What is Somatic Vocal Healing?
A practice of meeting what you feel — and giving it sound.
Not singing. Not performance. The honest sound of what’s here, made out loud until it’s been heard.
Most sound healing makes sound for you.
Somatic Vocal Healing asks
what do you feel —
and what is the sound of that?
That’s the whole shift — two small words. We make the sound of something, rather than for it. The voice stops being something to manage — pleasant, in tune, never too much — and becomes what it has always been underneath: the body’s most direct language. The practice gives that language somewhere to go.
You arrived knowing how to do this
Watch a small child for an afternoon. Delight, protest, grief, wonder — all of it sounded the moment it arrives, with the whole body behind it. Nobody taught them that. It’s just what a voice does.
Then come the other lessons: keep it down, keep it pleasant, keep it from saying too much. The full voice doesn’t disappear. It goes quiet and waits — and it’s still in there.
One tone is the whole instruction
Singing reaches for melody — for something shaped and lovely, something to get right. Sounding reaches for none of that. You cannot do it wrong: it will always express something.
The crack, the waver, the rough edge — that’s not a mistake to fix. That’s the information. With sounding we welcome exactly what a performer would smooth away.
- Turns feeling into form
- Wants to sound good
- A shape to get right
- Starts from a question
- Asks what is here
- In and out at the same time
You begin where you are
There’s no script. The only question is what is the sound of this moment? One tone — the sound of how it actually is, right now — not a song, not yet a story.
You stay with it and let it finish on its own. Sometimes it shifts on its own: turns inward into a hum, opens into something rounder, dissolves. You don’t force it anywhere. You attend it.
And when the tone finishes, there’s one more question: what is below that? You make the sound of that too. You only ever need to go one level deeper for a shift to happen.
Sounding goes in and out at the same time: outward into expression, so what’s here finally gets said — and inward into listening, because the one who most needs to hear that sound is you. Acknowledged things leave on their own.
Your body is on your side
We tend to treat the body as something that can fail us — the tension, the ache, the symptom that won’t stop.
Somatic Vocal Healing starts from the opposite assumption. Your body has been cooperating the whole time, doing exactly what it believed it needed to do to protect you. The voice is simply the most direct way to hear what it’s been trying to say.
It doesn’t always feel better right away
This is what no brochure tells you: sometimes you feel worse before anything settles. If all you want is to feel nice for an hour, there are gentler tools — and they’re good ones.
But if you’re willing to meet the parts that have been waiting — the grief, the anger, the old fear — what’s on the other side isn’t a quick boost. It’s a steadier kind of peace. More lasting. More structurally yours.
Don’t expect miracles — expect a real relationship with your own voice.
You are your own healer
No one can heal you — not a teacher, not a method, not a sound. Nobody can make your sound for you, which means nobody can do your acknowledging for you. And the healing is in the acknowledgment.
That doesn’t mean you do it alone — we never stop needing each other. But what we give each other isn’t the healing; it’s the space where healing becomes possible. A guide holds that space. What rises in it is yours.
“There’s nothing I did.
It was already there.”
— Jacob Vermeulen, founder · Where this began →
The voice will never force you.
The safety isn’t a rule we added — it’s built into the instrument. The voice only brings up what you can be with. And volume is a dial, not a dare: softer when something is big, barely a hum if that’s the day. Soft counts. Soft often counts double.
Things people ask first
Do I need to be able to sing?
No — and it matters that you can’t get this wrong. Sounding has no melody to hit and no audience to please. If you can sigh, groan or hum, you already have everything the practice requires.
What does it actually look like?
You arrive, you breathe, you settle. Then you’re guided toward one honest tone at a time, and you stay with it. In a group everyone sounds at once, so nobody is performing for anybody. The room holds you; it doesn’t watch you.
How is it different from a sound bath?
In a sound bath the sound is made for you — you lie back and receive, and that can be lovely. Here the sound comes from you: nobody does it to you, because nobody can. You’re not receiving someone else’s sound; you’re finally hearing your own.
Is this therapy?
No. Somatic Vocal Healing is a body-based practice, not a clinical treatment, and it isn’t a substitute for therapy or medical care. Many people practice it alongside therapy — the voice often reaches what words have been circling for years.
What if I’m embarrassed by the sounds I make?
Nearly everyone is, at first — that shyness is part of the material the practice works with. You can begin with a hum behind closed lips. Quiet counts. Honest matters more than loud.
What about the neighbours?
The most common question in this work — more common than anything about trauma. Until the day you stop caring: a cushion, the bathroom, a parked car. Half this practice happens in parked cars. The first sound is the hardest — and it gets easier from there.
Where do I start?
The simplest door is the live online workshop — one hour, 9€, no experience needed. You sound along from home and feel what this actually does in your own body.
What is the sound of this moment?
Begin there.
Curious how this actually feels?
You cannot do it wrong. Nobody here will ask you to scream.
The occasional letter —
practices, and what's coming next.
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