Tender Revolution Ep. 6: Liberate Your Authentic Voice

In this episode, Catherine shares her process for healing wounds around the voice, including her own, and how it relates to the creation of this podcast. She then leads a powerful personal experiment in connecting to your own authentic voice, and any resistance you may have around it. Your voice is the movement of energy through the instrument of your body, and healing our voice means allowing our soul to have an expression on the planet.

Transcript

Welcome to the Tender Revolution.

I'm Katherine Liggett.

I know many of you listeners are very creative people and so you're going to relate to what I'm about to say.

That is that you create something in a flurry of inspiration and then that inspiration is over and in the meantime you have changed.

You've grown,

Things have shifted within you and you find that you're just kind of blocked creatively because you just can't create in the same way that you did in that rush of inspiration you had before.

Well,

That's a little like something that happened to me with this podcast and I recorded the first four episodes and wrote the fifth one in basically the same really beautiful experience of inspiration and then I set them all up to be published and I did a whole lot of growing and changing and healing just in the span of a few weeks as is the nature of these times we're in of rapid transformation and I realized that there was a bit of hypocrisy and I say that in a gentle way toward myself in the way I was presenting this podcast as very vulnerable,

Very authentic and yet here's the catch.

I would painstakingly write every episode,

Edit my writing,

Painstakingly record it,

Painstakingly edit it and mix it and choose the music for it because I was reliving a wound that I've worked on my whole life of needing to be curated and packaged in a perfect little gem in order to be acceptable and lovable.

So here I am this time around not writing anything down.

I'm literally just talking into this microphone because this episode is about liberating the authentic voice and I'm not saying that there's no time and place for writing a beautiful episode and reading it instead of speaking spontaneously.

I love that format and I will use it in the future but I'm doing this episode differently,

Namely just talking in order to help my own healing because I know that I'm a channel.

In other words,

I know that when I let energy move through me,

Through my voice,

It helps people.

I've helped a whole lot of people in my career as a shadow work practitioner with issues around the voice and I personally have struggled greatly with my own voice.

In fact,

I had pretty much a phobia of singing in front of other people in any way that was like actually good singing and not pretend kind of playful talky singing.

I had this phobia of singing until honestly just a few months ago where I would at the same time desperately fantasize about singing beautifully in front of a group of adoring people and also be absolutely paralyzed when my very,

Very supportive husband or other family or friends would want me to sing in front of them or maybe overhear me singing and compliment me on my voice.

It was absolutely paralyzing and I would just kind of go crazy and sob whenever I knew anyone had heard me.

It was a deep,

Deep wound.

And of course,

What we heal in ourselves is what we have to offer in healing others.

And so in my work with clients on their voice,

One thing that I've discovered is that there is no wound to the voice without there also being a deep wound of self-worth.

And if you speak the language of chakras,

There's always a wounded second chakra along with the wounded fifth chakra because we have to believe we're worthy of being heard in order to express our authentic voice,

Whether that's singing,

Speaking our truth,

Or just expressing ourselves in the world,

Allowing ourselves to be seen and heard for who we are.

One of the reasons I believe that so many old souls,

Sensitives,

Empaths,

Whatever you'd like to call us,

Have deep wounds around the voice is that we've had many,

Many,

Many lifetimes of being persecuted for speaking our truth.

Whether that's a beheading politically or a witch being burned at the stake,

You just pick a time period and there was a way that people who were more advanced,

So to speak,

Who could see through the illusion of the times were punished often with their lives.

So of course,

When we're a soul that's incarnated in this lifetime,

Where we're actually free to speak,

At least nominally,

We're not going to usually be punished with our lives for that.

We still have this massive residual scar tissue around our throat,

Around our second chakra.

And it prevents us from expressing ourselves in the world freely and inspiring others the way that we know we're here to do.

So in this exploration today,

I'm super excited to guide you into your own authentic voice.

Before we get into it,

I'd like to share a story of a workshop that I took by the founder of the actual official authentic voice therapy modality.

Her name is Anin Utagard.

And I made quite an impact in this workshop because of the sounds that came out of me when we did our exercise.

What we did,

And this is what the exploration today is based loosely on,

What we did is we partnered with another person in this workshop.

I was the only person in the workshop who was not a licensed psychotherapist.

So basically,

We're all therapists of some kind or another.

And we sat across from our partners.

So each of us had one partner,

We sat across from her.

And we took turns where one person would be the sounder and the other person,

The silent witness.

And the invitation,

The whole exercise was that the silent witness would sit across from us and just listen to us for 15 whole minutes,

Make whatever sounds we were called to make,

Even if that was pure silence.

And that's it.

No guidance,

No specific structure,

Just whatever sound or lack of sound wanted to come out of the body.

And the sounds when I was the sounder that came out of me were loud and demonic and terrifying.

And although I don't think I can take full credit for this,

There was a workshop participant who asked to leave after my turn was over to make sounds.

There was one woman in the workshop who just sobbed the entire time when it was her turn to sound.

She was unbearably embarrassed and paralyzed about the prospect of making spontaneous sounds in front of someone else.

And this person actually had sung professionally in her life.

So there's something so profoundly deep about wounds to the voice.

And that's why I'm so excited to guide you through this brief exploration today with the intention that you'll discover something about yourself,

You'll discover perhaps some resistance to sounding your authentic voice that will guide you into further healing.

Or maybe you'll discover that it's easier for you than you might have thought or something totally different.

So whenever you're ready,

Find a space where you could at least hypothetically make some sound.

If that needs to be into a pillow or maybe you need to pause this and go into your car and drive to the end of a dead end street,

Which is something I've done before.

Whatever you need to do to feel at least that you could make some sound.

Do that now.

When you arrive here,

First close your eyes and find your breath.

Breathing deep into the abdomen,

Releasing your pelvic floor,

Just really softening through the base of your body as you breathe and allow with a softening more breath into your root.

With the exhales sinking into the surface you're on,

Either seated or lying down.

And just connect as you arrive here with what your experiences in your body at the prospect of just making spontaneous sounds.

An experiment to begin here with how might it be different for you if there were another person in front of you giving you their absolute unconditional attention as you made whatever sounds would come out of you.

Imagine that person in front of you,

Just anyone,

And see what your body does to react.

Is there a contraction,

Excitement?

What's there?

Now version 2.

0 of this exercise and where it gets really juicy is actually having a second person,

A witness there with you.

So by all means,

Please do so if you like,

Please invite that person in.

If not,

I assume most of you will be on your own.

So returning now to just being on your own and seeing if that relaxes your body,

Noticing what effect that has to know that there's not another person there to directly witness you right now.

And so when you're ready,

I invite you to use these next few moments to allow whatever sounds need to come out of you to come out.

I'm going to be silent now for about two minutes and allow you to experiment with that.

That's clear.

You you you Taking a deep breath now Shaking your body out a little bit just releasing whatever came up for you during that two minutes and really showering yourself with absolute love,

Compassion,

Forgiveness if that was really hard really holding yourself maybe placing your hands on your heart and just saying I'm here with you we're not forcing our voice to come out we're just experimenting here I invite you to try this with yourself again and again give yourself one minute,

Two minutes,

Five minutes you might play music that's evocative for you or just be in silence and just see what comes out because the key to healing our voice is allowing,

Allowing energy to move through us that is what our voice is,

Our voice is source energy it's our soul's energy moving through the instrument of our body and expressing itself in the world and the more we can allow that movement through us the more we will heal our voice our expression of our soul here on this planet I thank you so much for doing this experiment in authentic voice with me today and I wish you fun and fascination and realization with the work that you do on your own with your voice don't take it so seriously the voice can be hilarious thank you all so very much

Reviews

The one about healing your voice was amazing. Thank you. 🙏🏼 you really understand. I am going to listen to this more than once 💖✨

OMG! I LOVED this exercise! Thank you for shinning light and speaking truth to the challenges we face with the throat chakra and being vulnerable enough to tell it through your personal story. I appreciated this session so much. Can’t wait to try it with a partner!

Thank you so much for that Catherine - as ever. It came just at the right time that I needed to hear that!🙏🏾

Very interesting perspective and freeing exercise …

Such a timely talk for me. Now I understand the connection between my fear to let hear my voice and my Shadow. Thank you so much Catherine! 💙💙💙

What a powerful experience! Thank you ❤️🙏

Really appreciate the authenticity shared and the takeaway awareness. Will continue this exercise.
Thank you!

Genuine and refreshing, thank you! By the way, you ad lib more smoothly than most people talk when prepared 🙂

I was fortune enough to have my husband in the room and he agreed to participate. This is a life-changing exercise for me. Thank you.

Love this talk and the exercise at the end, thank you 🙏🏼❤️😀

💖brilliant~oh my gosh, I ranged from 😪😭🔇😶🔈🔉🔊~lots of thoughts, a realization, thank you 😏💖