Musician UMI’s shows, coming to Seattle, include yoga and deep breathing

When Tierra Umi Wilson stands in front of the crowd at her Dec. 10 shows at Showbox SoDo, she won’t be singing all the songs off her debut full-length album “Forest in the City.” 

Instead, Wilson, who performs under the name UMI, will lead eventgoers through a yoga flow and deep-breathing exercise set to her album, which came out in May. It’s a different type of tour that Wilson hopes will have a positive impact.

“I’m trying something new with this,” said Wilson, who grew up in the Seattle area. “There are fears that come with trying something new, but my dominant feelings are excitement and trust. I think music is just one aspect of what I want to offer to the world.”

Spirituality wasn’t always something Wilson embraced, but music was a fact of life growing up. Her mother, Akiko, is a pianist while her father, Reggie, plays the drums, and her aunt is the Seattle blues singer Lady A.

“I would always sing, I would make instruments out of cardboard with my dad and put on concerts for my sisters,” she said. “I would wake up every morning to music playing and it was the last thing I would hear in my house, was music. It was always around me. When I started, it was such a natural thing.”

Wilson’s journey to becoming a meditation maven wasn’t quite as easy and started just after she graduated from high school. Suddenly, she was feeling stress tugging at her in ways it never seemed to before.

“I should not be that anxious at this age,” she recalled thinking at the time. “I just had that feeling that this isn’t how I want to live my life. I had to find something to help me.”

Growing up, Wilson, 23, said she was exposed to meditation and yoga through her mother, who is Japanese. Her Japanese heritage is also where she gets her middle name.

“When I had reached that turning point in my life, I thought, ‘What have I done before?’ ” Wilson said. “I remember I found this random 10-minute meditation on YouTube and I started crying after it because I had never experienced that level of peace in my mind, and I didn’t know I was capable of that. And I just remember, I was like, ‘I don’t know what I just did but I am going to search for this feeling and integrate it into my life.’ “

Wilson has spent her time since then not only creating music — she released five EPs before her debut full-length album — but also seeking to master the elusive art of mindfulness.

“I’ve been learning, researching, reading, trying out a bunch of different meditations over the past four years to reach this place now where I always feel like I know what to reach toward when I’m feeling out of balance and I’m learning to teach other people these things,” she said. “People will always tell me my music is calming and they feel peace when they hear it. After creating this album, I realize it’s a part of me and a part of my life so of course it’s a part of my music. It’s inspired me to find this melding of music and mindfulness.”

At the Dec. 10 shows, that melding will take the form of an hourlong event that Wilson said she hopes will provide a unique, healing experience.

“The intention of the meditation tour is to share with the people practices that I practice on the daily that have really helped me to maintain and create peace of mind within myself,” Wilson said. “I’ll be teaching breathwork to my music. … It’s like rebooting your system.”

The event will close with a sound bath that will include some singing by Wilson. Earlier in the day, a VIP experience will include an acoustic set and question-and-answer session.

After listening to “Forest in the City,” it’s easy to see how spirituality and nature have permeated Wilson’s life since that inflection point four years ago. Tracks like “say im ur luv” have a dreamlike quality while still possessing enough momentum to avoid being sleepy, but it’s not just the production that reflects the peace and healing Wilson has sought.

Wilson wrote each of her album’s 15 tracks and while many are ruminations on love or love gone wrong, a standout track is “sorry,” where she sings: “I wanna go slower, slower/Wanna start over, over/I wanna go home but, home’s just/So out of reach, not even in my gravity.”

Later in the song, the chorus includes the line, “I’m sorry, I will start lovin’ myself enough, yeah.”

It seems like that is Wilson’s goal for everyone who listens to her music.