About Lisa Chu
Lisa Chu, M.D., is a multidisciplinary artist, illuminator, and community catalyst.
Through SoulBodyMind life coaching, Lisa facilitates transformation, healing, and creativity with individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds. Her tools and methods include practices from the traditions of meditation, yoga, Thai massage, Breema bodywork, organic farming, wilderness backpacking, music improvisation, sound healing, intuitive visual art making, psychodrama, and drama therapy.
The recovery and remembering of spontaneity is of central interest in all of her explorations of human experience and potential for healing.
Lisa was born in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, to Chinese-Taiwanese immigrant parents. Her background includes classical piano and violin training starting at age three and four, respectively, which culminated in solo performances worldwide during childhood. She received an A.B. magna cum laude in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and an M.D. from University of Michigan Medical School.
After a brief career as a venture capital investor, during which she was the youngest professional in her firm to earn partner-level status, she launched her own entrepreneurial venture as a violin school founder in Silicon Valley. An unexpected encounter with burnout, six years into her successful business, led her on her own path of soul recovery and healing.
Her trainings include Real Speaking with Gail Larsen, Certificate in Sound Voice & Music Healing from California Institute of Integral Studies, Life Coach Training with Martha Beck Inc., Bio Optic Holography and Life Upgrade Coach Training with Mastery Systems University, traditional Thai massage training at Ethnik Massage School, Ubud, Bali, at Old Medicine Hospital, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and at Thai Massage Circus, Luang Prabang, Laos; and Breema bodywork at the Breema Center, Oakland, California. Most recently, she has added psychodrama, drama therapy, autobiographical therapeutic performance, and Playback Theatre training experiences to her repertoire of healing modalities.
Lisa wrote and performed an autobiographical one-woman show, originating in a drama therapy process and developing further within the artistic community of solo performance creation in San Francisco. She has performed the show at The Marsh and Stagewerx theaters in San Francisco and at the Transformational Language Arts Network’s Power of Words Conference. She has taught Embodied Storytelling as a wellness program offering for employees at Stanford, and assistant taught solo performance workshops with Charlie Varon at The Marsh.
Lisa has performed improvisational violin with her acoustic rock duo, Chinese Melodrama, has had a daily visual art practice shared on Instagram and at Wild Tomato Arts, and lives with her partner Randy in a coastal community near San Francisco, California.
She is grateful to her many teachers starting in childhood and continuing into the present, each of whom has fueled Lisa's relentless love of learning and passion for sharing her knowledge with others.