Ayla Schafer: Honouring The Water

A voice of the Earth shares her story, her awakening, and why water is calling us home.

British artist Ayla Schafer is a unique voice rising in today’s eco-spiritual music movement — a soft yet powerful reminder of who we are, where we come from, and what we are forgetting. Known as “A Voice of the Earth”, Ayla’s music is not simply performance — it is ceremony, invocation, remembrance. Her songs hold a frequency that feels ancient, honest, wild and profoundly human.

With the release of her new six-song album, Honour The Water, Ayla invites us into a sonic journey through the element that sustains every living being on this planet.

The journey into wellbeing

Ayla’s well-being path began in her early twenties — during what she describes as her first “Dark Night of the Soul”. Seeking healing, she followed an inner call that led her to Mexico, travelling for two years with horses, living close to the land, learning from indigenous peoples, ceremony, plant medicines, song circles and the quiet language of prayer.

“It woke something ancient in me,” she explains. “My healing wasn’t a concept. It was being in relationship with life itself — the land, spirit, the voice, the body, the elements.”

From there, Ayla’s life became a dedication — to caring for her inner world, her nervous system, her ancestral remembering, her creativity and her connection to the Earth as living teacher.

Today Ayla lives immersed in nature on Dartmoor — surrounded by moss, ancient stones, Bronze Age sites, wild rivers and rain. It is here that she healed from chronic fatigue. It is here the land breathed her back to life.

“The wild land is my lifeline. This is my kin. This is where I belong.”

Why Water

Over years of ceremony, Ayla witnessed a thread that was universal: the reverence for the elements. But it was water that called her deepest. Particularly when, in certain North American ceremonial traditions she sat in, the water was spoken to as a living being — honoured, prayed with, loved.

This was a turning point.

“Water is not a resource — she is intelligence,” Ayla shares. “She is spirit. She is life moving. When we listen, she teaches us surrender, softness, flow, grief, letting go, trust.”

As her connection deepened, water began arriving through her songs — almost on its own. Eventually, a body of work formed: the songs that now make this EP. Honour The Water is a poetic offering, a call to return to belonging, and a reminder that nature is not separate from us — we are part of her, shaped by her, dependent on her.

A key song on the new release was inspired by a message received from the River Dart — a powerful plea to humanity to wake up and remember.

“We think we are trying to save nature. But nature is trying to save us.”

Living the commitment

Ayla’s activism — as artist and human — is lived. She drinks from the spring that rises only 500 metres above her home. She knows exactly where her water comes from. She refuses chlorinated water where possible — not out of dogma, but out of relationship.

Through her campaign Music Plants Trees, every album and ticket sold plants a tree. Touring is done by train and boat wherever possible.

Because to honour the water is not philosophy. It is choice. Daily. Practical. Embodied.

A reminder we all needed

Where many speak of “well-being” as supplements, lists, planners and self-optimisation — Ayla’s work arrives as medicine from another dimension entirely.

Wellbeing as remembrance.

Wellbeing as belonging.

Wellbeing as reverence.

Her new album asks only one thing of us:

To remember our place within the living world — and to honour the water that sustains every breath and every heartbeat we will ever have.

Listen to Ayla Schafer – Honour The Water

DISCOVER: aylaschafer.co.uk