that I didn’t have words for, and then, quite literally, I had no words at all. My voice left. Not for a week or a rough month, but for over a year and a half.
I was already carrying depression. Losing the ability to say what I needed on top of that was devastating. It felt like a part of my soul had been switched off, and I couldn’t find the switch. I tried everything I knew, and I knew a lot by then, and none of it touched it.
Then a friend asked me a very simple question. “Has anything emotional happened to you recently?”
Mindfulness had taught me to watch the clouds go by and notice something was there. That wasn’t going to be enough. I needed to go down into the trauma itself and into the relationship between how we feel and whether we can say it out loud.
That took me out of the yoga world I knew and into plant medicine, then into long-form integrative somatic therapy, then into play and expressive joy practices. Music and ritual are where it finally landed. Since 2012, creativity, self love and worthiness have been the ground of my own healing, and singing is how I reached the parts of myself that talking never got to.
That’s the whole reason this work exists. What I hand you is the way back that I had to build for myself, one piece at a time.
What came out of it
The Vocal Flow Method
Your voice is the most honest instrument you own. When it’s held back, it’s usually holding something else back with it. The method blends three bodies of work that most people are taught to keep in separate rooms.
Yoga and bhakti
Breath, embodiment and devotional sound. The ancient technology for getting out of your head and back into the body that is actually singing.
Flow psychology
How presence, play and the right kind of challenge move you out of self monitoring and into full expression, on and off the mat.
Somatic trauma integration
Nervous system repair, so that opening your throat feels safe rather than exposing. This is the piece that’s usually missing from voice work.
Pure Flow, the short version
Fifteen years of holding rooms
I started teaching in 2012 with Blooming Lotus, and for eight years after that I was running transformational retreats in Koh Phangan, Thailand. In 2016 I founded my own school, Pure Flow Yoga, out of my love of yoga, nature and community. “Life changing” was the review that kept coming back. We won awards two years running and The Guardian named us one of the best retreats in the world.
Then 2020 arrived, the world shut down, and the studio closed with it. That ending is what sent me deeper into the voice work, and I’m glad of it now, even though it didn’t feel like a gift at the time.
These days I teach at The Yoga Barn in Ubud, run private retreats in Bali and Thailand, train facilitators, mentor people one to one, and play music. Same devotion, smaller rooms, much deeper work.
Where the work has taken me
Who I am here for
Curious yogis, aspiring singers, and people who went quiet somewhere along the way
Maybe you were told you couldn’t sing. Maybe you can speak perfectly well in a meeting and still can’t say the true thing to the person in front of you. Maybe you hold space for everyone else and have nowhere to put your own sound.
I work with women and men, teachers, therapists, facilitators and people who’ve never taken a singing lesson in their lives. What I offer is a safe and sacred room to meet the block, soften it, and let your own voice come back through. This is about presence, and your own sound coming back through.
Training and study
The lineage behind the work
I’m a lifelong student. Thousands of hours with master teachers around the world, and still going.
Degrees and certifications
- Compassionate Inquiry Professional Training with Dr Gabor Maté
- Post-Graduate Diploma in Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
- Bachelor of Arts, Psychology and Humanistic Studies, minor in Philosophy, McGill University, Canada
- E-RYT, 1000 hours of certified yoga training
Somatic, trauma and voice
- 100 Hour Embodied Trauma Integration, Tina Nance Yoga Therapy
- 100 Hour Embodied Flow Mind Module, Tara Judelle
- 100 Hour Yoga Nidra, Blooming Lotus Yoga
- Freedom Through Movement, Bex Tyrer
- Unwind the Feminine, menstrual cycle awareness and body literacy
Yoga lineages
- Ashtanga Yoga Research Center, one month intensive with Prem and Radha
- 100 Hour Shantaya Anusara Yoga, Jonas Westring and Carlos Pomeda
- 100 Hour Advanced Teacher Training, ISHTA Yoga, Rachel Zinman
- Anusara Yoga Immersions 1, 2 and 3, Shri Yoga, Julie Smerdon
- 50 Hour Yin Yoga and Yin Intensive, 5 Elements Yoga School
- 50 Hour The Art of Bhakti Yoga, Lorraine Taylor and Akari Tamura
- Beyond the Asana with Emil Wendel, and Yamas and Niyamas with Janet Stone
Community and business
- The Yoga Barn, Bali Spirit and BaliSpirit Festival, business and community development
- Guided by Anura and River City Kambo, consultancy and project management
- Uma Sai, community and business development
In conversation
Interviews and podcasts
Sing to Heal: Finding Your VoiceAnnelieListen on Spotify
Finding Your Voice, Embracing Emotions and Letting Go of LabelsRush DorsettListen on Spotify
Story of Healing and WanderlustLou Kelle WestListen on Spotify
Rediscovering HarmonyNessi GomesWatch on YouTube
Awakening Joy and Authentic ExpressionNessi GomesWatch on YouTube
Let’s find out what your voice is holding
If any of this landed somewhere in your chest, start with the quiz. It takes two minutes and it’ll tell you which of the eight Voice Archetypes you’re moving through right now, and what’s actually in the way.
With love and song,
Francie