I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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Before you open your mouth, your body has already said something.
Published about 1 month ago • 11 min read
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.
There is something I notice before anyone opens their mouth.
Before the first word, or the first note, I already know something about what I'm going to hear. I can see it in the way someone walks into the room. The shoulders that have traveled forward to guard the chest. The chin dropped toward the sternum. Or the opposite: the spine held very straight, deliberately, the way you hold something when you're afraid to let it go.
Both of those shapes are sentences. The body speaking in the only language available to it when the mouth wasn't allowed to, or when speaking led to consequences too severe to risk again.
This week I wrote about both of them. The shrinking and the stiffening. The collapse and the overcorrection. And what I keep coming back to is this: neither of those shapes is a flaw. They are intelligent responses to real conditions. The body did exactly what it was supposed to do. It protected you.
The question now is whether the conditions have changed enough that the body can begin to do something different.
Because here's what I know after 23 years of teaching: the voice lives in the body. Not just in the throat. In the breath. In the ribcage. In the upper back. In the jaw that has been slightly set since middle school. In the tongue that learned where the forbidden edges were. In the shoulders that decided, below the level of conscious choice, that this was the safer shape to be in.
And when the body begins to change the shape — slowly, in safety, with enough repetition that the nervous system starts to trust the new information — the voice changes too. Not because you found better technique. Because the instrument finally has room to do what it was always capable of.
That's what this week is about.
One more thing — I finally have a full page on my website that lists everything I offer in one place. If you've ever wanted to see the full picture — private coaching, the community, the courses, the archive, all of it — it's there now. No more hunting around. Just one link.
Somewhere in early adolescence I became conscious of it and started practicing. My memory had always been painfully sharp — every humiliation playing on a loop. So I started deliberately boxing memories away. By high school I was checking out of classrooms I experienced as propaganda, using dissociation to protect the territory of my own mind. The same in church: the moment a Sunday school teacher's tone shifted toward cruelty dressed as doctrine, I started singing a song in my head and left the room without moving.
I barely passed most of my classes. No regrets.
Because what I understand now that I didn't have language for then: I was making a rational choice in response to a genuine threat. My mind found the only exit available — and it used it. Spacing out saved me. Not just from boredom. From absorption.
The years I spent tuning out were not wasted. The dissociation was scaffolding. It was never supposed to be permanent. It was supposed to hold things in place long enough for me to become someone who didn't need it.
That is not a disorder. That is intelligence operating under difficult conditions.
And then there's what the body was doing the whole time the mind was leaving the room.
Before someone opens their mouth, I already know something about their voice from the way they walk in. The shoulders forward to guard the chest. The chin dropped. The spine curved into the shape of someone who has spent a long time trying to become smaller. Or the opposite: someone performing uprightness, holding themselves deliberately erect, jaw slightly set, brow not quite released.
Both are trauma responses. The hunched posture and the performed posture. The difference is that the performed one is less recognized because it looks like confidence. But from the inside, it doesn't rest. There's gripping, effort, and a voice that becomes controlled rather than free, and precise rather than warm.
The shape we're looking for is in the middle. Quieter than both. When you first find it, it often feels like you've disappeared, because the performing body has been so loud for so long that neutrality reads as absence.
That feeling is important information. It means you've found something real.
This week's podcast brings both pieces together, and adds the one that nobody talks about: the overcorrection.
Are you a shrinker or a stiffener? Or do you move between the two depending on who's in the room?
And what's the shape that doesn't require effort to maintain — the one that emerges not from performing safety, but from actually beginning to feel it?
🎧 The Shape You Learned to Hide In — And the One You Performed Instead → Listen here
The Breath Also Keeps the Score...
And the video this week is the somatic practice that connects everything.
When you're carrying something you don't want anyone to know — a secret, a shame, a truth about what happened to you — your body starts holding its breath. Automatically. Without your permission. And then when someone asks what's wrong, the voice won't come.
That isn't shyness. That's a trauma response. And it has a somatic fix.
The yawn. One of the body's most natural relaxation responses is used as an entry point back into free breath and free voice. Practice it in your safe alone moments, and your body will remember it in the moments you need it most.
🎬 Why Shame Makes You Hold Your Breath — And the Yawn That Can Free Your Voice → Watch on YouTube
The Lab published this week — the research underneath all of it. 🔬
You get a massage. You feel better for a few hours. You get a chiropractic adjustment. You feel better for a day. But something keeps coming back. The same tightness. The same areas that never quite release no matter what you do.
This explainer video tells you why. The true origin of chronic muscular pain is not structural — it is neurological. Wilhelm Reich's body armoring: the chronic bracing patterns that develop when the body has been under sustained threat. The muscles stay contracted because the nervous system learned that relaxation was unsafe. Until that learning is updated, no amount of physical therapy will produce lasting change.
Until that learning is updated. That's everything.
The Time Machine wrapped up this week — seven decades, seven grooves, all felt in the body. From the Charleston's long-short swing to hip-hop's laid-back boom-bap to the 2000s syncopation that tilts everything sideways. A whole rhythmic education through music you already love.
And coming next week in Vocal Recess: RUNNING LATE. ⏰
Meet Dot. She's twenty-one, she's a secretary on the thirty-fourth floor, and she has never once in her life been on time. It's 1940s Manhattan — and this week you're going to perform as her.
Dot has a problem every singer will recognize: when she's behind, she speeds up. And speeding up has never bought anybody a single second. Each day is one moment in Dot's day, and each moment quietly teaches one piece of musical time — the real vocabulary, with reference points you already know, wrapped inside a comedy monologue so nobody feels lectured.
Common time. The downbeat. Subdivision. The rest. 3/4. 6/8. And on Sunday — the fermata. The one symbol in all of music that means: take as long as you want.
Six days of running. One day of finally stopping. Come meet Dot. 🗂️
And Voice Lessons begins a new song Monday: SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW. 🌈
A new month. A new song. A perfect classic for the upcoming theme of August: Breaking Through.
This week we're learning Somewhere Over the Rainbow — and if you think you already know this song, wait until you try to sing it. That opening octave leap — some-WHERE — is one of the most dramatic register crossings in the American songbook. You cannot sing it without navigating the passaggio. The song teaches the technique.
Here's what the month looks like:
🎵 Week 1 — Open Throat: We meet the song, learn the melody in all three keys, and begin to identify where the voice wants to shift registers. No pressure yet — just noticing.
🎵 Week 2 — Breath Support & Phrasing: This song has some of the longest, most sustained phrases in the standard repertoire. We mark up the sheet music, find the breath points, and learn to commit to a phrase all the way to the end.
🎵 Week 3 — The Passaggio: The week the whole month has been building toward. We go straight at the register break — what it is, why it happens, and how to move through it so seamlessly that no one hears the crossing.
🎵 Week 4 — Diction & Expression: The song is not about a rainbow. It never was. Week 4 is about understanding what Dorothy is actually singing — and letting that understanding change everything about how the voice delivers it.
Voice Lessons videos drop every Monday inside The Healthy Voice Community. Sheet music and audio tracks in three keys are in the course space — try all three before committing to yours.
If you've been curious about what Voice Lessons looks like from the inside — this is a great month to begin.
The body knows exactly what it needs, and when we stop trying to push through and simply listen, something opens. Several students came into their sessions depleted, emotionally raw, or struggling — and instead of powering through technique, we pivoted to sound healing. Every single time, they left feeling energized, lighter, and more themselves. The voice is not just a muscle to be trained. It is a barometer of the whole person. And sometimes the most advanced thing you can do in a voice session is put down the agenda and let the sound do its work.
🎵 Listening: Vibraphone Jazz on Spotify. It feels like I'm living in a 1960's cocktail party.
📺 Watching: The Golden Girls. My go-to stress reliever.
THE JOURNAL PROMPT
This week's journal prompt and practice are brought to you by last week's Vocal Recess activity — The Time Machine. A taste of what we do inside the community every week.
You already read the room — you just don't always trust it. This week we practiced feeling a beat before counting it, letting the rhythm land in the body before the mind names it. You do the same thing with spaces: you walk in and you know — the air is heavy, everyone's performing being fine, something happened here — before a word is spoken. We call it "just a vibe" and say it a little apologetically, like it doesn't count. But it's the oldest instrument you own. So write about a time your body knew something about a room before your mind caught up: What did you feel, and where did you feel it? Did you trust it, or talk yourself out of it — and what happened either way? You knew the beat before you could count it. You knew the room before you could explain it.
THE PRACTICE
Read a room with your body, on purpose.
The next time you walk into a space — a café, an elevator, someone's kitchen, a waiting room — pause for one breath before you do anything else, and let your body tell you the tempo of the room. Not your thoughts. Your body. Is this a fast room or a slow one? Are your shoulders rising or dropping? Is your own breath speeding up or settling? Does the air feel like it wants you loud or quiet, big or small?
Don't fix anything, don't explain it, don't judge whether you're "right." Just notice — the way you learned to feel a beat this week before counting it. Name one word for what you picked up: rushed. heavy. warm. guarded. easy. That word is real information.
Do it once a day for a week. You're not learning a new skill — you're catching yourself already doing one, and starting to trust it. And here's the quiet part that matters for your voice: the room you feel as "small and quiet" is often the exact room where your voice shrinks without asking you first. Once you can feel that happening, you get to decide whether to go along with it.
Seven weeks of trauma-informed voice work — vocal technique, speech exercises, guided visualizations with original music, nervous system education, and journal prompts — all inspired by the same methods I use in my private coaching sessions.
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." — 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." — 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." — 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." — Stephanie, Zürich, Switzerland — Mastery member
Seven of the best play-based voice activities from the archive — available to everyone, no membership required.
A noir mystery. A Grimm-style fairy tale. A vintage romance novel. A punk week. A comedy week. A Shel Silverstein poetry week. A 1950s newsroom. Every one of them is secretly a technique lesson.
Your voice doesn't need more pressure. It needs permission.
The harmonium changed my practice. There's something about the drone — 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.
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.There's a moment in a lot of songs where the whole thing lifts. The key changes, and the same melody suddenly feels higher, brighter, or a little more urgent. And if you're not listening for the mechanics, you don't notice them at all. You just feel that something shifted. It's been a week of big energetic shifts. We lost a truly iconic voice. And from the flood of articles and videos and posts, it's obvious how many...
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.There's a moment in a lot of songs where the whole thing lifts. The key changes, and the same melody suddenly feels higher, brighter, or a little more urgent. And if you're not listening for the mechanics, you don't notice them at all. You just feel that something shifted. I've been thinking about that all month, because so many of you are in the middle of one. A key change in your own life. And from the inside, a key...
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist. We've spent all of August breaking through things. Higher notes. Older stories. The tight places in the throat, and the tighter ones in the mind. Now, during the upcoming last week of the month, we do something different. We turn around and look at what was actually in the way. And here's what I keep finding, after years of this work: Most of what stops us was never actually a true wall. It was only a perception....
