I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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Anger is shame's bodyguard.
Published 21 days agoΒ β’Β 7 min read
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.
Something went viral this week.
Why Shame Lives in Your Hips hit a nerve. A big one. Thousands of new people found their way here β through the psoas, through the root chakra, through the very specific ache of a body that has been holding fear for so long it forgot that's what it was doing.
Most of the responses were exactly what you'd expect when something real lands somewhere real. Recognition. Relief. A lot of I didn't know this had a name.
And then β the other kind.
The comment section of a shame video, it turns out, is a live psychology study. The throat release videos brought out one type of troll. The shame and hips video brought out something different entirely. Rage. Profanity. The specific flavor of anger that belongs to someone whose shame just got poked β and who has nowhere to put it but outward.
I recorded a podcast about it this week. Because I couldn't stop thinking about a phrase I heard recently that explained everything I was watching in those comments.
Anger is shame's bodyguard.
π§ Anger Is Shame's Bodyguard β Listen hereβ
The video that started it all:
The psoas contracts every time your body feels threatened. Every crossed boundary. Every moment of chronic stress in childhood. If that happened often enough, the psoas learns to hold that contracted position even when there's no threat present. And because the diaphragm connects directly to the psoas β if it's gripping, your breathing is affected. And if your breathing is affected, so is every note you try to sing.
This is root chakra work. This is voice work. They are the same thing.
π¬ Why Shame Lives in Your Hips β And How Your Voice Can Release It β Watch on YouTubeβ
Two essays on Substack this week β both about the same thing from different angles.
The first is about what happens when you teach yourself to leave your body to survive β and what it costs the voice when you do.
"The work isn't always technique. Sometimes it's learning to stay."
The second is about why laughter is not the opposite of serious healing. It is the completion of it.
Pennywise loses everything the moment the kids laugh at him. Not because they overpower him. Because they make him ridiculous. Stored trauma works the same way. The moment you can really laugh at it β you begin to neutralize it.
"Shadow work can get heavy. You don't want to stay in the underworld too long. The goal is to learn to face what's down there without flinching β and then laugh at it on the way back up."
The 30-Day Pitch Perfect Challenge moves into Week 3 β Find the Note.
Tuner work. A cappella singing. Breath and pitch connection. Applied precision in real conditions. We've trained the ear, befriended the scales β now we put it all to work in actual music. Inside The Healthy Voice Community
πΈ Songwriting Workshop β Tuesday May 19 at 11am PDT(Practitioner + Mastery) This month we write around friendship and community β using You've Got a Friend by James Taylor as our structural model. We'll break down what makes a chorus land emotionally, then build one from scratch β melody, lyric, and rhythm β together, in real time. No experience required. If you can hum, you can contribute.
π Masterclass 2 β Thursday May 21 at 4:30pm PDT(Mastery only) Same intimate hot-seat format as Masterclass 1 β different time zone. Up to four volunteers work live on pitch, expression, breath, or whatever is most present. Observers welcome. Drop your name in the Mastery space to hold a spot.
And next week's community series: THE VOICE CORRESPONDENT. π° Breaking news from inside the instrument. Seven days. Seven news desks. Weather. Sports. Celebrity gossip. Crime. Satire. Arts. Finance. All of it about the same thing: a voice trying to find its way home.
Breaking news from inside the instrument. Seven days. Seven news desks. One beat: your voice.
Each day a different reporter files their story. The weather desk tracks atmospheric conditions in the throat chakra. The sports desk covers a singer who attempted a high note without warming up β authorities responded. The celebrity gossip desk has obtained exclusive sources confirming your real voice is completely different from your performance voice. And allegedly much better.
The crime desk is investigating The Silencer β a serial vocal criminal whose known aliases include The Pusher, The Strangler, and in particularly severe cases, The Pre-Apologizer.
The satire desk reports that an area singer was told to just relax and somehow became more tense.
The arts desk reviews a full resonance event that took place in a bathroom in West Hollywood. The bathroom is understood to have excellent acoustics.
And the financial desk closes the week with a warning: singers who skip their warm-up are facing significant vocal debt. Long-term investors in daily practice, however, continue to outperform.
Every report comes with a real technique, a practice, and one instruction: read it out loud like a broadcaster. Because the reporting is the practice.
This is The Voice Correspondent. We'll see you Monday. π°
The healing path is hard. And this time of year adds its own particular weight β the end of the school year stirs something in almost everyone, whether you're a parent navigating the chaos or someone who left school decades ago but still carries the emotional patterns it installed. The anxiety, the performance pressure, the feeling of being evaluated and found wanting. It runs deep. And it runs quietly. What I keep watching, though β and what I am consistently humbled by β is that these people don't quit. They show up anyway. They are healing warriors. Every single one of them.
π Reading: What We Lost by Howdie Mickowski β sitting with this one slowly.
π§ Listening: Predictive History by Professor Jiang β the long patterns underneath the noise. Helps me think differently about what we're living through right now.
π Noticing: a lot of peace and love messaging is quietly powering over the hate. You won't see it in the mainstream narrative β you have to pay attention to the individuals in the collective. And when you do, what you find is that most people want love. They proactively fight for peace. That's the real story. It's not being told loudly enough.
βοΈ Journal Prompt
Shame is the thing you carry in secret. Anger is what you put in front of it so no one gets too close.
Think about a moment when you felt a flash of anger that was disproportionate to what happened. Not the surface reason β the thing underneath it. What was being protected? What was the shame that the anger was guarding?
You don't have to share this with anyone. Just write it. Name it. Because the thing you can name has already lost some of its power over you.
π This Week's Practice
Open your throat as if you're about to yawn β wide, easy, no effort. Let the jaw drop.
Now send sound downward. Not up into the head, not out into the room. Down. Into the chest, the belly, all the way to the abdomen.
Feel the vibration settle there β low, warm, present.
And as you hold that sound, silently repeat in your body: I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.
Not a thought. A sensation. Let the words vibrate through the tissue that has been gripping around the opposite belief for years.
That's root chakra work. That's voice work. They are the same thing.
Keep going β because the world needs your unique voice. ποΈ
π The Voice Liberation Method Is Helping Hundreds
Seven weeks of trauma-informed voice work β vocal technique, speech exercises, guided visualizations with original music, nervous system education, and journal prompts β all inspired by the same methods I use in my private coaching sessions.
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A single private session with me is $150 for 60 minutes. Seven sessions would cost you $1,050. The Voice Liberation Method gives you over 7 hours of that same work for $97. That's a savings of over $950.
This is the course I wish I'd had when I was a young classical singer with tension in my shoulders that nobody thought to ask about. Now it's yours.
"Voice Liberation is full of tools for my toolbox! It's working. I'm trying to get through the vocal exercises then go back and do the lessons! The content. Wow." β Belinda Williams, VLM student
"Once I let go of the fear of singing the song wrong in our last Courage Circle, was when my voice was able to be unleashed. This journey of reclaiming my voice has taught me so much of myself so far." β BellaShanti, Foundation member
"This was a fantastic session. I learned so much about how the vocal instrument works, and the emphasis on somatic awareness opened up a whole new approach for me. It's amazing how one can go for decades using the voice without ever really understanding it, and what a difference it makes when knowledge and experience are put together in a structured way. Also, it was just plain fun." β Steven Brent, Practitioner member
"Working with you has helped me to overcome my fear, follow my own inner voice and give it expression. The Community is very supportive and the content is extremely rich." β Stephanie, ZΓΌrich, Switzerland β Mastery member
The harmonium changed my practice. There's something about the drone β it drops you into your body faster than almost anything else I know. I've had both of mine for years and I wouldn't trade them.
Old Delhi Music is where I got them. Colorado-based, independently owned, exceptional quality.
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