Giving Voice to The Body’s Tales: How the Voice Can Help Express, Shape, and Transform Our Wounds. Voice Movement Therapy

The voice is our primary way of communicating; it is how we meet people, how we identify ourselves and are identified, how we share who we are. Sited in the space between head and body, the voice brings the inner world to the outside, conveying words, thoughts, emotions, and psychic states. We put the stories of who we are into voice, and yet the voice also tells its own story, so there’s not only the words which we say, there’s also that which is conveyed unconsciously through the sound of the voice. We respond to and are responded to by that which lies beneath words, the secrets of the self which are carried in the voice. The energies of events which impacted us negatively get stuck in the body; through the use of Voice Movement Therapy, feelings and emotions such as grief, fears, all that does not fit into words and that which is unbearable to contain, can be expressed and thus transformed, enabling the reclaiming of the many aspects of ourselves. Bringing the voice into the body and allowing the expression of that which is hidden, frozen, or silenced means to loosen the grip of old stories and give form to them so that new relationships may be forged with the old tales. The rhythms of the body, the beat of the heart, the flow of blood, and the rates of inspiration become music which allows the voice to sound freely and the body to compose itself anew as it sings itself into songs of transformation.