Profile | New Age musical healer on revitalising Hong Kong people using her mix of music, spirituality, yoga and dance, and her family roots in the city
- Raised in Texas but with a father from Hong Kong, New Age musical artist Daphne Tse loves travelling and promoting wellness
- She is in Hong Kong this month, appearing at the Harmony in Motion: A New Year Wellness Workshop, where she hopes to energise burned out city residents
Daphne Tse grew up in Texas with dreams of becoming a pop star. One of six children, she loved playing the flute and singing in the school choir, and recalls the joy of watching Mary Poppins as a seven-year-old.
Music was her passion and Los Angeles, California, was the city to make her dreams come true.
“My father told me I couldn’t go to LA until my diploma was on his desk,” she says. Days after graduating from the University of Texas, Tse was bound for the City of Angels.
But Tse took a spiritual path. Driven by an insatiable curiosity for other cultures, she travels the world, guitar strapped to her back, sharing her healing yoga music that she combines with dance, chant and meditation.
This month Tse is in Hong Kong for “Harmony in Motion: A New Year Wellness Workshop” at Sun Yat Sen Park in Sai Ying Pun on February 17.
“In cities like Hong Kong, people overwork themselves. They have energy, but not vitality,” says Tse, who is also leading boutique events hosted by Anri Shiga on February 16 and 18. “I take sound, music and movement to map out the body – to help people tune up and tune in their body,” says Tse.
Building community connections that, for many, were broken during Covid-19, is another of the workshop’s aims.
Tse’s shift from pop-star dream to New Age artist reality was organic.
“My LA roommate, sick of hearing me sing all the time, said ‘learn the guitar’.” So she did, spending hours listening to Shawn Colvin, the three-time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter and shining light of the new-folk movement.
“I was addicted to her Live ’88 album and listened to it over and over, learning how to play guitar and sing like she did.”
She waitressed, dabbled in acting, and had a bit of an existential crisis. “In 1997 I sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to Paris and backpacked through Europe for six months to try to find myself.”
Back in the US, she found herself at a Yogaworks studio in California where she embraced yoga’s many branches, including asana, meditation, chanting and sound healing.
She met yogini Shiva Rea, now a lifelong friend, was inspired by her Bhakti yoga teacher, Jai Uttal, and discovered the spiritual teachings of Ammachi and Pema Chodron. LA’s yoga community gave her a sense of belonging and confidence in her art and music.
Tse loves Hong Kong, a city close to her heart. It’s where her father was born before moving to the US as a 22-year-old, where he met Tse’s Mexican/American mother.
“My great-grandmother was known as ‘Hong Kong Old Mary’ – her story is fascinating.”
Mary Wong (1870-1972) was a hawker who sold trinkets to visiting sailors to support her three sons. One morning, in 1921, on board the US freighter SS Diana Dollar, she found and, more importantly, returned a valuable diamond necklace belonging to a passenger.
That gesture of trust became her golden ticket: instead of accepting money for returning the jewels, Wong asked for a lifetime pass to board any Dollar Line ships that entered Hong Kong to sell her goods.
“I have a real visceral experience when I land in Hong Kong, as if this is where I’m supposed to be,” she says. “One day I will live here.”
It almost happened in 2020 when Tse applied for the Master of Expressive Arts Therapy programme at the University of Hong Kong. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
“I got locked down in Texas with my mum and dad, but it was a blessing because I got to spend the last three months of my mum’s life with her before she passed … usually I would have been on the road.”
She recently returned from South Korea and Japan and from performing at Boom, a music festival in Portugal. “There were 20,000 people dancing in a tent – it was incredible.”
With five albums to her name, Tse has found her spiritual voice. She wants others to find theirs.
“People think you’re either born a singer or you’re not, but I don’t believe that … People go to the gym to get better biceps and you can do the same with your vocal muscles.”
Diaphragmatic breath exercises are key. “There are different types of breathwork that can energise you or help you find equilibrium. It’s important because studies have shown how breath patterns can cause stress,” she says.
Her mental health issues led her to study psychology. Now she’s a counsellor
Helping stressed out business executives embrace mindfulness is a growing part of her work. She recently returned from Hawaii, where she taught meditation, movement, sound and singing to a group of Japanese businessmen.
She also incorporates the Hoffman process that uses techniques, from Eastern mysticism to deep meditation, group therapy and visualisation, to identify and resolve past issues that affect our present lives.
“It’s basically the programming you’ve got from your parents – all the habits, all the data – and then pulling out the inner child and saying it’s OK to play and to be curious and joyous,” she says.
“By the end of the five days, these men were able to express themselves – crying and jumping around and dancing. They were given permission to be seen and to be vulnerable,” she says. “A lot of times we don’t give ourselves permission to be light, playful and silly.”
Studies have shown that music engagement not only shapes our personal and cultural identities, but also plays a role in mood regulation.
“When I sing or play guitar, the vibrations go in and people let go – that’s the healing power of music,” says Tse, who has plans to explore electronic music and release an album of cover songs.
“I just turned 52, so I’m focusing on staying vibrant and curious,” she says. “Every year I tell myself I’m going to settle down but instead I adventure on.”
