Voice Body Connection

April 16th has become an international celebration of the voice - happy World Voice Day! Coming to you from my farm with the baby lambies, Lola, and a song I wrote to wish you a great one.

Muchas abrazos to the Brazilian voice team who initiated this celebration in 1999

On this world voice day, here is my wish for each of us...

That we know how unique and special our voices are in the world, and how important it is that we share them...

That, if we are struggling with our voice physiologically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, we know that we are not alone, that there is hope, and also that we are valid as we are today...

That we celebrate the voices of people who are expressing themselves (in life-giving, non-harmful ways), and know that their expression, freedom, artistry, passion, and joy is a gift to us all...

That we join our voices together to build the world we want to live in and pass on to future generations.

If you have an invocation to add, share it below 💕

📽✂️ by

Gave this speech at the beginning of Release Your Voice class last week. I know how important it was the first time someone expressed this concept to me. I was racing around to 1000 places trying to outsource my vocal healing - I wanted someone to help me, to save me, to fix me. And of course the real healing started when I realized that no one was going to fix me - I was in charge of my own healing.

This is the last year I’ll be live-teaching the full curriculum of Release Your Voice. So I extended the sale prices through the end of the day today - hop in if you want the max personal attention from me. It’s not my job to help or heal you - but I think you can find vocal support and healing here. ❤️‍🩹

https://www.voicebodyconnection.com/releaseyourvoice

Editing by Ines Naranjo

Eclipse season is a time when stuff becomes abundantly clear, and I’ve realized this needs to be the last year I teach the full curriculum of my big Release Your Voice vocal health class. (This decision has to do with my energy & bandwidth related to my health.)

I wanted to explain, so you know that this is the last year you can get the max personal attention from me in this class. If you’ve been on the fence, I created a $29 one week trial to make it easy to try class out. You’re sincerely invited to join this wonderful cohort: https://www.voicebodyconnection.com/releaseyourvoice

💕, Elissa

The first day of Release Your Voice class is tomorrow! Here’s what we’ll cover:
* How having a vocal issue - whether it’s been going on for a year or a decade - makes a huge impact on our body and our psyche.
* How being in “I-need-to-fix-my-problem-as-quickly-as-possible” mode is keeping us in fight-or-flight, which puts us in a state where we’re unable to stop pushing through our vocal tension.
* How to move out of fight-or-flight, using the Body-Mind Centering concept of yielding. (It’s so simple, and yet so profound!)
* Attuning to our bodies on a cellular level, and using what we notice to gain a better understanding of how we’re feeling. That includes somatically and emotionally.
* The Unconscious Competence model to explain habit change, so that we can go about our healing with compassion instead of self-punishment.
Class enrolls only once a year. Join us 💗🗣💗 (Link in bio, obvs)

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Our voices are the pathway to liberation, and holy moly do we need some liberation right now. This is an excerpt from the Release Your Voice masterclass I led last week. The full Release Your Voice class starts this Wednesday and runs through June. It’s a deep dive into physiological, mental, emotional, and spiritual vocal healing. Join us.

Yesterday’s masterclass was the kick-off - Release Your Voice class is open for enrollment! 🎉 We start next Wednesday 2/18. This is one of the internet’s original long-form in-depth vocal health training courses, and I am so grateful to be bringing it back after a five-year hiatus. The class is long (18 weeks) because healing from muscle tension and vocal fatigue is a complex and circuitous journey. If you’ve felt alone on your path, please come join this training and this community where we can heal together! And if you remember some of these moments because you’ve taken the class before, or studied with me in any of these phases, please say hi in the comments! I would love to hear from you!

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My vocal practice is different depending on the day. But here’s a peek behind the scenes on a particular day last week at how I combined expressive exercises with my Hindustani-inspired singing practice, with my tension release exercises, with the song I’m working on. Shout outs: To Priya Darshini ( ) - my incredible special singing teacher who’s opened up a whole world for me. To Rodgers and Hart - you guys rocked, thank you for your contribution to the Great American songbook. And to Inés Naranja - thank you for your editing, I’m just loving compiling these videos with you.

Reclaiming my voice was a combination of doing the work to heal, while letting go of the outcome. And on a random day six years after my voice loss episode - when I had long ago stopped waking up obsessing about the state of my voice, I finally realized my stamina was back. In fact, maybe it was better than it had been before. Here’s a bit of the story of how I got my voice back. Editing by .

Here’s Part 2 of the story of How I Lost My Voice. If you have a similar story, please feel free to tell me anything you relate to or want to share. You are not alone. 💜

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Spent some time digging through old pictures and videos, because I finally feel ready to tell this story more fully. It’s been almost twenty years since I lost my voice, and my entire life and career changed.

Thank you so much for working with me to put this together. You are a dream.