I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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The body has been holding this longer than you know.
Published about 2 months ago • 7 min read
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.
This month is called My Body, My Voice.
And this week, the body showed up.
Not metaphorically. Not as a concept in an article. Actually, physically, in sessions — cracking open, releasing, crying. The kind of crying that isn't about sadness. It's about relief. Something that has been held in the tissue for years finally finding a way out.
I cried a little too.
Because that's what this month is — a reckoning with the body as the voice's home. The psoas, the deepest muscle in the body, quietly holding an old earthquake in the foundation of every breath. The face, storing decades of swallowed words in fascia and muscle. The nervous system firing up the speed dial the moment it senses threat — rushing the voice, tightening the throat, stealing the dignity out of every sentence.
This week I wrote about all of it. And I watched it move through the community in real time — first through science and anatomy, then through comedy.
Yes, comedy.
TAP TAP... IS THIS VOICE ON? was this week's community series — stand-up bits written to perform out loud, each one about the very specific experience of having a voice and being terrified to use it. And something happened when people started performing them. The laughter was the release. The pause before the punchline turned out to be a breath support lesson. The absurdity of it cracked something open that the serious work sometimes can't reach.
Laughter. Tears. A lazy hum on the floor with your hand on your belly.
All of it is the body finally exhaling.
And next week — we come home. ROMANCING THE VOICE starts Monday. Seven chapters. A love story between you and the voice you've been estranged from. The meeting. The estrangement. The slow burn. The reunion.
But first — here's everything from this week.
There is a muscle most people have never heard of. It is the deepest muscle in the body, the only one connecting your spine to your legs — and it has a direct neurological conversation with the part of your nervous system that decides, in any given moment, whether you are safe.
When it has been bracing for too long, the voice has nowhere to stand. The breath has no floor.
And then there's the face. Someone left a comment on one of my videos saying the exercises were keeping her face looking young. I've been thinking about it ever since — because it's true, and because almost no one knows why.
You can't moisturize your way out of a clenched jaw.
The face doesn't just express emotion. It stores it. And singing — real singing — is the only thing that works on it from the inside out.
✍️ I've Been Doing Facial Exercises for Years. They're Called Singing. → Read on Substack
When the nervous system is under threat — real or remembered — the voice does one of two things. It gets louder and sharper. Or it disappears entirely. Most people spend years swinging between those two extremes, wondering why neither one feels like them.
This episode is about the third option.
🎧 Dignity Is a Skill — And Your Voice Is How You Practice It → Listen here
And then there's the speed. The way the voice accelerates under pressure — rushing through sentences before anyone can interrupt, before you can be dismissed, before the moment closes. This video is about why that happens and how to stop it.
🎬 Why You Talk Too Fast When You're Nervous (And How to Stop) → Watch on YouTube
And when you're ready to actually work — here's a free complete vocal workout: breath support, resonance, and speech exercises in one session. This is what community members get every week. Consider it a gift.
This week I want to share something Laura M. wrote after her first session with me:
"Two Wednesdays ago, I broke down during my vocal lessons. I couldn't find my voice. It was terrifying. I cried and stumbled through 'Don't Know Why' by Norah Jones, ironically thinking — I don't know why this is so panic inducing for me. Later that evening, I had my first Trauma Informed Voice Healing session with Bella. My voice has been sincerely liberated since. Liberated in a way that says: hey. I can do this. Even if it's not perfect." — Laura M.
That's one session. One evening. If you've been waiting for the right moment — this is it.
Seven days, seven chapters, written in the style of a vintage romance novel. Each one about the very real, very human experience of having a voice you've been estranged from — and finding your way back.
Here's the premise I keep coming back to: we talk about losing our voices like they disappeared. Like something was taken. But most of the time, we left first. Slowly. One small silencing at a time.
The voice waited. It always does.
💌 Monday — The First Glance
💌 Tuesday — The Estrangement
💌 Wednesday — The Love Letter
💌 Thursday — The Slow Burn
💌 Friday — The Confession
💌 Saturday — The Dance
💌 Sunday — The Reunion
Each chapter comes with a somatic technique note and a prompt — because this is still voice work, just dressed in something a little more dramatic than usual.
A reminder: community prices go up May 1 for new members. Everyone already inside keeps their rate. Forever. Foundation $25 / Practitioner $67 / Mastery $147. If you've been waiting — this is the window.
Something cracked open this week. Multiple clients moved to tears — not from sadness exactly, but from the particular release that happens when a voice that has been held for a long time finally gets to move. Cathartic isn't even quite the right word. It's more like relief. Like the body finally exhaling something it forgot it was holding. I'll be honest — I cried a little too. Being on the other end of that kind of opening is one of the greatest privileges of this work. I don't take it lightly. Not for a single session.
📚 What I'm Reading / Listening To / Noticing
📖 Reading: My Big TOEby Thomas Campbell — a physicist's unified theory of everything. Consciousness, reality, and the nature of existence. Exactly as wild as it sounds, and exactly as rigorous.
🎵 Listening: Spiritual Jazz playlist — the kind of music that doesn't resolve when you expect it to. It sits in the question a little longer. I find that deeply comforting right now.
👀 Noticing: the space in between states. The moment just before a shift — when one thing has ended and the next hasn't arrived yet. I keep finding that's where the most honest voices live. Not in the certainty on either side. In the pause.
✍️ Journal Prompt
Think about a moment when something shifted — when one version of your life ended and another hadn't quite begun yet. That in-between place. The pause before the next thing.
What did your voice do there? Did it go quiet? Did it rush to fill the silence? Did something true try to come through that you weren't ready for?
The most honest voices I know live in that space. Not in the certainty on either side. In the pause.
What's yours been trying to say?
🌀 This Week's Practice
Before you speak today — in any conversation, any room, any moment where your voice is about to be required — stop.
Take one breath in. Let it fill the belly first, then the chest. Don't rush the exhale.
And in that pause — that half second before sound — notice what's there. Not what you're about to say. What's underneath it. The real thing, before the edited version takes over.
Now speak from there.
You don't have to change what you were going to say. Just notice what it feels like to let the body arrive before the voice does. That pause is not empty. That's where the honest sound lives.
The old threat is over. Your voice is allowed to be a river again.
See you next week. 🎙️
— Bella Frequency Notes, From The Healthy Voice
🎓 The Voice Liberation Method Is Helping Hundreds
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.
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.
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