Hélène Seiyu Codjo

Hélène Seiyu Codjo is a shakuhachi performer, composer and teacher who lives in The Netherlands. She holds a Dai Shihan (Grandmaster) licence from the Hijiri-Kai school, founded by Fukuda Teruhisa, who also gave her the name Seiyu 聖 優, meaning "Holy Kindness". She teaches in the Netherlands and online.

Her path to the instrument began in 1994–1995, when she borrowed a CD by Yamaguchi Goro. She was a classical flutist at the time and has written that she never imagined she would give up her silver flute. She began shakuhachi in 2002 with Daniel Seisoku Lifermann in Paris and has studied with Fukuda Teruhisa since 2006. She received the Jun Shihan licence in January 2013, the Shihan licence in 2015 and the Dai Shihan licence in Tokyo in 2023.

Before shakuhachi she worked as a professional flutist from 1987, playing classical and contemporary music and then world flutes. She was also an orchestra librarian in Paris, a musicologist, and an author of children's shows, poems and short stories.

Her music draws on the traditional zen repertoire as well as modern pieces and her own compositions. She has released the CDs African Memories (2020) and Reflection (2021), and she plays in Duo Satsuzen with the flutist Catherine Balmer-Magnin. She also creates meditations, including chakra meditations with shakuhachi, and writes a blog on practice, meditation and the instrument. In 2021 she created a Virtual Shakuhachi Dojo on Patreon.

She describes her aim as inspiring people in daily life and helping them connect to inner peace through deep breathing. Playing in nature is among the things that make her happy.