Voice Work Is Body Work
How your voice can reach what therapy can’t.
Unresolved trauma has a way of sticking around in the body.
It can be frustrating — and challenging to figure out how to get it out. There are a lot of things you can do to help release it. Physical activity. Cardio. Anything that gets your heart pumping and your breath moving. Yoga. I especially love hot yoga because of the sweating. Therapy.
But what if these things aren’t enough?
I’m not saying they’re not helpful. They’re extremely helpful. But what happens when you reach a point in your healing process and you can tell — it’s still there. And you don’t know how to get it out.
This Is Where Voice Work Comes In
I developed my methods over years of studying sound healing, experimenting with different chanting practices and breathwork, going back to my days as a student of Taoist martial arts — Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Taoist meditation. Learning about Buddhism. Yoga. All of these Eastern practices speak openly about the energy body, something we don’t really acknowledge in Western culture.
But energy is a thing. After all, we wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for energy. Calories are our units of energy. We burn them. We use them.
We can also experience stuck trauma as energy blocks within the body.
The Voice as Internal Massage
Here’s how the voice can help you release it.
As a massage therapist in the past, I would work on people’s bodies where they had muscular tension. When that tension becomes extreme and chronic, it starts to form knots in the muscle tissue. What a massage therapist does is go in with our fingers, our hands, sometimes our forearms, sometimes tools — and use rhythmic movements with pressure to break up the stuck tension.
When I was dealing with my own unresolved trauma, trying to figure out how sound healing could play into my healing process, I realized something:
The voice and the massage therapist’s hands have something in common.
Both use vibrating pressure to break up stuck energy.
Where No Therapist Can Reach
If energy blockages are real — which I believe they are — then energy can get stuck deep within the body. In spots where no therapist can reach.
No physical therapist. No psychological therapist.
Only you and your voice.
Your voice is a vibrating sound current. Picture it in your body. As you sing, there’s a vibrating current going both in and out.
When we sing on a sustained sound — an “ahh” — and pay close attention to what’s happening in our bodies, we can use our own awareness and intuition to notice where the stuck energy lives. A consistent twitch. A pain deep in the chest. Something in the digestive system that’s always bothering us.
That’s where we send the voice.
We use our imagination to direct the vibrations into those areas. Just like a massage therapist breaks up tension near the surface, we send the energy of our voice deep within — to break up what’s stuck in our bodies, our psychology, our soul.
Wherever we feel stuck and trapped, we can use our voice to reach it.
How We Release Toxins
This actually makes physiological sense.
The way we release toxins is through our skin via sweating, through our digestive organs, and through our breath.
Voice work is breath work. It’s body work. It’s energy work.
It’s all connected.
The Most Significant Healing Practice I’ve Found
I have had sessions where I’ve done this practice for almost two hours. It becomes a journey — very similar to what people describe in psychedelic experiences. You find something that has been blocking you for your whole life, and you spend significant time going in and breaking it up.
It’s effective. It’s impactful.
This is the most significant healing practice I have experienced on my own path.
After having a blocked voice for so many years, it was this practice that finally helped me get over the blocks that were keeping me from sharing my voice with the world.
That’s why I share it with you now.
You Can Do This On Your Own
You don’t need a harmonium. You don’t need me. You can sit in your room, sing long “ahhhs,” and be with yourself.
Pay attention to how you’re feeling. Pay attention to what comes up.
That’s ultimately all we’re doing: learning how to have a healing relationship with our voice. Learning what’s been blocking that relationship. And then using the very medium of the voice to heal the blocks.
It’s amazing.
Keep going — because the world needs your unique voice.
💙 Bella
✍️ Journal Prompt
Where in your body do you feel stuck? What would it feel like to finally let it go?
🎤 Work With Me
Private 1:1 voice healing sessions — find where the tension lives and release it together.
→ Book an intro session: https://calendly.com/hello-bellapayne/75
💙 Join the Community
The Healthy Voice Community — live sessions, video library, and a space to heal together.
→ https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page
✨ Unsilenced
Journaling helped me find words for things I couldn’t say. 52 weeks of prompts to reclaim your voice.
→ Get it - $22: https://rawveganbella.substack.com/p/unsilenced-a-year-of-journaling-back
📖 Singing Through the Shadows
A memoir in essays and songs. The stories behind the songs I wrote when I couldn’t speak.
→ Chapter 1 is FREE: www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com