Do you lower your voice to sound more confident?

I was speaking on the phone with a potential student and she shared with me how her voice was hurting because for a time she was speaking lower than normal in order to feel more confident. She says ‘lowering my voice seems to reassure my colleagues and at the time I felt they needed me to be that for them - to be strong and sound more masculine.’

Many people have to navigate societal pressures that lead them to change or modify their speaking voice which often results in feelings of inadequacy, discomfort and even shame.

I say to her the singing voice has all the frequencies you need to help you return back to your natural self. Your voice in its natural alignment has a balance of low, mid and high frequencies and you felt you had to push away the high frequencies in order to be what they needed you to be.

I continue to help her understand that our spoken words serve as a reflection of the spectrum of light and dark within us, a delicate balance between masculine and feminine energies. I point out that, as a female, you pushed away your feminine energies and this has affected your whole being, not just your voice.

She says yes that’s true.

I say the exercises that I teach are designed to stretch your energy and your voice so that your voice includes all of the frequencies and not just the low and mids. You can think of it like a physiotherapy treatment that works with light and vibration to bring back balance and flow to the whole body.

It just turns out that as the speaking voice rebalances through very specific voice exercises a beautiful singing voice is also revealed in the process.

I emphasize to her the importance of having all the frequencies in her voice, particularly the high frequencies as we tend to lose these as we age which cause a host of other issues.

When the speaking voice is lowered un-naturally it can pull us down heavily into the body affecting the posture which in turn affects our hearing as well as affects the tone in our muscles.

I say your singing voice can teach your speaking voice to return to its true nature with all the frequencies, you can stand up straight again and speak in a balanced tone that is commanding but full of low, middle and high frequencies.

She says I don’t sing, I can’t sing, it scares me too much to be that vulnerable.

I say I understand.