MONGATA STUDIO
A Contemplative Community
Mongata is a contemplative community devoted to sound, deep listening, restorative practices, and creative living. Through immersive sound experiences, breathwork, mindfulness and artistic practices, Mongata offers pathways for reconnecting with yourself, cultivating resilience, and living with greater presence and resonance.
[MÅNGATA]
A SWEDISH WORD MEANING
The glimmering reflection path of moonlight on water. It’s through this path, this secret doorway that we can take the inner journey to our own inner healing.
VALARIE BUDAYER | FOUNDER OF MONGATA STUDIO
Meet the Owner
Valarie is a musician, contemplative artist, expressive arts practitioner, and founder of Mongata Studio in Madison, Connecticut. For more than 30 years, she has explored the ways sound, creativity, contemplative practice, story, and place can help us live with greater presence, meaning, and aliveness.
Her work draws from a rich collection of practices including therapeutic music, sound, guided imagery, breathwork, SoulCollage®, labyrinth facilitation, and mindfulness. Her sound work weaves together a 60-string monochord table, therapeutic harp, crystal singing bowls, quartz crystal chimes, kantele, voice, and other acoustic instruments to create deeply immersive experiences of listening and rest.
Valarie is also a song and tradition keeper with deep ties to Gotland and the Baltic Sea region, where she has led retreats and pilgrimages exploring labyrinths, traditional song, story, creativity, and place.
At Mongata, she brings these many threads together to create contemplative and expressive arts experiences that invite people to slow down, listen deeply, create, wonder, and engage more fully with their lives.
Credentials
Valarie is a Portland State University graduate with a BA in Music and an MA in Piano Pedagogy from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
CERTIFIED IN
ACDA Certified in Sound Therapy, Mindfulness Meditation, Pause Trauma-Informed Breathwork Facilitator, and Medicinal Qigong.
BLESSED TEACHERS PAST AND PRESENT
I am greatly blessed and honored to stand on the shoulders of these great teachers:Imelda Almqvist, Rachael Salley, Mirabai Starr, Evelyn Rysdyk, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Master Mingtong Gu, Lee Holden, Daisey Jussi Huovinen, Hank Wesselman, Harold Gray, Mary Kogen, Florence Abel, Richard Fuller, Robert Bonham, Tomas Svaboda, Said Salem, Hamza el Din, Jarrod Byrne Mayer, Eileen McKusik, Chloe Goodchild, Marla Leigh Goldstein, Mitch Nur, Alexandre Tannous, David Shemesh, Elian Zach, Laura Ferguson, Samantha Skelly., Emma Dunwoody, Heather Downey. I am so thankful for all the wisdom they have imparted!