'... open up your Voice to the possibilities
beyond judgment...'
Barbara Chabior
What is Holistic Voice Therapy?
Long before our ancestors developed verbal language skills, they sang to communicate emotions and build social connections. Our voices, with their own unique tone and timbre, reflect the state of our emotional lives and can open windows into the condition of our health and wellbeing. Holistic Voice Therapy works with the voice to help improve health and wellbeing. It also addresses personal expression, gently lifting the often heavy barriers that prevent us from giving full voice to our emotions. The practice aims to create a dynamic and transformative ‘wholing’ space in which suppressed feelings can be safely expressed and set free. The voice works here as the body and mind’s self-healing device.
Say Yes offers you a variety of approaches, which generally belong to two categories. The first, known as Passive Voice Therapy or PVT, provides clients with a treatment employing vocal tones and their infinitely subtle range of overtones. These are used by the practitioner to cultivate your relaxation and rebalance your body’s energy system. The Holistic Voice practitioner scans your body for energy imbalances before the treatment and once again after the intervention to assess the its effects.
A collection of Vocal Processing Techniques or VPTs form the second approach to Holistic Voice Therapy. The practitioner works closely with you to select the most beneficial package of VPTs, which variously use breath, voice, movement and visualisation to help process, express and redress energy imbalances.
The relationship of trust established between you and your practitioner adds an important and life-affirming dimension to Holistic Voice Therapy.
What do Holistic Voice Therapists do?
Resonance, Resistance and Release
The ‘Three Rs’ of Holistic Voice Therapy!
These powerful principles, which interweave across the course of therapy sessions, are central to the work undertaken by British Academy of Sound Therapy practitioners. Sound resonates with the internal energy system of our bodies to create a dynamic relationship. During therapy sessions, the body’s Resonance is stimulated and its energy system rebalanced using Himalayan bowls, the voice, crystal bowls and other sound sources. We address our energy imbalances or Resistance, using sound to identify expressive or emotional blockages – those familiar yet self-limiting ‘Holding Patterns’ of belief and behaviour – and deliver their Release. The therapeutic environment developed together by practitioner and client provides the safe space from which Release naturally flows as the ‘out breath’ that succeeds the ‘holding breath’ of Resistance.
How many sessions do I need and how long are they?
The answer is determined by your individual needs. Holistic Voice Therapy begins with a 90-minute session during which I will identify your body’s present patterns of Resistance, find their corresponding Resonance and begin the process of Release. Most people respond well to the intervention over the course of five further hour-long sessions, although additional treatments may be required to rebalance under- or overactive energies within your body.
How much does Holistic Voice Therapy cost?
Again, the answer depends on your needs. Say Yes offers three- or six-session therapy courses. The introductory three-session course costs from £70 for the first session with additional sessions offered at £60 per session; six weekly sessions cost £360 for the complete course or from £60 per session. It may be necessary, however, to charge more to reflect the time taken and distance covered by the therapist to reach clients. Please read about Say Yes offers and promotions!
GROUP INTEGRATION THROUGH DANCE
DRAMA
AND
MOVEMENT
IN THERAPY
SOUND
IS
COLOUR
IN
MOTION
LANGUAGE OF SOUND BEYOND WORDS
Here are examples of VPT techniques demonstrated by vocalist and improviser Will Hewett as he explores the language of sound beyond words. After singing for fifteen minutes each day for a year, Will describes - and sings - what he learned about commitment and the ability of a simple creative practice to open us to vibrancy and to a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us.
M U S I N G
