About Dr. Kathleen Riley

Kathleen Riley is a musician, researcher, certified biofeedback trainer, teacher, and coach with over 45 years of experience teaching, writing and performing. Her innovative teaching and research with performing artists enables them to “tune” the instrument of themselves and rediscovering the transformative power of intention, expressed through spoken word, music and movement.

Dr. Kathleen Riley’s teachings integrate and balance the mind, body, and spirit through intention and proper flow for artistic expression. Working with biofeedback, breathing techniques and sound, she helps musicians, performing artists as well as individuals from other professions overcome technical limitations, heal work-related injuries, reduce anxiety, and enhance their quality of life. Read her bio below for more about her expertise.

Powerful Tools for Sustained Resilience

Incorporating physics, frequencies, and resonance in our own electromagnetic fields, posture and optimal alignment, biofeedback and self-regulation techniques, and her expertise as a musician, Kathleen helps performers understand how everything is connected. Our most powerful frequencies come from our heart signals which respond to the thoughts and emotions we feel.

Holistic Approach to Expressive Performance

Kathleen offers a unique holistic coaching for optimal performance and wellbeing. Her methods have a transformative effect on sound produced musically or through spoken word. This has been experienced by thousands who have attended her workshops.

Dr. Kathleen Riley's Education & Experience

Kathleen Riley, PhD, Yamaha Artist in Education and Music Performance Specialist, is recognized nationally as a researcher, lecturer, teacher and innovator on musicians’ technique and injury prevention. Following three degrees in piano performance, Kathleen then went on to post-doctoral studies in neurophysiology and psychology at NYU. This led her down a path in 2001 that changed the trajectory of her career. She brought in her new found knowledge through neurophysiology, psychology, and biofeedback into her “toolbox” and created classes, workshops, and biofeedback coaching sessions for students and professionals to optimize their performances. In 2004 she began working with biofeedback to monitor muscle activity and became certified in sEMG biofeedback. She began to integrate video feedback along with muscle, and the software ProformaVision was created by PBI MyoVision, inspired by her research and work. Kathleen has taught workshops and masterclasses for every instrument. While living in Cleveland, Ohio, Kathleen served on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she designed courses and ran a biofeedback lab where her students could monitor themselves, seeing as well as experiencing the shifts that were occurring in both mind and body. Kathleen was also on staff at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine. Her research study exploring the effects of a shared heart intention among members of a string quartet on the musicians and audience members was filmed and produced as a documentary, Intention: The Power of the Heart. Most recently, she has been appointed as a Visiting Research Scholar at San Francisco State University. Private coaching sessions are also available in person and online.