This workshop is full. Please join our next event on March 20!

The symptoms of traumatic stress—emotional dysregulation, numbness, hyper-vigilance, self-limiting beliefs, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, disassociation—live in the body and manifest physically. This can impact vocal function and inhibit the ability to communicate, create, and connect authentically. The paradox for voice professionals is that we are not psychotherapists, yet we work with people who hold trauma in their bodies. We frequently witness these symptoms in singers during lessons, clinical sessions, or performances. Recognizing the significant impact of trauma on the voice and the need for resiliency practices in the voice studio or clinic, Trauma-informed voice care provides a collaborative, embodied approach to voice pedagogy. We prioritize the singer’s lived experience, honor the voice professional’s scope of practice, and empower individuals to more clearly identify their vocal agency.

This workshop will:

• Provide an overview of how traumatic stress impacts the body and voice, and how the concept of co-regulation, or co-harmony, can help us to create more compassionate singing spaces

• Contextualize voice pedagogy within the trauma-informed concepts of safety, trust, choice, empowerment, boundaries, and equity/accessibility

• Explore tools for nervous system support—including breathwork, movement, embodied sound, and meditation—that can be incorporated into lessons, clinical sessions, and performances.

Trauma-informed voice care holds space for messy, multiple realities about our bodies and our voices—I experience anxiety, and my voice is powerful; I have a vocal injury, and I sing from wholeness. We honor these complex truths and place each student/client at the center of their own individual experience. We affirm vocal dignity with the mantra: I deserve to take up physical and acoustic space.