Your Voice: A Sacred Portal to Nervous System Healing (and why regulation isn’t about being Zen 24/7)
Our voices are one of the most underrated, yet badass tools for nervous system regulation.
Seriously—it’s not just for ordering coffee or explaining (again) why “just relax” or “take a deep breath” is not a viable regulating strategy. Your voice is a direct line to relative safety, connection, healing, and embodied transformation. But let’s get one thing straight: being regulated does not mean being calm all the time. Feeling big feelings—rage, grief, joy—isn’t a sign of dysregulation. We are feeling creatures, not malfunctioning robots and all emotions and sensations have wisdom!
Clarifying Nervous System Regulation
Dysregulation aka living in survival mode (states of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, shutdown) often happens when we get stuck in survival responses after a traumatic experience(s) and our body continues to fiercely protect us from the threat that is in the past . And then sometimes, if we’ve been socialized as a woman—or as a person of color, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent— the threat can actually be never ending, because let’s be real: this world is practically designed to keep us feeling UNSAFE and dysregulated because of systemic oppression, biases, injustice, inequity, uneven distribution of resources, power dynamics, etc..
Chronic stress, hypervigilance, exhaustion, numbness, or feeling frozen? Not a personal failing—just the impact of systems that benefit from our depletion and submission. And yet, mainstream wellness often sells regulation as an individual project, as if bio-hacks and “self-care” alone can undo centuries of oppression and violence. But what if true healing isn’t about “calming down”—what if it’s about reclaiming the right to stand up for ourselves, to get angry, take up space, to say NO, to make noise and ROAR, to feel pleasure, to express ourselves without fear for our survival, to co-regulate in ways that our ancestors have always known? What if a deep felt sense of safety isn’t just in stillness and calm, but also in movement, expression, and permission to be as you are in your full aliveness and authenticity?
A truly regulated nervous system is flexible—it can become activated when needed and return to center, to our home in homeostasis (or, in polyvagal terms, the ventral vagal state). Regulation is about capacity to BE WITH what we’re feeling authentically—the ability to move through the ups and downs of life, experiencing stress, fear, rage, grief, and joy without getting overwhelmed and stuck in chronic survival stress.
Our protective survival states manifest in two primary ways:
1.Hyperarousal: aka the activation of the stress response when we feel UNSAFE aka fight-or-flight mode, where we may feel anxious, panicky, irritated, angry, rage, fear, body ready to move, muscles bracing, energised, fast heartbeat, and hyper-vigilant, looking for threats to confront or escape.
2.Hypoarousal: if we cannot escape or confront the stressor/ threat we move into our second “escape plan” and experience a kind of frozen outside, energy moving inside, numbing, feeling immobilised, slower heartbeat, and on the extreme end whats known as dorsal shutdown, or collapsing and contracting, conservation of energy, and moving into into hopelessness, shame, despair, and depression.
A well-regulated nervous system isn’t always calm; it’s adaptable. It knows how to shift between these states without getting overwhlemed or stuck for too long and return to feeling relative safety and connection to Self, others and the world.
The Role of Your Voice in This Process
According to polyvagal theory, your voice plays a significant role in nervous system regulation. As humans, we’ve been singing, storytelling, and gathering in community for thousands of years—using our voices not just to communicate but to co-regulate and foster belonging. The vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem through the heart, lungs, and digestive system, connects to the muscles of the face, throat, and vocal cords, influencing our ability to express emotion through tone, rhythm, and prosody.
When we speak, hum, chant, or sing, we activate the vagus nerve, sending powerful signals of safety to the nervous system. This helps the body unfreeze, release tension, and shift out of survival mode into a state of connection and restoration. The tone, vibration, and rhythm of our voice act like a built-in tuning fork, allowing us to regulate not just ourselves but also those around us. Feeling heard and resonating with others strengthens resilience, reminding us that we are not alone—because safety and healing have always been found in connection
However, many of us have been conditioned to suppress our voices: “Keep it down.” “Stop crying.”“Don’t be so dramatic.”… If you’ve ever been told your emotions were too much, you likely learned to silence yourself. Suppressing our voice also suppresses our ability to regulate. Especially for women or other oppressed and marginalized individuals, societal conditioning has often stripped us of the freedom to express, to take up space, to roar when needed- because often times doing this meant being in danger, so its a genius adaptation that helps us survive, and at the same time if we are living our whole lives like this on auto-pilot this self-suppressionhas been shown by science to create chronic nervous sytem dusregualtion that creates inflammation and dis-ease ( its no wonder that women and other marginalised groups are way more prone to chronic health conditions like auto-immune and certain cancers).
The truth is expressing ourselves authentically is our birthright, look at any toddler or wild animal—try telling them not to express! Imagine what happens when we spend decades suppressing all that energy. It doesn’t just disappear; eventually it can turn into chronic tension, inflammation, and dis-ease. Consider reading Dr.Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal for a more in depth look on this. I have seen this time and time again with my clients and in my own life where years of unexpressed anger, internalised shame and silencing myself eventually showsd up as a cancer diagnosis. I dont wish this on anyone that’s why I am so passionate about this work, the more we are aware of how our biology works, what we need to feel safer and more connected, and learning the language of our own unique body, takes us off a life of living on auto-pilot and survival and creates more choice, agency and empowerment to live a life of thriving, aliveness, ease, pleasure, belonging , a life lived on purpose.
Reclaiming Your Voice: A Radical Act of Healing
Intentionally using your voice is one of the most powerful ways to complete the stress response cycle. When your system perceives a threat (real or “ghosts from the past” stored in your body), it generates energy—your life force energy—to adapt, move, protect, or flee. If that energy doesn’t get discharged, it becomes trapped. This is why movement and vocalization are crucial for healing.
Here are some ways to explore:
1.Sing Your Heart Out :Maybe choose a song that matches your current mood. Feeling angry? Try blasting some punk rock. Feeling tender? Perhaps sing a lullaby to yourself. Singing invites emotions to move through, helping you complete the stress cycle. Tears, laughter, shaking, even stomping—it’s all welcome.
2.Hum or Sigh :Humming creates gentle vibrations that tend to soothe the nervous system, while sighing releases tension. Maybe try a long, audible sigh (ahhhhh) and notice if anything shifts.
3.Roar Like a Lion 🦁 Yes, really. Growl. Roar. Hiss. This often helps discharge built-up survival stress and sends the message: “The danger is over. I am safe in this moment.”
4.Speak Your Truth 💬 Maybe practice saying: 1. “No.” (To what drains you.) 2. “Yes!” (To what excites or scares you in a good way.) 3. “I don’t know.” (To give yourself time to feel.)
5.Play With Sounds 🎭 Make weird noises. Chant. Laugh loudly. Playfulness tends to be deeply healing—your nervous system may just love it.
Explore and see what works for you and your beautifully unique nervous ssytem!
The Bigger Picture: Voice, Safety, and Joy
Using your voice isn’t just about surviving; it’s about thriving and being FULLY ALIVE. The state where we feel most embodied, relatively safe, and connected to self and others is called ventral vagal in Polyvagal Theory. It isn’t merely a state of calm; it’s a state of aliveness, our home in homeostasis. When we are feeling safe enough ( and not trying to survive) we get to experience sensations, emotions, and feelings that feel ok, neutral, or even pleasure!
When we’re in this state, we’re open, curious, connected, and expressive. We can feel awe, playfulness, flow, fun, pleasure, excitement, awe, and creativity, We can dance between stress activation and rest with ease, handling life’s intensity without shutting down or burning out – this is what it means to have capacity to BE WITH our emotions, sensations, and the stresses of life, aka the window of capacity but more on that later. Your voice can serves as a bridge to this state.
Why This Matters Now
In a world of hustle culture, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism that often pressures many of us to shrink, quiet down, to stay still or stay in constant “doing” and achieving mode, reclaiming your voice is a radical act of self-care and resistance.
As humans we all have inherent needs of safety, belonging and dignity, and we will consciously or unconsciously adapt to get those needs met – we are wired for survival and to us as human mammals not having those needs met feels life threatening! SO it makes sense we may have learned to contort ourselves into tight little boxes, and at the same time this is not a sustainable way of living. Empowered voice lets us have boundaries, make requests for things we need and desire, speak up about what matters to us, and say the things our heart desires.
It’s a way of affirming:
🔥 “I will not silence myself to make others comfortable.”
🔥 “I will not abandon my body’s wisdom.”
🔥 “I am worthy, not because of what I achieve, but simply because I exist.”
So, if you’re ready, what would it be like to take a moment today to use your voice? Hum. Sigh. Sing. Roar when you’re mad. Speak your truth out loud. Notice what shifts in your body.
Your voice isn’t just sound—it’s a portal to healing and embodied transformation, I know it can feel scary, I’ve been there. And at the same time it may be the most liberating thing to experience. What would it be like to let your nervous system sing back to you. You might be surprised by what it has to say. 🎤✨
Window of Capacity
The “window of capacity” is your individual sacred space where you are connected to your Self, embodied, present, have some of that ventral vagal relative safety onboard to FEEL all your feels (yes even the icky ones). I prefer the word capacity over tolerance because the word tolerate feels a little disempowering to me.
Incorporating the concept of the “Window of Capacity” can deepen our understanding of nervous system regulation and the pivotal role our voice plays in this process. Originally called the ” Window of Tolerance, a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel, usually refers to the optimal zone of arousal where we can function most effectively. Within this window, we can manage stress, process information, and respond to situations in a balanced way. However, when we step outside this window, meaning we do not have enough capacity to BE WITH the emotion, sensation, of survival stress activation, we may start to get overwhelemd and experience either hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
When we are within our Window of Capacity, our sympathetic nervous system (which helps us respond to stress) and parasympathetic nervous system (which helps us rest and recover) work together harmoniously. This balance allows us to stay present, embodied, regulated, engaged, remembering our values, and staying connected to our compassionate heart and common humanity, even when we feel unsafe (unless this is a life threat then obviously we need to respond appropriately and defend ourselves or get ourselves to safety).
By intentionally using our voice through singing, humming, sighing, roaring, or authentically speaking up, we stimulate the vagus nerve, promoting a return to our Window, it lets our nervous ssytem know that right now, in this moment we are safe enough and there’s no tigers coming to eat us (often these tigers are in our heads in the form of busy, racing, anxious thoughts and using sound and vibration is also a good way to interrupt this cycle). This practice enhances our capacity to navigate the dance of life’s challenges by cultivating resilience and adaptability, reinforcing the profound connection between vocal expression and nervous system regulation.
Incorporating vocal practices into our daily routine not only aids in discharging built-up survival stress but also expands our Window, allowing us to handle life’s intensity without shutting down or burning out. By reclaiming our voice, we affirm our right to express, to take up space, and to thrive.
So here’s an invitation: what if reclaiming your voice—your actual voice—was part of your healing? Singing, humming, sighing, even roaring (yes, really) can help shift you out of survival mode. Because regulation isn’t about silencing yourself—it’s about getting unstuck. When I’m regulated, I can actually use my anger instead of it using me. I can feel grief without drowning in it. I can move with my emotions instead of being consumed by them. And in a world that has historically tried to keep women and marginalized folks quiet and compliant, finding our voices—loud, messy, joyful, unfiltered—isn’t just self-care. It’s resistance. It’s liberation.
What would it be like to hum a little, to sigh deeply, to sing out your favorite song, to say “no”, to speak about what matters to you, and maybe even roar today? What might you need to feel safe enough to do so? See what happens. Your nervous system might just sing back.
If any of this resonates, and you feel ready to start reclaiming your voice as a sacred portal to healing, growth, and embodied transformation towards the life you desire, consider exploring integrative somatic coaching
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