About Anima
Comprised of producer / composer / instrumentalist Ali Calderwood and Vocalist / Songwriter Daniela Lanaia, Anima is an offering love to the Earth and all Her relations. They are based in the Highlands of Scotland, where they write and produce Anima’s inspirational music, blending meditative and rich soundscapes, infused with deep ambience, ethereal, nurturing vocals, ancient tones, sacred sound and a variety of world instruments.
Ali and Daniela live immersed in the wilds of our Mother Earth, and have been guided by deep connections with the land and original peoples in ancient ways of healing and remembrance. They are the co-founders of the Sacred Living Earth Trust – a vision and sanctuary space dedicated to the protection and restoration of our sacred, living Earth.
Anima is a word found in various languages and cultures, and means soul, breath, air, life force and feminine spirit energy. It is this sacred energy of the Great Mother that inspires their work, and that radiates out as “the energy of unconditional healing and love” felt in their music.
Ali began producing music under the name Anima in 2004, releasing his debut album “Celestial Baptism”, and later, “Star Ancestory”. The same year, Ali and Daniela met in Bath, Somerset and shared time in retreat in the mountains of Wales and Scotland. The following year while individually travelling in Mexico, they reconnected and began performing music together, and later while living in the Amazon of Peru and the Andes of Bolivia, recorded their first joint album “Lemuria Emerging”.
Anima have now released 15 titles, including the compilation album “Light” published by New World Music, and 2 compilation SACD's released in Japan.
Ali Calderwood
Ali was drawn to explore sound at an early age, and over the years, has developed his own unique style of award winning music that has gained international acclaim. The beauty and depth of his compositions immerse the listener in a world beyond time and space.
"Ali's music has an emotional eloquence which is both deeply touching and inspiring".
His musical work has been widely used to facilitate healing and the expansion of consciousness, and is frequently licensed for use in film and spoken word releases. Under the name of 'Anima', Ali has now released 13 albums, and Anima are one of the first artists in the New-Age/Healing genre of music to record in DSD. (A high resolution recording process that preserves the original, rich quality of the music) Recent notable commissions include two SA-CD's, released in Japan.
Ali's music is deeply inspired by the spiritual resonances and vibrations that are cultivated through living alignments with the deeper movements of life. His path has been one of continual refinement, focusing on the original and ancient ways of living, prioritising harmonious relationship with both the spiritual and physical realms around us. He spent many years alone in nature, often in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, vision questing to deepen the connection with the ancient ancestors who lived in right relationship with all of life, and knew the harmony of Creation.
Over the years Ali has travelled extensively, spending long periods living in different parts of the world with certain elders and indigenous peoples, who's ways of life and spiritual closeness to our Mother Earth were still very much connected. His journeys took him to Asia, India and South America, where during this time he received further training and initiations in indigenous healing traditions.
He has now found home in a remote location in the Scottish Highlands, off-grid, surrounded by forest and water, with access only by boat. He lives there with his partner, Jemma and their two little girls, Ariya and Aiyana. The Anima studio is also based there, powered by the renewable energy resources of water and sunlight.
Daniela Lanaia
Daniela is the vocalist / songwriter of Anima, a sound healer, and practitioner of healing arts. With a "crystalline voice" and "music that penetrates the heart", her music is an offering of love, enfolding the listener in a tender embrace of the Sacred.
Since childhood, she has been immersed in the creative and healing arts, and the magical/spiritual substance imbued within the Earth. She has a playful, wise spirit; a gentle yet strong nature and way in her work.
Spending much of her adult life in wild landscapes, sacred sites and with Nature, she has traveled and learned from indigenous cultures and healers in North and South America and the British Isles, learning and reawakening to ways of ancient wisdom and sacred relationship with Mother Earth.
Daniela works with sacred sound, ancient pathways and energetic healing and shares/teaches yoga, meditation, spiritual ecology, organic and biodynamic approaches to working with the land. She has a unique and sensitive awareness that is rooted in a loving relationship with the Earth and the stars.
Daniela has collaborated with Ali on many of Anima's albums and is currently working on a new album as well as series of guided meditations. In concert, she offers a sacred space of healing and deepening into the heart, and has performed along with Ali and independently at events throughout the UK, Europe and the Americas.
Daniela now resides in the the Scottish Highlands, where as well as music, she works closely with the land, growing a medicinal forest garden and relationship with the Earth where the spirit of the plants, mountains and waters are honoured as living beings and worked with to co-create a place of harmony and sacredness.
"Our voice is Creation and the expression of our soul..may each word and note that we sound be a sacred offering of love to the Divine. May we tread gently, with deep roots, upon our paths, in service to this sacred Earth.. For the waters, the mountains, the forests and rivers.. we are all the children of the Mother of life"
Daniela offers healing and one to one work, and travels regularly offering retreats and sound healing in the UK and abroad. For more information visit www.alunahealing.co.uk
In harmony with Nature
Anima reside in the West Highlands of Scotland, in a remote off-grid location. Power for recording their music is provided by Nature through renewable energy sources, and food is grown on the land in harmony with the natural rhythms and cycles. Anima has evolved to encompass a close-knit community of souls who have come together to work in service to the Great Mother, to honour the Earth and live in alignment with the original and sacred ways.
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