Do you lower your voice to sound more confident?
She says I changed my voice for years and felt I had no choice but to speak in a tone of voice that made me sound more capable and stronger than I actually felt at the time.
Now my voice feels stuck in that altered state, it hurts and I’m at a loss for how to change it back to sounding and feeling natural, and who I really am.
Lowering my voice seemed to reassure them and at the time I felt they needed me to be that for them - to be strong and sound more masculine.
I say to her the singing voice has all the frequencies you need to help you return back to your natural self. Your voice in its natural alignment has a balance of low, mid and high frequencies and you felt you had to push away the high frequencies in order to be what they needed you to be.
I continue to help her understand that our spoken words serve as a reflection of the spectrum of light and dark within us, a delicate balance between masculine and feminine energies. I point out that, as a female, you pushed away your feminine energies and this has affected your whole being, not just your voice.
She says yes that’s true.
I say the exercises that I teach are designed to stretch your energy and your voice so that your voice includes all of the frequencies and not just the low and mids. You can think of it like a physiotherapy treatment that works with light and vibration to bring back balance and flow to the whole body.
It just turns out that as the speaking voice rebalances through very specific voice exercises a beautiful singing voice is also revealed in the process.
Lastly I emphasize to her the importance of having all the frequencies in her voice, particularly the high frequencies, as this establishes a tone of safety and trust not only for others but for herself as well.
I stress that the voice should function as a two-way street, serving the needs of both herself and those around her.
She says I don’t sing, I can’t sing, it scares me too much to be that vulnerable.
I say ‘okay then.’