Subconscious Voice Repatterning℠
SUBCONSCIOUS VOICE REPATTERNING℠ WAS DEVELOPED BY ANITA STRYKER AND IS A KEY ELEMENT OF BODY-LED SINGING℠
When we work with the quality and tone of our voice, we are working with our subconscious mind. This is why the relatively simple practice of vocal freedom may take years to master. It is also why a teaching style that directly speaks to your subconscious mind will accelerate your progress. This is the basic concept underlying “Subconscious Voice Re-patterning”.
The article below explains why the voice is so connected to your subconscious and how SVR works.
How is your voice is linked to your subconscious mind?
There are many factors that link the voice to your unconscious mind including it’s physiology, how vocal-patterns develop from infancy and the brain-science of music and language.
Let’s start with the physiology of the voice.
You may have noticed that their are several involuntary reflexes in the voice linked to your emotion and stress-level. This includes the obvious crying and laughing but also more subtle responses such as tightening or being more relaxed. Most people don’t have direct “control” over these responses, but do recognize that they are responsible for creating them. Subtle thoughts and triggers processed in our unconscious evoke a response in our emotions, breath and vocal chords. While most of us are not aware of these subtle thoughts, we are aware of the resulting mood shifts and tension in our bodies or even our voices. This is good news! It matters less what the triggers are and more that we can train our response to them. Once your awareness builds you can reprogram your responses through regulating the way you speak/communicate and breathe. It also works the other way around. Many people have chronic subconscious patterns or stored emotions that evoke vocal tension. We use SVR to work with the subconscious mind and create new, more beneficial thought patterns that support a released voice.
How the Anatomy of your Voice is Connected to your Unconscious Mind
One of the mechanisms through which stress influences our breath and voice is through the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve regulates your nervous system to a state of trust, or fight or flight depending on your level of stress. The vagus nerve runs parallel to the spinal cord and has bundles of nerves in 3 locations all of which are directly involved in singing/speaking. Those 3 place are the pelvic diaphragm, the diaphragm and the throat. When we are in a place of trust our voices and breath will naturally be more relaxed and open.
Furthermore, there are only a handful of muscles in the human body that are both under our voluntary and involuntary control and two of those muscles are directly used for singing – the diaphragm and the pharynx. This means that these muscles are essentially a bridge between our conscious and unconscious control.
Now, let’s look at how the voice develops in a child.
A young child’s brain is programmed to zone into the sound of his/her parent’s voice. This is because children are in the process of programming the way they communicate. Often times, we pick up vocal-use patterns from our care takers.
One interesting thing that I learned from teaching children’s music is that a child’s musical ability is based more on having a parent who is joyful and enthusiastic about singing with their child, than about whether that parent is a “good” singer.
This points to something I believe, which is that the ability to sing in-tune is linked to confidence and vocal technique (which is basically speaking and singing in an uninhibited way), than it is about having “good” or “bad” ears. Again, our unconscious beliefs around singing influence what comes out, and how our voice develops from infancy.
Music and the Brain
There are countless articles written on “music and the brain” and “language and the brain”. It is one of those things that makes Homo Sapiens uniquely intelligent. It is a well known fact that many parts of our brain light up with music, language, rhythm and singing. Music and language have such a powerful effect on the brain that it is not uncommon for stroke victims to use music therapy to stimulate and recover brain function in specialized areas of their brains.
Singing specifically asks us to bridge the gap between language and music, helping us to connect the left and right hemispheres of our brain. This promotes healing and improves brain function. With greater inter-communication and access to more parts of your brain, you have greater mastery over your unconscious mind, and visa versa.
As we work with our voices, not just what we say but how we say it, I believe we are working with and affecting parts of our unconscious mind.
So, how does SVR work?
There is a language for communicating with the unconscious mind, that is different from that used to communicate with your conscious mind. When a helpful suggestion makes it past the barriers of your conscious awareness, it will go deep into your unconscious mind where it’s effects are more lasting – sometimes permanent. There are methods and techniques to communicating with the unconscious that SVR utilizes in each and every voice lesson. You most likely will not directly notice the methods as they are occurring. However, you will notice feeling relaxed, joyful, and at ease. You will notice that you make progress unusually fast.
The truth is, we are always sending unconscious messages to each other. The trick is knowing just how to make each message specifically crafted for your benefit, so that you achieve your goals with singing as fast as possible and enjoy every step along the way.
For clients interested in reprogramming their speaking voices, SVR also directly addresses your speaking patterns, and gives you tools to control stress related-to or manifesting-in your communication patterns. Rather than discuss the story underlying patterns of vocal tension, we simply work directly with the tension itself, the body, breath and voice.
Conclusion
To summarize, the voice bridges the gap between your conscious and unconscious mind. For this reason, as you reprogram your voice, you also have the opportunity to gain personal freedom related to how you respond to and express your emotions. The inverse is also true. As you gain personal freedom and mastery, your voice will improve. Both processes reinforce and support the other. The key is releasing stored emotions of fear and shame related to communication.
This sort of “real learning” as it’s taking place, challenges us. It’s not necessarily pleasant. A tell-tail sign that you are expanding your mind, is the experience of effortful learning or frustration, followed by a sense of greater ease, and increased capacity for happiness over time.
When you know this, you can out-smart the resistance that keeps you in your known patterns. Instead you get to create a life of expansion, learning and awakening. The benefits go far and beyond singing. Each day that you practice singing or speaking becomes its own reward. Each challenge is an opportunity to better yourself – to become happier and healthier in every sense.
If you wish to read more about Subconscious Voice Repatterning and how I relate to it on a more personal level, please read about How I Re-programmed My Own Voice and What I Discovered.
Take the next step.
I want to help you find your next step to your authentic, beautiful, Free Voice.