I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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The door you thought was a wall πͺ
Published 16 days agoΒ β’Β 9 min read
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. It's been more like a door we've looked through for so long that we forgot it opens. There's the note we can't hit, the belief that we're too old, or too late, or too sensitive, or too much. They feel solid, right up until you get close enough to see the hinges.
So this last week is the gentle one. We stop pushing and start looking. And the article below is one of those doors, the big one about sensitivity, so let's start there.
This one is the companion to the article, where reading turns into doing. I walk you through why your voice sounds the way it does, and then take you into a short exercise to find the pitch your body actually wants. We release the jaw, open the throat, slide through your range, and narrow it down to the one or two notes that feel easy. Most people discover they've been sitting higher or lower than their body prefers this whole time. Do it somewhere private the first time. Your car counts. Then tell me in the comments what you found. β Watch on YouTubeβ
THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE
βοΈ Are You a Highly Sensitive Person? β Read on Substackβ
Meet Jennifer, who has a beautiful voice and only ever lets it out in the car. This one is about why sensitive people so often hide their voices, why that sensitivity is actually your biggest advantage as a singer, and a daily toning practice to build the nervous-system safety that lets it out. Plus how to become a researcher of your own fear instead of a victim of it. β Read on Substackβ
It's one of my favorite questions, and people almost always ask it with a little wince, like it's a dumb thing to wonder. It isn't. Nobody arrives with a voice fully intact. You assembled yours out of the voices that happened to be in the room, the same way you picked up your accent. This one is about the unlearning: how strain, pitch, and even the irritability you feel after a long conversation are all clues, why a voice climbs high or drops low as a quiet safety signal, and why your real voice is simply the one that doesn't cost you anything. β Read on Substackβ
Coming Next Week in Vocal Recess: The Other Side π
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πͺ THIS WEEK IN THE COMMUNITY: THE OTHER SIDE
This is our last week of Breaking Through, and it's the reflective one. All month we've been breaking through things, and now we turn around and look at what was really in the way the whole time. Because most of what stops us isn't a wall at all. It's a perception, a door we've looked through for so long that we forgot it was a door. So each day we look at one, and we pair a little reflection with a simple sound-healing tone that climbs the body from the ground all the way up to the crown of your head.
Day 1, The Doors of Perception. We start with the big idea, that a block is a perception and not a wall, and we ground ourselves with a low, rooted tone.
Day 2, The Time Door. We look at "I'm too old," and question where that deadline actually came from, with a loose, flowing tone.
Day 3, The Shame Door. We gently peel the sound of our voice apart from the old shame stuck to it, toning from our own center.
Day 4, The Belonging Door. We notice that the voices we love are loved for sounding like no one else, and we tone from the heart.
Day 5, The Perfection Door. We reframe a crack as information instead of a verdict, toning from the throat, honest over polished.
Day 6, The Stone Door. We look at "I can't change," and find the proof in our own voice that we already have.
Day 7, Your Door. You choose the one perception you're most ready to look through differently, and tone the most open sound your voice can make, like a door swinging open.
It lands somewhere quiet and true. The block was never really a wall. The thing between you and singing was a way of seeing, and that's the one thing you're always allowed to change. Come walk through with us.
Next week we begin a brand new Voice Lessons series, and we're singing Lullaby of Birdland. It's also our first step into September's theme, Breath Becomes Sound. As always, we start at the very beginning, with open throat technique. And this time the whole series is chasing one thing: a lyrical, legato line. Smooth and melodic, every note pouring into the next. Come start it with us.
SONGWRITING WORKSHOPS β NOW WITH MUSIC THEORY
Once a month, our Practitioner and Mastery members meet for a Songwriting Workshop. And from here on out, every one of them will fold in a little music theory.
Here's why. Most singers were never taught theory in a way that actually made sense, because theory is almost always taught through an instrument outside the body. That leaves a lot of singers lost, and a lot of instrumentalists frustrated trying to work with them. After twenty-three years of teaching it to hundreds and hundreds of people, I've learned how to make theory click for singers, and I'm building it into every workshop going forward.
If theory has ever intimidated you, don't worry. It comes in small, bite-sized doses, always tied to the lyric-writing we're already doing, and there's still a full lyric track for anyone who just wants to write the words. We already have our first one down, on key changes and modulation, and it's a regular monthly thing now. If that's been calling you, come sign up.
The most sensitive people in the room are almost always the most gifted, and almost always the most convinced they're the exception. They hear one wobble and decide they're not a singer. What they're actually hearing is how finely tuned they are. That same sensitivity is what makes their good notes land so hard.
π What I'm Reading / Listening To / Noticing
Reading: Dream Yoga by Andrew Holecek, a beginner's guide to lucid dreaming.
Listening: Matthew Halsall. Contemporary jazz, spacious and unhurried, the kind of thing that puts you in a philosophical mood and makes you want to create.
Noticing: Catch the phrase "you're too sensitive" this week, out loud or in your own head, and ask what it's really asking you to shut down.
Somewhere along the way, most of us got the message that we were too much of something. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too easily affected. You cried at the wrong moment, or a song wrecked you, or you felt the mood of a room before anyone said a word, and somebody told you to toughen up, to stop being so sensitive, to grow a thicker skin. So you learned to turn it down. To feel less, or at least to show less.
But here's what I've come to believe about that: The very sensitivity you were told to hide is the thing that makes a voice worth listening to. The singers who move us aren't the ones with the thickest skin. They're the ones who let us hear that they feel everything. Your sensitivity was never the flaw. It was the instrument.
So write about this. When did you first get the message that you were too sensitive, and who was it from? What did you do with that feeling? Did you shut it down, hide it, apologize for it? And here's the real question. What might change if you treated your sensitivity as the source of your voice instead of the thing getting in its way? What have you been calling a weakness that might actually be the most valuable thing you've got?
π This Week's Practice
Here's a small practice to feel this in your body, not just think about it.
Find a song, any song, that has ever made you cry or given you chills. Just one. Play it, and this time, instead of bracing against the feeling or trying to hold it together, let it move through you completely. Let your face do what it wants. Let your breath catch if it catches. Don't perform the feeling and don't fight it; just let yourself be as affected as you actually are.
Now, while that feeling is still moving in you, hum along softly with a few notes, or sigh out an easy open sound on top of it. Notice how different your voice feels when you're not guarding against the emotion. It's usually warmer. Freer. More yours. That's the whole thing. The sensitivity you were taught to hide is the same sensitivity that opens your voice, and every time you let yourself feel a piece of music instead of managing it, you're training the openness that singing asks for. You don't have to toughen up. You have to let it in.
Keep going β because the world needs your unique voice. ποΈ
β Bella Frequency Notes, From The Healthy Voice
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
Seven of the best play-based voice activities from the archive β 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 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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