Using sound healing through voice vibration is a powerful part of the work I do with clients, it is the central premise of the retreats I run, and I even incorporate it in to my corporate workshops (not that I call it sound healing there – although I do usually let people know it’s something I do.)

Sounding is practical, physical and powerful … the trouble is – so few people know what it actually is.

So, what the actual * is sounding? How does it work? What does it do? Is it too weird, hippy and woo for you?

I’ll answer the last question first: “No.”  Like I said up above sounding is physical and practical, it is also powerfully direct – in fact, I love a sceptic scientist type receiving it – because the laws of physics and your physicality mean that there is no way you won’t feel the effects of sound.  Is there, or more accurately can there be, a spiritual, or ‘woo’, element to it?  Yes, of course, and if you are vaguely interested in expanding your connection to your energetic and ‘higher’ self then sounding is a really simple and effective way to open those doors.  Quite frankly, I’ve travelled out of myself receiving sounding and I have clients who have connected to parts of themselves, their past, or their ancestry that they didn’t know existed…. But we’re now in the realm of the weird and woo, and those elements are not for this article!

Sound healing is having a massive growth, to the extent that when I mention I use sounding as a part of my process to help you find your more confident voice, more and more people say things like “So is that the thing with gongs? Or sound bowls?”

This is great – it means that there is a wider awareness of sound healing and sound vibration work as a therapy and method of meditation.  Sounding through instruments (gongs, bowls, drums, didgeridoo, percussion etc) is more widely known.  Sadly, most people are completely unaware that they are, in fact, carrying around with them the most powerful and direct instrument for sound healing, everywhere they go.  This is ……. YOUR VOICE.

Using sound as a healing modality is an ancient art – it is debated that some of the chambers in the Egyptian temples and pyramids were sounding chambers for healing – it wouldn’t surprise me, I first ran sounding groups when I was invited to, on someone else’s retreat, in Egypt in 2011.  We sounded in several chambers and temples there, not only were the acoustics amazing, but the energy astounding.

Using sound to help you find your more confident voice … that’s the added bonus, the magic element, the ‘oh ****’ moment of the deep work that I do.  If you want to really let go of the patterns, thoughts and feelings that hold you back from public speaking, sharing your ideas, being recognised, seen and heard in front of an audience, in team meetings or in front of the team you lead, or a camera – you need to know what those patterns are and where they are held in your body and brain.

What is sounding?
Sounding is allowing the vibration of sound (however it is created) to resonate through your body with the objective of recognising mental, physical and emotional restrictions to receiving the sound, and then releasing some of those restrictions.  Sound is matter, it is created by vibration and has waves that travel.  Your body is matter, matter has the ability to effect matter – like when an opera singer holds a note that matches the resonant frequency of a crystal glass; there is only so much of that frequency the shape of that glass is made to hold – as it matches, so the glass first, starts to vibrate and then, shatters.

How does sounding work?  Your body’s cells are like that crystal glass. Just like muscles have muscle memory (if you can ride a bike, you can ride a bike, even if it’s been 10years your body will remember how) so, your cells have emotion memory – it’s what method actors rely on, putting themselves back in to the feeling of a time, to recreate the emotions.   Cells are matter and they hold the vibration of your emotion memory, when you put yourself in a situation that feels similar to your brain and body, so your body and brain respond, without you thinking about it, mentally, physically and emotionally.

Voice is Vibration – Vibration Effects Matter. Your Cells Are Matter!

Voice IS vibration – sound is made through your vocal chords as they vibrate together, slowly for lower tones, faster for the higher ones.  When you feel the sound waves that match the frequency of the energy in your cells, in or of the emotion state that your body recognises, so the vibration of the sound creates a change in the vibration of the cells – and much like the crystal glass, they start to vibrate, then have to release.

Both water and bone are both great conductors of sound, this is how you can physically feel sound travelling through your body – try it – sound a deep, resonant hum and you will feel vibration either in your chest, lips, jaw, or nasal cavity.

What does sounding do?  It’s highly likely you already know and understand this process, if a piece of music that you don’t relate to anything or anyone, has ever moved you to tears (or in my case when I was younger, house or techno music making me frustrated and angry.)  You like the music you like because it has an effect on you.  Perhaps there are people’s voices that make you feel calm, those which compel you to listen, ones that get you energised, others that you move away from – part of this is the subconscious physiological response to both their sound and energy, or vibration.

Sounding is often used as a healing or meditation tool, I use it in this way myself.  However, it is also one of the most powerful tools I use for helping people find their confident voice.

If you don’t like speaking, it’s highly likely that it’s because in some way speaking in front of others doesn’t feel ‘safe’.  What happens, is you then subconsciously restrict the physical vibration of your voice from resonating in certain parts of your body that hold the cell-memory of the reasons why it doesn’t feel safe.  Sounding is a way to connect to yourself on a deeper level and recognise those areas, by physically feeling where you don’t like letting the sound travel to.  Once you have an awareness of this, it’s then easier to know where we need to do the work, to open up your body and therefore let you use the whole of your voice.

Doing this work may also release the emotional holdings you have around speaking, it’s like re-visiting a house that as a child you thought was haunted and scary – when you go back, a part of you still doesn’t want to go there, but you can see it from a different perspective and eventually realise, it’s just a house that people stopped loving.

Start loving your voice again.

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