purpose

To provide compassionate, client-centered voice care that honors lived experiences and fosters a supportive space of co-creation, embodied sound, and vocal dignity.

Distressing experiences and complex stress, whether experienced at once or over a period of time, can result in trauma. These painful events can create emotional and physical overwhelm, including anxiety, depression, social disconnection, and chronic illness. The bio-psychosocial effects of intense stress may impact vocal function, creating communication difficulty, a fear of speaking, performance anxiety, or feeling silenced.

Directly or indirectly, singers can feel stigmatized for the ways in which their bodies have protected them against threatening experiences in the past: gasping for inhalation, difficulty exhaling consistently, articulation difficulty, mental and emotional fatigue/numbness, muscle constriction—especially the tongue, diaphragm, psoas, trapezius, strap and auxiliary breathing muscles. Often, these are habituated nervous system responses, created in moments of stress to armor the body against danger. Instead of treating these responses like “vocal faults,” we honor how the body has functioned as a fortress in times of distress. No one should ever feel ashamed for how their body has protected them.

Combining the trauma-informed principles of safety, trust, choices, collaboration, empowerment and access/equity, trauma-informed voice care recognizes the profound physiological, psychological, and social effects of trauma on the individual/voice. We also acknowledge how singers have been harmed by the collective trauma of systemic, institutional, and colonial oppression in voice and artistic communities. By cultivating present-moment orientation, self-inquiry, and an emphasis on observation rather than correction, we provide a collaborative approach to voice care that empowers individuals to more clearly identify their voice and its innate creative agency.*

Megan’s work was recently featured in a Q&A for the NATS publication, Intermezzo: An Introduction to trauma-informed voice care., and published in The Journal of Singing.

*Please note: Megan is not a licensed mental health care provider, and trauma-informed voice care is not a form of psychotherapy or a substitute for mental health care.