Find Your Voice

The opening prepares the body to let go of effort. You extend your inhales and exhales without straining any muscle, then picture the air filling the space behind your cheekbones, the whole lung cavity and the gaps between your ribs. The idea is that the air does the work while your diaphragm expands in the most relaxed way.

Not loud at all. The guidance repeats that you don't need volume, only a vibration you can feel. You can hum gently behind the nose, or use a soft sigh for the throat, chest, diaphragm and lower belly. Later you can stop the sound completely and just feel the sensation.

First you send vibration downward in stages: behind the nose, the deepest part of the mouth, the sternum, the solar plexus and finally the lower belly. Then you reverse it, starting low and moving up through the solar plexus, sternum, vocal cords and nose. Finally you take one big inhale and vibrate all of these places at once, twice.

It's a line of air or energy rising from your lower belly up the centre of your body and out of your mouth. You're invited to wonder what it would feel like for your voice to resonate from that depth. You're also asked to adjust your posture so that column has room to flow.

You close your mouth and enter stillness, with no physical sound. You notice whether you can still feel the energetic vibration of your voice moving through you. Then you keep breathing in that way and simply listen for what your inner voice may want to say.

The closing words explain it: when your inner voice gets stuck, your physical voice is often stuck too. By paying attention to resonance in the body, through the way you breathe and through gentle sounding, you open space for the inner voice to come out more smoothly and cleanly.