Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Turner Johnson.
Hi Carol, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story. Music has always been my refuge and my escape – a place where my external world could fall away and give way to my inner world. In that space, everything felt possible. I could go anywhere, be anyone, and feel connected to something much bigger than myself.
There was always music in our house when I was growing up. Both my mother and father had beautiful singing voices, and my father was my first great inspiration. He played many instruments, including piano, guitar, and drums. I used to sit beside the piano and watch him lose himself in the music.
By the age of nine, I was taking piano lessons. A year later, I began studying flute. I fell in love with classical music, especially Beethoven, Debussy, and Bach. Through their music, I could feel and express emotions I didn’t always have words for. Most of all, I was no longer alone. My first experiences singing were in the church choir, where the beautiful hymns soothed my soul. Later, I studied opera and worked with some of the best vocal coaches in Los Angeles and Austin.
In my early twenties, I met my husband and we formed a band that played original music. We made records and toured all over the country, opening for artists including Dave Matthews Band, Hootie and the Blowfish, the late Jeff Buckley, Blues Traveler, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters. We won major label deals, and we lost major label deals. We did it all! We experienced the excitement and the disappointments, and even after the initial hype had faded, we kept going. We continued playing professionally for more than thirty years.
We were playing theaters and festivals and going out on tours. At the same time, something was changing in where the music came from and what we wanted to offer through it. We were writing richer songs, listening more deeply, and learning to trust the unspoken language between musicians and the energy of a room. For me, music was becoming something sacred- a way of entering the deeper places within ourselves and inviting others to meet me there. I wanted to give that experience room to unfold, to let the music carry us somewhere we might not have reached on our own. That called for different venues, different settings, and audiences who wanted to enter that space with me.
The first time I was introduced to sound healing and crystal bowls, something just clicked. I could feel the sound moving through my body and around inside my head. In my body, it felt like a powerful river. In my mind, it opened a doorway to something that felt like truth. It felt sacred. This was what I had been looking for. That “ride” had found a purpose: healing and alleviating suffering through connection to something bigger than ourselves.
I took a deep dive into the study of energy healing and vibration across different cultures and traditions. I became a shaman, a Reiki master, and a Kambo practitioner, weaving my own thread of sound healing through all of it.
I had always loved being in nature, and that relationship quickly deepened. Nature vibrates just as we do. We come from it; we are part of it. When I immersed myself in the natural world, I began to notice that I could tune in and hear its song – whether it came from a place, a rock, a stream, or a plant.
In 2013, my husband and I opened Zero Gravity Institute, a floatation center and yoga studio in Austin. It was there that I began developing my own guided sound journeys. I allowed my voice to be completely free…, no song, no words, no melody…. Just presence.
It’s a curious sensation when your voice begins to change its timbre and texture, and no longer feels as though it belongs to you alone. It’s like becoming a radio receiver, surfing through the channels. I’ve learned not to be freaked out by it, but to meet it with fascination, curiosity and reverence – to trust and let go. It’s not about me, it’s about the message that’s coming through.
Today, I create sound journeys and guide others through that doorway, offering a space where they can explore and discover their own truth and healing.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth? It’s been a ride! I have done and been many things in my life, and the story continues to unfold.
Sound healing feels like something I’ve been connected to all along, but trusting it enough to let my voice be completely free was a little terrifying in the beginning. I had spent years training my voice, learning how to shape and control it. Now I was being asked to listen and follow—to allow a sound to emerge without knowing where it would lead. That went against so much of my formal training. There was a real power struggle between the perfectionist and the healer.
What I came to understand was how much more the healer in me could offer when I allowed myself to be vulnerable enough to surrender. Sometimes a sound I might have judged as a mistake would turn out to be the very thing that touched someone deeply—the catalyst for their healing. Learning to honor those moments changed my relationship with my voice. I had to trust what I was offering before I could ask anyone else to trust it.
One of the most difficult experiences of my life was losing our float center and yoga studio in the aftermath of COVID. My husband and I had poured so much of ourselves into that space, and losing it was one of the most traumatic things I had ever experienced. It became my great lesson in impermanence: nothing is guaranteed, and nothing stays the same. Chapters open. Chapters close.
My path forward was clear. I threw myself fully into my work as a shaman, a healer, and an artist. That work has carried me. I love who I was, and I love who I am now. I’m learning to honor each part of that journey while allowing the next part to unfold.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Sound healing is my passion and my art. I work with a growing collection of instruments, sounds, and loops to create an environment where healing can occur. My voice is the thread weaving through those spaces. I experience it as both receiving and transmitting healing frequencies, listening and responding to what emerges in the moment.
Every sound journey is a ceremony. We cross a threshold together, leaving ordinary reality behind and opening to the bigger mystery. I don’t know exactly where the journey will lead. I enter with only an intention. That openness is part of the work. I’ve also added an embodiment practice at the end, inviting the body to awaken and allowing the experience to continue through movement.
I have led sound journeys for many kinds of events and settings, including accompanying psychedelic journeys. One of my most interesting collaborations was with the Umlauf Museum in Austin, where I curated a sound journey for an exhibition called “The Floating Forest,” which featured sound-activated art. Being able to explore that relationship between sound and visual art was fascinating – it was so cool and so much fun.
I also collaborate with dancer and filmmaker Mary Hill, who creates films that tell stories through dance and sound and submits them to independent film festivals. Recently, we won Best Sound Design at the Nice International Film Festival for “Shadow Flame, Shadow Gold, Winds of the West.” The piece was filmed and recorded at the bottom of Cave Without a Name, near Boerne, Texas.
What I’m most excited about right now is my upcoming album. I’m doing all of it myself: singing, playing, composing, arranging, recording, mixing, and mastering. We have a studio in our home, and I wanted to discover what would happen if I could be completely alone and simply hit record. No time limit, no agenda – just time and space, with no input beyond my own and spirit.
There is a difference between working with a group on behalf of others and discovering what comes to the surface when I’m alone. When I record, I slip into that space of no-thing and allow whatever emerges to be what it is. It’s a practice of getting out of my own way.
Then comes another kind of listening. I listen carefully for how to support what I hear. A sonic picture begins to reveal itself, and I start adding layers, shaping the sound around what first came through. I love that movement between surrender and deliberate creation.
The album contains six pieces, each one is a soundscape intended to carry the listener beyond ordinary reality and into another realm: the natural world, the feeling of being held in a mother’s arms, or that mysterious space between waking and dreaming.
I’ve been surrounded by audio engineers for much of my life, but I hadn’t really had the opportunity to get behind the mixing board myself. Now I feel that pull, and my peers have been fully supportive. I’m using Pro Tools and Ableton Live, and having that creative freedom is exciting. Learning the technical side is a big undertaking and requires a lot of patience, but I’m dedicated to seeing it through. I’m mixing the album now, with the goal of finishing it in the coming months.
To stay connected with my sound events and the album’s release, you can visit carolturnerjohnson.com. My next sound event will be a Winter Solstice Celebration in Austin on Sunday, December 20.
In the meantime, I invite you to visit our YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@vidabrillante2025
You’ll find live recordings of past sound journeys, along with medicine songs I share with my husband, Kevin.
Kevin is my biggest supporter. He runs sound at all my events, records the journeys, and produces the live videos. So much of what I’m able to share with people afterward is possible because of his care and work behind the scenes. Thank you, my love.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
To me, a risk is just another choice, and every choice has consequences. It’s just whether or not you can live with them. I believe in common sense, weighing your options, and taking calculated risks. Knowing when to say no matters just as much as knowing when to say yes.
That being said, I wouldn’t be who I am today without taking chances. I don’t let the idea of being ready keep me from taking a chance on something I really want. There is always more to learn, something to improve, some reason to wait. At a certain point, you have to let go of perfectionism and do the thing. Some things can only be learned by beginning.
There is something powerful about stepping into the unknown, where the story hasn’t been defined yet and all the possibilities are swirling around. You take a step, pay attention, and find your way. I enter that space every time I sit behind my bowls. I have to trust myself enough to begin and stay open to where the experience leads.
My album is asking that of me in a different way. Learning all the technical aspects of producing a recording is a huge undertaking. I’m taking responsibility for every part of the process, including skills I’m still developing. It takes patience and a willingness to be a beginner, even after a lifetime in music.
But creating these sonic spaces lights me up. When I allow myself to simply be… let my voice unfold and move freely, what comes through can astonish me. There is still so much to discover in sound. I feel like a pioneer in my own creative life, exploring territory I haven’t entered before. The process of discovery is a reward in and of itself, and it gives me the desire to keep going through the risks and challenges.
I believe we can create our own opportunities. When you do something that lights you up, it comes through in the work and in the enthusiasm you bring to it. Other people begin to feel it, too. There is an energetic quality to that kind of resonance – a sense that the universe has opened… matched frequencies… and is vibrating harmoniously…. and opportunities begin to find their way into your life.
That’s how this interview feels to me: an opportunity that found me while I was doing the work I love.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.carolturnerjohnson.com
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vidabrillante2025
Image Credits
Head Shot- Melinda Ortley Photography
Group Shot and Black and White – Tara Rudy Photography
Live Shots- Kevin Johnson
