Who’s Stuck In YOUR Voice Box?
Do you know the person living inside your voice box? It’s probable that your speaking (and singing) voice seems overly obvious and mostly irrelevant to you, but after years of teaching, coaching, and performing myself I have realized that the ONE thing that should be totally and completely hassle free, the full function of your voice, is actually one of the more complicated emotional triggers and subsequent hindrances of our daily lives. If you think your voice isn’t great, if you think your voice just “is what it is”, or if you don’t even think about your voice at all, you’re not the exception. You’re actually in some very good company.
Most of us are not conscious or intentional about how we present our voice, and most of us don’t think about how we are heard. Concurrently we are overly self-conscious about what we sound like when we think our voice is the center of attention. There is constant yin and yang going on in our voice box and yet we are usually out of balance. It’s a confusing duality that takes a bit of attention, re-framing, and reconnecting to fully understand and control.
The voices of everyday people going about their everyday lives are frequently perpetuating the effects of cultural, familial, and societal messages we hear from birth. We in turn translate those messages and put them right back onto our kids, friends, family, coworkers, communities and the like. Now they are stuck in the same cycle and everyone is simultaneously finding it difficult to realize their full potential self in the world around them. And most of us contribute to this cycle unconsciously as a phenomenal cultural species with the power of voice afraid to use really use it.
There is an honest, relaxed, confident, authentic, satisfied, and happy person in everyone’s voice box. Yet many of us don’t even give this important aspect of ourselves a second of thought – always on auto pilot – always regurgitating the sounds of the world around us – never even understanding how it physically works or how we have lost touch with it somewhere (usually) in childhood.
If you never putting emphasis on how important this little box of yours is than you will never be able to fully access your true self. Do you know what you would sound like if you sang as loud and free as you could without any tension or inhibition? Because that’s YOU. That’s your voice. That person is in there – never having the opportunity to get out. Trapped by fear. But fear of what? Most of us don’t even know what we are afraid of.
In working with countless everyday people I have seen the same messages of vocal self doubt, insecurity, fear of been seen using their voice, fear of standing out because of their voice, and fear of simply being heard and not feeling as if that alone is valid. But I have also seen that when people learn what their voice can and should do and combine that with the freedom and space to find all the places that their voice can take them – places the human voice was BUILT to take them – I see transformation. I see relief. I see freedom of being truly heard by THEMSELVES. And then… without fail… every time… I see power. The power that is hidden inside that little tiny unnoticed, ignored, dismissed voice box. It get me emotional every time. Probably because it’s undeniable emotion being freed up and I am just caught in the crossfire. I love it.
So who is trapped in your voice box? Do you know that person? Have you met that person? Do you see him/her/they regularly? Or is it a mystery to be solved? Beware – it’s a strong relationship and when you finally admit to the world that you are crazy about the person trapped in your voice box you will never want to keep him/her/they hidden again.