Shulamit Elson is the director of the SoulSongs School, and the spiritual director of the Great Octave Foundation, and she the creator of Sound Prayer® and SoulSongs® Meditation.

She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Kabbalah of Prayer ~ Sacred Sounds and the Soul’s Journey, and the producer of powerful audio CD’s including, Beyond Words Sacred Sounds of the Tree of Life and Vibration, which joins Shulamit’s voice with the chants of eight Tibetan Buddhist monks.

She has also published a volume of poems entitled Brooklyn Bodhisattvas, the title poem of which is included in the N.Y.U. Press anthology of poems Broken Land, Poems of Brooklyn.

In the 1990's, Shulamit was a successful Wall Street business woman. She arrived in the rough and tumble world of mergers and acquisitions after leaving behind her early upbringing in Orthodox Judaism and after several years as a bohemian ex-pat in the café society of Europe.

Although her Wall Street career brought her material success and an upscale New York lifestyle, she was deeply unfulfilled and acutely aware that something important was missing in her life. While her early religious upbringing provided few answers, it nonetheless gave her an underlying sense that she would not find this missing piece of herself in the purely materialistic world in which she was living.

And then something extraordinary happened. This pragmatic down-to-earth women began to have what she describes as "amazing visions."

These visions began in the form of pure light, so overwhelming that at first she was quite frightened and simply wished for them to go away. At times, she questioned whether they were simply the result of her own over-active imagination. But in the end they lit a path to a way of life that would nurture her own soul and allow her to nurture others.

As Shulamit accepted the reality of her visions, they began to take the form of teachings that left her with a profound sense of peace. She began to meditate in an attempt to gain some control over their comings and goings and she soon became able to be an active participant in the visions themselves.

Eventually she was taught a series of vocal sounds to use in her meditations. Once she had mastering the art of producing these sounds with her voice, she was instructed to look into the ancient Jewish mystical texts called the Kabbalah, for an explanation of the power of the sounds, as well as the spiritual tradition from which they came.

After extensive reading of ancient Kabbalistic texts, some of which had never been translated into English, Shulamit came to realize that the sounds she had been taught in her visions were not at all new, but rather belong to a highly evolved spiritual system with roots going back well before the first century. Leaving the world of Wall Street completely behind, Shulamit set out to become a serious student of this ancient mystical teaching.

In the ensuing years, Shulamit has become a highly regarded spiritual teacher. Her personal story, her compassion, and her ability to connect to those who are searching for purpose and meaning in their lives has drawn devoted students from around the world.

Shulamit has taught and presented to diverse audiences in a wide variety of venues: at the Tibet House in New York City, to AIDS patients in Mexico City, to the parents of children with cancer at the Ronald McDonald House of New York City, to students at Esalen Institute, to European Union Reconciliation Councilors, and followers of Sri Aurobindo at the Auroville Healing Center in Pondicherry India, as well as Palestinians and Israelis in the holy land. At the invitation of a US Congressman, she has performed sacred SoulSongs in the Rotunda in the Capital Building in Washington DC and in 2001 she was honored to give the “keynote” address for the introduction of the Congressional bill H.R. 808 to create a cabinet level Department of Peace.