I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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What are you doing to heal? And which one could you go deeper on?
Published 25 days ago • 10 min read
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.
By the time I had been teaching piano for about thirteen years, I figured out something that changed everything: when I was open with my students about my own nerves at recital time, something shifted between us. That wall between teacher and student came down. And once it was down, they felt safe enough to tell me how scared they really were.
I kept going. I shared about struggling with music theory, about feeling like I wasn't moving fast enough, about the frustration of wanting to be better faster. And what those vulnerabilities created was a bond — one that made it possible for my students to make mistakes in front of me without fear of judgment.
So I want to do the same with you.
I've told my clients and my community many times that voice work is a lifelong path. It doesn't end. I don't claim to be a master — the only real requirement of being any kind of teacher is to be a few steps ahead and willing to share how you got there. That's all this is.
So here's something vulnerable: I want to talk about my own relationship with post-traumatic stress.
I've written about it before, but I've never shared what it's actually like for me right now, in this current moment. The truth is, after more than two decades of living with these symptoms, they are so minimal that I can go weeks forgetting it's even something I'm healing. And then a bad night comes. The flashbacks return, the anxiety follows, and sometimes a short stretch of darkness settles in — convincing me there's no way through it.
Until I remember that I have been through it before. Many times. And so I do what I need to do. Comfort food. A movie. A walk. A friend. And most importantly, I stop fighting it. Fighting panic attacks only makes them worse. What works for me now is treating the symptoms something like a difficult person at Thanksgiving dinner — a genuine pain in the ass, but one I know will leave eventually. I sit in their presence, I manage my reactions as wisely as I can, I go to sleep, and I wake up the next day.
I wrote a Substack article about everything I've done to manage these symptoms over the years.
✍️ What Has Actually Helped My PTSD Recovery → Read on Substack
There's a thread running through everything I'm sharing this week.
I've been telling you about my challenges — and what has actually helped me get through them. Post-traumatic stress is one. But the body has a way of expressing itself on multiple fronts at once, and mine has also been dealing with chronic sinus conditions since I was four years old.
Tonsillectomy. Ear tubes. A childhood ENT doctor who felt like a permanent fixture. And then a singing career where congestion became, at times, genuinely debilitating.
I've spent years figuring out what actually helps — not what sounds good in theory, but what has moved the needle for me personally. I hope it helps.
✍️ 9 Things That Have Actually Helped My Chronic Sinus Conditions → Read on Substack
And there's a podcast this week that I recorded on Saturday — inspired by watching the film Gaslight for the first time.
I didn't learn the term gaslighting until about five years ago. Before that I just called it what it was: lying and manipulation. But watching that film clarified something I've been thinking about for a long time — how to end relationships with difficult, manipulative people without giving them another opportunity to use your words against you.
I call it the quiet breakup.
This episode covers the human magnet syndrome — why certain people seem to magnetically attract difficult personalities, and what's actually at the root of it. Why talking doesn't work with this personality type. What my therapist taught me about being okay with not understanding why someone does what they do. The three-strikes rule. And the specific strategy I've used more than once: emotionally neutral, dignified, no door left open for manipulation.
Why the less you say to a difficult person, the better off you are.
The sequel to one of the most popular series we've ever run. More stand-up comedy bits. More timing work. More breath support hidden inside the punchlines. Because the pause before the joke lands has always been a breath support lesson in disguise — and nobody told you that until now.
Voice Lessons: a new song begins Monday. 🎵
June was The Water is Wide. Four weeks. Four techniques. Open Throat, Breath Support, Resonance, and Emotional Expression and Diction — all landing together in one song by the end of the month.
July begins with Fly Me to the Moon.
First lesson drops Monday. Same format, new song, the work deepening. This is how real vocal improvement happens — not from one-off exercises, but from returning to the same song week after week with something new each time. By the end of the month, you hear yourself change. Same song. Different instrument.
Open Throat. Breath Support. Resonance. And now — the human layer on top of everything. Expression and Diction working together in The Water is Wide.
Tuesday July 1 at 4:30pm PDT — for Practitioner and Mastery members.
45 minutes of guided sound healing using your own voice. Chakra toning, sustained vowels, visualization. Members describe feeling euphoric, completely relaxed, healed. It is one of the most beloved sessions in this community — and if you've been thinking about joining, this is a beautiful week to do it.
Sound Healing is the session that shows people what this community is actually capable of.
A monthly editorial magazine — deeper into the science, the philosophy, the voice. Issue 5 is about The Emotional Dial, the shadow, and the voice that was always yours. Four back issues included when you sign up.
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 secretly a technique lesson.
Your voice doesn't need more pressure. It needs permission.
I work with anywhere from six to nine clients a week, and I want to share something: I genuinely love this work. The range of people who come to me is wide — some are dealing with extreme vocal conditions where speaking is a real struggle, and others have full use of their voice but are so plagued by fear and self-consciousness that they can't bring themselves to use it authentically.
Others are simply carrying too much anxiety and they've decided the voice is the tool they want to use to find their way through. All of them learn the same techniques — we just organize them differently to suit what each person actually needs. Watching people grow into greater comfort with who they are, session by session, is one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. I feel genuinely grateful for every hour of it.
🎵 Listening: Mozart — string quartets and concertos mostly. I find Mozart relaxing
📕 Reading: Krivda: The Godtrix Against the Matrix by Enna Reitort. What can I say? This is basically every amazing conspiracy involving the Catholic Church, Linguistics, and the Billionaire World Domination all tucked into one giant paperback. I love it.
📺 Watching: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Gaslight (1944) Making my way through all the classics, the weirder the better.
✍️ Journal Prompt
Make a list of everything you are currently doing to heal. Don't edit it — just write it all down. The therapy, the walks, the diet changes, the breathwork, the yoga, the journaling, the community, the music. Everything that belongs on that list.
Now go through it twice.
First pass: circle the ones that have been the most effective. The practices that have actually moved something.
Second pass: put a star next to the ones you enjoy the most. The ones that don't feel like work. The ones you'd do even if nobody told you they were good for you.
Look at where the circles and stars overlap. That intersection is important information.
Now ask yourself: which one could you go deeper on for the next six weeks? Not wider — deeper. More consistent. More intentional. More time.
Pick one. Write about what going deeper might look like. What it would require. What it might give you in return.
$97.00
Voice Liberation Method Course
Your voice isn't broken. It's blocked.
Blocked by tension. By fear. By things that happened to you that you may not even... Read more
Choose one practice — just one — that you know works for you. Something from your list, or something you've been meaning to start. It doesn't have to be big. It has to be doable every single day.
Build a small ritual around it. Same time, same place if you can. Give it a beginning and an end so your nervous system knows it's happening on purpose.
Commit to it every day this week. Not as an experiment — as a decision. Then commit again next week. Same practice. Same ritual. Don't switch.
After several weeks of this, something will shift. Not dramatically, not all at once — but something will move that wasn't moving before. Consistent practice does what occasional practice never can. The body responds to repetition. The voice responds to repetition. The nervous system responds to repetition.
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
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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