Have you ever noticed how your throat and voice change in relation to your emotions? How your throat might constrict and your pitch might tighten when you’re feeling distressed?
Or how you’re able to experience a full belly laugh from seemingly deeper, beyond your vocal chords when you’re having an amazing time?
Our voice (or, “vocal behaviour” as described by speech therapists and technicians who specialize in the psychology of voice) is actually a powerful indicator of our emotions.
I’ve mentioned previously how emotions are held in our body, and it’s not only our limbs or our heart centres that hold emotions. It’s also our vocal chords.
That’s why it can support your self-healing work to incorporate vocalization into your practice. Vocalization in a concentrative form is also great for reducing the stress response in your brain over time.
There are different ways of using vocalization to support your wellbeing, and today’s post will look at some options.
I’ll share a few ideas for you to experiment with, so you can find what works best for you to help increase your confidence and sense of calm.
Ways of playing with your voice
There are a few options to start to work with your voice, regardless of whether you:
- Consider yourself an expert communicator, or struggle with sharing your ideas
- Are more expressive, or hold back
- Feel confident, or diffident
Connecting to your voice is a powerful way to release emotional blockages and help you feel more confident and aligned within yourself.
Pick an option and give it a go! If you don’t love it, use another. I encourage you to experiment with each one to find what works best for you.
Here are some options to consider, and variations so you can find the right fit for your context.
- Singing
- Humming
- Chanting
- Mantras
- Reading out loud
Singing: You do not need to have a “good” voice
Maybe you “have the voice of an angel”. Maybe you have the voice of an ogre. Doesn’t matter!
It’s not about how it sounds, it’s about how it feels when you sing. It is not a performance. Not for anyone else, not for yourself. It’s a felt experience.
- Next time you’re in the car (be safe please), or in the shower, sing along to your favourite song, and really notice how you feel when you sing.
- Notice how it feels in your throat, then notice how it feels in your chest.
- Also take a moment to notice if any emotions are arising.
Humming: A good precursor to chanting
Humming is a great option if you haven’t tried chanting before and if singing isn’t really your thing. Here’s what I suggest for humming.
- When you’re in the shower, on a noisy subway, or in an elevator by yourself are all great times to try this out.
- Start with a small “Hmmmmmm” to yourself. Not so bad, right?
- Now do it again, but make it go for a little longer.
- As you continue to vibrate your hums, start to add a bit more oomph to them.
Just like with the singing, it’s not about how it sounds, it’s all about how it feels. Where are you feeling your humming? Does it vibrate in your chest? Your ears? What do you feel?
Chanting: Even if you’re not a monk
Chanting…commonly conjures up images of somber monks, super spiritual types, or otherwise religious/spiritual settings that don’t really feel relatable to daily life.
On the contrary, and you’re ready to taking the humming a step further.
Chanting involves holding a tone like when you were humming, except that you’re saying a word instead of just saying “hmmmm”.
Chanting is also great if singing isn’t really your thing, because it’s like singing but without following a varied melody (unless you’re into Gregorian chant, in which case that’s a combination of chant and song).
- To chant, choose a word or sound (“Om” pronounced “Oh-m” is a common one).
- Then vocalize the word, like when you were humming, taking a few seconds to say the word. Where you may normally say a word in less than one second, start with stretching your vocalization of the word over three seconds. And then five seconds.
- Gradually say the word with more energy, almost with a droning quality.
- Just like with the singing option, this is not a performance. Focus on how it feels to chant. Where do you feel it? In your chest? In your throat? Your mouth? What about your skull?
Mantras: In the language of your choice
The word mantra in Sanskrit means “mind vehicle/transport”. A mantra is simply a word or phrase that is repeated during meditation to focus the mind and support deep meditation.
A mantra can be in any language, and although a mantra can also be repeated silently, for the purposes of this post, I recommend vocalizing your chosen mantra.
- You can find mantra from the Vedic tradition online, or you can create your own (e.g. “I surrender.”, “I accept love.”, “I am loved”, etc.). Just make sure it’s positive! You’re repeating it over and over, so make sure you’re repeating something healthy to yourself.
- As you vocalize your chosen mantra, focus again on how it feels to speak. What arises for you as you repeat your mantra? Make sure to say it out loud (no whispering!).
Reading out loud: Not just for kindergarten
Reading out loud is a common practice in a number of traditions, and is another option for vocalization empowerment.
While it may seem to be the most accessible, least obtrusive option for vocalization, it’s also potentially the most difficult.
Reading can be distracting for the purposes of vocal empowerment because it’s difficult to focus only on what you’re feeling when you’re reading.
However, it’s still an option, so perhaps just keep in mind you may want to come back and actually read whatever your material is after your vocalization exercise.
- Choosing a dictionary, poetry or other literature may be a good option for this.
- Remember, while you’re doing the exercise, keep your attention on how it feels to read out the words.
How long to use your vocalization
Regardless of which option(s) you play with, start out with your vocalization for one minute (set a timer!). That might seem really short…but if you’re not used to using vocalization in this way, it might actually feel really long!
Gradually increase the length of time to suit your preferences, but I would suggest a minimum length of 3 minutes to bring you into that calm state. Depends how you’re incorporating vocalization into your day, though.
Incorporating vocalization into your day
1. As a calming mechanism
If you want to use this tool as part of your day to increase your calm and focus, I suggest choosing times that give you at least 3 minutes (but longer is better). These 3 minutes should be ongoing, and done each day for the best effects on relieving stress response in your brain.
Here are some ideas:
- In the shower
- On transit (most transit has enough ambient volume that you can do the humming option and no one will be any the wiser)
- In the car
2. As its own practice
You can also start up a daily practice of vocalizing, starting with a couple minutes and working your way up to 20 minutes.
That might sound really long, but just wait until you notice how you feel after!
3. Into a new or existing meditation practice
Vocalization counts as a form of concentrative meditation.
My recommendation is generally to include both concentrative and contemplative exercises into your regular routine in order to garner the full range of benefits of meditation.
It helps to remember that concentrative meditation has the significant benefit of noticing when your mind moves to a new thought.
If you have a new or existing practice, you can use vocalization as the concentrative component of your meditation.
- Existing practice: you can just replace your current concentrative practice with the vocalization for awhile and see how that goes.
- Starting a new meditation practice: I suggest an even split of half your time for concentrative (vocalization) and half for contemplative.
Playing with chanting and other audible mechanisms can be incredibly liberating, and it’s so good for reducing unnecessary stress response in your brain. Find a way that works for you and let me know how it goes!