A mode of engagement with aliveness itself, through our attention patterns.
Cultivating listening as a practice of perceptual and relational expansion through sound-based, embodied, philosophical, and creative pedagogies that build community, deepen attention, and develop the relational capacity to engage across difference.
About Us“This is so unique and so deeply needed in these dark times.”
— A community member, from our session reflections
Read More TestimonialsAbout Us
Paula and Lia met as students at Harvard Divinity School where their individual work as scholars and practitioners brought them together to explore how listening could be a spiritual and civic practice. This grew into Resonant Listening.
Paula Ortiz
Co-Founder, Resonant Listening
Paula Ortiz is an Ecuadorian scholar and practitioner. Her work explores the intersections of the sonic imagination, expanded states of consciousness, and relational ontologies, with a focus on ritual and pedagogical innovations that re-signify and re-sacralize the everyday. She has a background as an educator, integration chaplain, impact investor, and filmmaker. She holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from Hamilton College, and is a 2018 Thomas J. Watson Fellow. The cultivation of awe and grieving modalities are central to how she moves through the world.
Lia Pikus
Co-Founder, Resonant Listening
Lia Pikus is a multi-disciplinary artist and scholar based in Cambridge, MA. Drawing on patterns and processes from the natural world and centering the importance of deep listening and ritual, her work seeks to foster experiences of presence and connection through sensory attunement — sound's ability to soften the boundary between self and other, and to awaken, shape, and communicate the preverbal and primordial. She is a 2021 graduate of Rice University and a 2023 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, and is currently pursuing her master's degree in Religion, Ethics and Politics at Harvard Divinity School as a Presidential Scholar. The heart of her practice, and life, is curiosity and wonder.
In the News
Harvard Gazette · February 10, 2026
Funding Innovative Approaches to Belonging
On the Deep Listening Workshop Series and its Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund grant — building relational capacities so participants can “engage with differences more compassionately and creatively.”
Read the Article →HDS News · October 30, 2025
HDS Students Win Harvard Culture Lab Grant for Deep Listening Project
On receiving a $10,100 Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund grant, hosted under Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, to develop the yearlong Deep Listening Workshop Series.
Read the Article →HDS News · June 1, 2026
Marshall Ganz Explores Deep Listening as a Tool for Community Organizing at HDS
On the workshop with Professor Marshall Ganz, part of the Deep Listening Workshop Series, exploring reciprocal listening, “brave space,” and storytelling as tools for organizing.
Read the Article →SXSW EDU 2026 · March 9–12, 2026 · Austin, TX
Resonant Listening as Relational Attunement
A session on how artists and educators can use listening as a creative, relational tool for community-building and cross-difference dialogue, inspired by Pauline Oliveros.
Read the Article →What Is Resonant Listening
Resonant listening is a mode of engagement with aliveness itself — cultivating our perceptual bandwidth to recognize the many kinds of communication and connection that happen beyond and before the emergence of verbal language. Rooted in the practice of Deep Listening, it takes listening as the foundational vehicle for relationship building.
Through this perceptual expansion, we uncover new realms of relationality — across lines of difference in the human world, and with our environment — and exercise our agency, aliveness, and ethical life in relation with one another.
Self, Community, Environment
Three layers of relationality that resonant listening asks us to attend to — each held within the next.
The Pillars
Hearing vs. Listening
Hearing is the physiological reception of sound — what happens in the ear, and can be measured. Listening is the conscious, intentional direction of attention to sound; it is inherently relational, and involves a subjectivity that cannot be measured. A simple way to hold it: the ear hears, the brain and heart and body listen.
An Ethics of Sound
No sound is considered noise or irrelevant — traffic, breath, heartbeat, and silence are all valid material for listening. This democratizes sonic experience, and asks us to notice how our attention patterns are shaped by the systems and power dynamics that surround us: how we come to listen to certain voices over others, across lines of race, gender, ethnicity, and class.
Imagination & Aliveness
If our perceptual bandwidth defines our horizon, then expanding our capacity to listen expands what we believe is possible — with ourselves, with one another, and with the more-than-human world. This is why resonant listening is an ethical and imaginative practice: it is essential to imagining new worlds, because it expands what is possible.
“Listening is not neutral.”
— Paula Ortiz, HDS News, June 2026
Our Offering
A flexible suite of experiences we bring to collaborators and partner institutions — cultivating listening as a practice of perceptual and relational expansion through sound-based, embodied, philosophical, and creative pedagogies that build community, deepen attention, and develop the relational capacity to engage across difference.
Workshops
Immersive sessions grounded in theory, embodiment, sound, and relational exercise, capped to preserve intimacy. Upcoming themes include listening across difference, power dynamics, contemplative practice, storytelling, medicine and sound, embodied movement, and engaged listening through art and archival encounters.
Integration Retreat
A day-long retreat for a curated cohort of practitioners, followed by a one-on-one coaching session with Paula and Lia to bring resonant listening into spaces such as classrooms, offices and community settings.
Curriculum & Teaching Modules
Recorded lectures and course-ready teaching modules, developed in collaboration with teaching and learning centers, for professors and offices to introduce resonant listening pedagogy.
Partnerships & Custom Sessions
Facilitated workshops for institutions, organizations and private gatherings.
Event Archive
Deep Listening through the Thin Veil, with Raveena
Harvard University
An evening with musical artist Raveena exploring sound and presence together — our highest-attended gathering yet, with about ninety participants and a waitlist.
Deep Listening as Attention Practice, with the Strother School of Radical Attention
Harvard University
A foundational session on listening as an expression of care and curiosity — hearing versus listening, and the fluid shift between global and focal attention.
Resonant Listening as Relational Attunement
SXSW EDU · Austin, TX · March 2026
A talk on how artists and educators can use listening as a creative, relational tool for community-building and cross-difference dialogue, inspired by Pauline Oliveros.
Deep Listening for Community Organizing, with Marshall Ganz
Harvard Divinity School · June 2026
Professor Marshall Ganz explored listening as an active practice for community organizing — from reciprocal attention to “brave space” as the ground for collective trust.
Deep Listening as Spiritual Practice, with Dean Melissa Wood Bartholomew
Harvard Divinity School
A session with Dean Melissa Wood Bartholomew on deep listening as a spiritual discipline — attending to the sacred within silence, presence, and communal prayer.
Sonic Meditations
Harvard University · ongoing
A recurring series of embodied sonic meditations held across Harvard's campus.
Testimonials
Reflections from participants in our first year, collected through anonymous session forms.
“Through this series, I'm realizing to what extent I exist as a participant in my own life — how listening itself is an active modality of relating. This series has strengthened my desire to take a more engaged, active role in my relationships with others and the world.”
— Staff Member
“What better way to build and strengthen ties between community members than to enhance and intentionally develop our ability to listen to them.”
— Participant
“This space is rare, unique, and necessary to the change we need to continue to advance as an intellectual community committed to the progress of our communities and shared ecosystems.”
— Student
“This is so unique and so deeply needed in these dark times.”
— Community Member
Contact Us
For workshops, partnerships, or press inquiries, reach out anytime.
With Gratitude
We are grateful to the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund, and to our mentors and friends who have supported our work.
Resonant Listening
resonantlistening.co
© 2026 Resonant Listening