Yes! 

Ha! It’s for both! I truly believe it's everyone's birthright to sing, to speak, and to use their voices in all the ways they can imagine. So, I think everyone is a speaker and a singer!

That being said, if you’re looking specifically for singing training, you probably won’t find what you expect here. But you might find what you need! I don’t teach singing the way it was taught to me, I teach vocal health and an expressive approach to singing.

If you're a professional or amateur singer who found this because you're dealing with muscle tension dysphonia, the offerings designed for you are: Release Your Voice class, How To Warm Up, and the Vibrant Voice Technique course. 

If you're a speaker looking to develop more confidence for the camera or the stage, Authentic Voice Academy is the best place resource. (Or my earlier, more bite-sized version of that training called How To Have Presence.)

We include both singing and speaking in our Voice Body Connection Community sessions.

Physiology was my way into understanding my own voice loss episode. Losing my voice was confusing and devastating, and some of my earliest healing came from developing an understanding of vocal mechanics. It helped me wrap my head around what might have happened to me. I find that this is true for many folks I’ve worked with: understanding our voice on the physical plane is a really helpful first step. 

Over the course of time, though, I came to understand that there was a really strong mental component to my vocal challenges. I started to recognize my expectations of who I should be, how I should sound, and what my life should look like. 

I also came to understand that there was a really strong emotional component to my vocal challenges. I processed a bunch of anger (why did no one teach me this?!?!!), a bunch of grief, and I developed an ongoing practice of recognizing and accepting my emotions. 

Now, I especially understand that there’s an enormous spiritual component to voice work. For those of us familiar with the chakra system, you know that the throat chakra (visshudha) governs creativity, expression, communication, living our truth, connection with others. Voice is so connected to our identity because it’s the way to share our identity with others. My favorite music that I write is medicine for myself that I share with others. And really everything that I’m offering here is the medicine that I created for myself to heal my voice, that I’m so happy to share with you. 

Welcome to the land of physiology-science-geekiness meets somatic-and-nervous-system-exploration meets presence-and-confidence-work meets spiritual-hippie-witch-woo.

Haha, yes! Expect some woo. 😇

The element that will bring our throat chakra (our creativity, expression, communication) out of balance is lies. These can be overt lies, like saying the sky is chartreuse. Or these can be subtle lies, like pretending that you’re happy when you don’t feel happy, or pretending everything is chill when everything is not chill. 

For me, one of the layers that really helped unearth the root of my disconnection from my voice was realizing that I often wasn’t sharing my truth. 

So I got curious about how to access my truth and share it genuinely. I learned that I can send my truth out through sound, which is part of the reason that free sounding, making weird noises, shouting, etc. is a big part of Voice Body Connection practices. 

I learned that I could feel more aligned by sharing my authentic truth all day with the people I love, the people I work with, and my community and neighbors. (To the best of my ability, of course!)

As a performer, I realized I could even bring more of my full self to other peoples’ words and other peoples’ songs. 

Based on all the ways I’ve found to express myself authentically, I developed a framework called the Voice Body Connection Process™. That process is core to everything we do here, because it allows us to start with our physical sensations, follow that through to our thoughts, our emotions, and our desires, and be fully present with what’s going on so we can express ourselves genuinely, and communicate authentically with others. 

Since we’re talking to other people all day every day anyway, this is the real practice that allows us to “clear the pipes” of our vocal channel.

I’m teaching a free class on June 30th, where I’ll walk you through the Voice Body Connection Process™, and how to use it in your vocal healing and your life! We’ll meet at 12:30pm Eastern for one hour. If you can’t make it live, sign up anyway and I’ll send you the recording afterwards. I’m so excited to cap off the month of new website vibes with this offering! 💜