About Voice & Sound Therapy
Our voices are the essence of us. They are intimate, immediate and powerful tools for expression and healing. Voice therapy offers a way of nurturing ourselves, restoring balance in our mind and body and sometimes working through something that is difficult in our lives. The element of voice is incorporated into the therapeutic sessions I hold in different ways.
Therapeutic Voicework: In these sessions I help you to work through things that are getting in the way of flow in your life - by helping you tune into your somatic (felt in the body) experience and by guiding you through exercises in breath, voice and movement. These sessions also incorporate mindful awareness practice and involve some reflection and dialogue.
Sound bath with Voice: A sound bath using mainly singing and overtone (polyphonic) singing. Sounds of particular tones and frequencies combined in certain ways have been shown to induce states of deep relaxation, sometimes a dream state, and even to reduce pain. Overtone singing has its roots in ancient traditions and is associated with transformation and healing.
During all sessions, we will be developing mindful awareness of our somatic experience, which can be a useful way of working if we want to try something new or if other therapies have not worked for us.
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Voice and sound therapy can improve relaxation ability, elevate mood, stimulate the mind and create deeper levels of interconnectedness and wellbeing.
I am currently looking for individuals who would like to receive free voice therapy treatments in return for helping me to complete my training. If you are interested you can find out more and get in touch here
Background: A Somatic & Holistic Approach to Healing
In the last decade we have discovered that our experience and what we know as our 'mind' are the result of a complex interrelationship between internal and external elements, physiological responses and mental activity. Habits, associations and reactive patterns become woven into our nervous system.
We can work with our somatic, bodily experience to create safety and soothing in the midst of challenge as well as new ways of responding to stress and difficulty. This way we set new and helpful habits in motion. We also develop an embodied sense of being that can provide us with a deep sense of fulfilment.
Voice Therapy utilises this approach and draws on the teachings of Mindfulness and the power of reflection.
Mindful Awareness
“Mindfulness is a pause -- the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.”
Tara Brach
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Voice Therapy utilises and builds a mindful awareness of our experience. As we work with our voices and inhabit our internal experience, we build a capacity to see and feel the processes that are driving us. Once we see them, we have some choice about how we respond. Using our voices, we can create new ways of responding and build a powerful internal support mechanism for ourselves.
Reflective Practise
Becoming aware of our experience gives us the opportunity to reflect on how we view what is happening and on what is working or not working in our lives.
The method of Voice Therapy that I practise involves guided reflection, where I help you to notice and reflect on your experience in the moment. Though the past is always with us, in this method we don't look back much, but instead use reflection to work with our moment to moment experience - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual - to give us clues about what we need and to respond in a way that's useful.
Working like this can be a powerful way of gaining insight, creating new patterns and building a sense of wellness and connection in body and mind.
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Sound therapy
Sound has the power to shift us from one mood state to another. Throughout history, we have used sound to process and respond to our emotional needs. Sound is experienced through the touch sense of vibration as well as through our auditory perception. Recently, we have discovered it can induce altered states of consciousness (for instance, when we're intensely relaxed or daydreaming) that are beneficial for our health and wellbeing. There is some evidence that overtone singing (in voice therapy) is a very effective way of achieving these states.
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