From Composing to Coaching: How the Arts Sustain One Student’s Work

Layla Minoui has spent nearly two decades writing music for film and television. Over the course of her career, she has composed scores for more than 200 episodes of primetime programming, which has earned her recognition in the industry. But music, for Minoui, has never been about accolades. It hasn’t even been about the performance. “Rather,” she says, “it has always been a way of connection, like a window into myself.” That understanding deepened profoundly after a health crisis shifted not only her relationship to her work but her entire perspective on life.
 

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As a composer and pianist, music has never been about the performance. Rather, it has always been a way of connection, like a window into myself.
Layla Minoui, M.A. ’26, Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building

Minoui has been writing music since the age of eight. For years, it served as what she calls her “sanctuary” — a place to feel whatever needed to be felt without trying to change it, to meet herself with curiosity, and to process parts of herself that were asking to be seen and heard. But it was not until she faced cancer that she began to understand music’s role in her life from a therapeutic lens.

“Throughout my healing journey through cancer, I turned to music, movement, and the expressive arts as a way to process, connect, and make meaning,” she recalls. “These practices were profoundly therapeutic, and it naturally opened the door toward a new professional path.”

As a mother to a neurodivergent child, Minoui also witnessed firsthand the power of expressive arts in her son’s world. It supported his emotional regulation and gave him “a strong sense of identity, belonging, and connection.” That observation deepened her desire to study these modalities more formally and to explore how they might support others.

Minoui is now a second-year graduate student at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she recently transitioned from the M.A. in Expressive Arts Therapy to the M.A. in Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building, a program she describes as even more aligned with the work she hopes to do as an emerging expressive arts coach.
 

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Minoui considered many programs. CIIS, she says, was the only one that truly resonated with her purpose and intentions. What drew her in was the quality of the faculty and training, and especially the way the program values and honors the individuality of each student. “From my very first meeting with the head faculty, the process felt less like a traditional academic path and more like a collaborative journey of exploration and discovery,” she explains.

That collaborative spirit has defined her experience at CIIS. The program, she says, has helped her clarify her direction “in a way that feels both guided and deeply personal, allowing me to move toward this work with authenticity, clarity, and intention.”

When asked which classes have been most transformative, Minoui pauses. “Each class in the program has been monumental for me,” she says. But two stand out: Expressive Arts Approach II Introduction to Drama Therapy, taught by Armand Volkas, and Narrative Therapy, taught by Professor Shoshana Simons. Both, she says, have played a meaningful role in helping her understand the direction she wants to take in her future practice.

Instead of telling us what to do or how to think, [CIIS] guides us inward, inviting us to explore the material through our own lived experience. It’s something I’ve never experienced in any other program.
Layla Minoui, M.A. ’26, Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building

What she appreciates most about the faculty is that their demonstrations never feel textbook. “Instead of telling us what to do or how to think, they guide us inward, inviting us to explore the material through our own lived experience,” she says. “Something I’ve never experienced in any other program.”

The facilitation style, she notes, reflects the essence of expressive arts work itself: spacious, intuitive, and deeply relational. Faculty participate in the modalities alongside students, creating what Minoui describes as “a genuine reciprocity, where they learn from us as much as we learn from them.”

In addition to her studies, Minoui has created a project called Journey to Rebirth, an album and immersive live performance that brings together cinematic soundscapes, musical storytelling, spoken word, visual imagery, and movement. The project includes a booklet with reflections, embodied practices, and journal prompts as an added invitation for deeper self-reflection.
 

While the project is inspired by her personal journey, Minoui is careful to clarify that it is not simply her story. “Rather, it is designed to invite others into their own inner landscapes,” she explains, “with the intention to connect to the universal themes of love, loss, courage, and resilience that arise throughout our human experiences.”

The work is meant to create “a space where audiences can slow down, feel, reflect, and meet themselves from a place of curiosity,” she says. Her hope is that it serves as “a deeply human reminder of our capacity for presence, meaning, and connection, no matter where we are on our path.”

Journey to Rebirth is an outpouring of her ethos and passion, a way to use the expressive arts as a pathway for presence and connection, both individually and within community. “A place to meet ourselves and one another with curiosity,” she says.

She hopes to bring this work into spaces where it can support others through transitions, healing, and self-discovery. This means integrating both expressive arts and somatic approaches to help individuals navigate moments of uncertainty, reconnect with themselves, and move through internal blocks that stand between them and the life they desire. It’s a journey Minoui knows intimately, and is still walking herself.

For Minoui, the transition from composer to coach is not a departure from her life’s work but a deepening of it. Music has always been her haven. Now, at CIIS, she is learning to hold that space for others. “I am grateful to be continuing this journey at CIIS,” she says.