Jacob Vermeulen

I started with singing. For nearly ten years I taught authentic singing — holidays, workshops, retreats — fascinated less by technique than by something underneath it: change how a person feels, and the voice changes on its own. The reverse turned out to be true too. That was the question I kept following.

Then life did what life does. My late wife, Upala, as she lost her speech to illness, started to sound — before any of this was a method, before it had a name. She used it to acknowledge her own feelings, and each time she did, she’d move from turmoil to something like bliss in a couple of minutes. I had never seen anything like it in my whole career as a singer.

So my focus moved from singing to sounding — from the voice that reaches for something beautiful to the voice that tells the truth about what’s happening inside, in this exact moment. Both are real; I simply followed the second one. Out of that, over years and a great many sessions, Somatic Vocal Healing took shape.

I don’t think of myself as a healer. I hold space; people heal themselves. My job is to make that safe and possible, and then to step back. I’ve had the privilege of doing this with thousands of people across Europe and South Africa, online and in person — and I’m still learning what the voice can do.

Songdance is the home for this work — the name for everything that has grown around it: the workshops and retreats, the twelve-week course, the online sessions, the Songdeck and its app, and the people who keep returning to sound together. It began as a way to gather what I was teaching in one place, and it has become a small community across Europe and South Africa, in person and online — held by a handful of teachers I trust.

Jacob lives in Belgium with his partner, Lieselot, and their son, Pepe. He works in English; the German-language practice is led by Carmen & Lorenz, and he collaborates with Karen Evans, Daniela Hess, and Lesanne across courses and retreats.