Journey to the Sound God:
Healing and Empowering Voice and Self Through Sound
by Mimi O'Neill

A brief description of each chapter follows:

Chapter I: The Voice as a Mirror
This chapter serves as an introduction to Journey to the Sound God:
Healing and Empowering Voice and Self Through Sound presenting the main themes: the voice as a "window through which the self emerges," a powerful and personal vehicle that conveys spirit and life, that is both sensitive and dynamic; the voice that mirrors back our psychological states, our emotions, our thoughts, and our beings; the voice as "a spiritual path"- that brings us into contact with all levels of our ourselves - the "essential nature," the personality, the emotional make-up, and the individual typology, and the voice from which we gain tremendous insights into the nature of ourselves.
Working with the voice offers us a vehicle to attain personal integration and communion with ourselves. Through exploring and developing the voice we can experience personal healing, and generate spiritual energy and power. Using the voice opens the heart and energizes the subtle centers known as the "chakras." Working with the world of sound and vibration through the vehicle of the voice produces spiritual development and brings us intuitively and experientially in touch with the logos of the universe.

Chapter II: The Journey to the Sound God: Claiming our Sounding Selves
This chapter describes the state of modern man as being cut off from the birthright of the natural voice, primarily as a result of our modern disembodied state - a state of not living fully integrated in the body and soul. It goes on to explore the experience of ancient peoples, who, living closer to the earth and within a holistic paradigm of the divine, had more direct contact with the vibrational sound of the voice in daily life: in religious ritual, in celebration, and in communion with nature.
Human beings have not changed, modern people long for this same integrated body/soul state that is generated by working with the voice. To reenter into communion with the self and the universe, into embodiment through using the voice, is to enter into relationship with the nada brahma, the sound god, a Sanscrit term originating in the Upanishads. As we encounter the sound god, we awaken the subtle centers, known as the chakras. This chapter offers a description of each chakra: the root center, the genital center, the belly or solar plexus center, the heart center, the throat center, the third eye and crown centers, and describes how the awakening of each center through sound and meditation practice enhances our lives.

Chapter III: Your Natural Voice
This chapter guides the reader through simple exercises to identify the natural voice using the hollow spaces of the face, the mouth and throat, and the chest. It also describes what an "open" voice is and what it feels like. I share anecdotes about my own life and voice teachers - teachers who brought me into contact with the innate spiritual and physical working of my voice - as young singer.

Chapter IV: Your Voice and Your Life
In this chapter I talk about how I became aware of the profoundly generative relationship between the voice and the sense of self. This association occurred for me intuitively over the years in my own work and then in my work with others. As I began to listen to people's stories about their lives, I was able to see the relationship of how the voice had developed. Through hearing how people as children hadn't been seen, heard, or loved for who they actually were, I saw how survival mechanisms - innate constriction, negative self images, and self-sabotaging psycho dynamic patterns - had entered the body, shortened the breath, and had basically restricted the voice. Realizing these connections, I was compelled to work spiritually as well as physically. A person's vocal development was not just a matter of physical exercises, it involved examining a person's whole life.

Chapter V: Voice Patterns: Psycho/Spiritual Dynamics and Their Relationship to Your Voice
In this chapter I describe a "voice pattern" as "the sound of your voice that is created by the automatically functioning musical groups throughout your body," generated by your sense of identity and your interaction with your life. I go on to describe the two main patterns; the "throat grabber" - a voice that sounds caught in the throat, pushed, heavy, hoarse, or monotone - and the "child voice." People with the throat grabbing voice are often repressing anger and frustration and are experiencing a lack of personal power. By grabbing and forcing the muscles of the throat they feel a kind of surrogate or substitute power. The person with the child voice often experiences the "fear of being big," that is, the fear of being fully adult. This person usually possesses a fear of their own power. Thus, the voice, as well as the persona, remains childlike and small.

Chapter VI: Sam and Ann
In this chapter we meet Sam, the business man, limited and annoyed with his scratchy, forced, throat grabbed voice, and Ann, the cabaret singer, suffering, with her static-filled, weak, throat grabbed voice. We go deeper into the journey towards the sound god through the stories and experiences of these two people.
Through Sam and Ann's work we encounter the issues of basic trust, the fear of rejection, the critical inner judge, the wounds of severe criticism, and the dynamic of not being seen for who one is, all dynamics that affect the sound of the voice and how we allow ourselves to use our voices. Conditional and unconditional love and a thorough discussion of the inner critic are also major themes of this chapter. Energy and vitality, qualities generated by opening and empowering the voice and self are discussed as major themes of the sound god.

Chapter VII: Voice Exercises, Meditation, Toning, and Defending Against the Critical Inner Judge
In this chapter we work with voice exercises to heal and develop the throat grabbed voice. We work with a guided mediation to enhance our basic trust and sense of being "held." We also work with toning in the belly and earth center (the root center), practices that bring us into a sense of physical and emotional embodiment. Through this embodiment, we are able to come into an integrated contact with ourselves, a contact from which we learn to practice awareness and discernment, thus, empowering ourselves. We also learn methods to defend against our critical inner judge.

Chapter VIII: Sally: The Light, Wispy, Childlike Voice
In this chapter we explore Sally's fear of allowing her own power. Sally, unhappy with her weak voice, that, "no one takes seriously," discovers that she developed this fear growing up in a volatile, loud family. Lake many people growing up in a fearful or unsafe environment, Sally rejected her own power, unconsciously believing all power to be dangerous and harmful. Consequently, she dis-empowered herself by maintaining a soft spoken voice and a submissive personality, never allowing her voice or herself to fully emerge as an adult.

Chapter IX: Your Vocal and Physical Transition Through Puberty, Posture and Breathing, Exercises for the Childlike Voice, Meditation and Toning in the Heart
In this chapter we work with our vocal and physical transition through puberty, a highly traumatic and transformative time for the young person. During puberty the patterns that shape the adult voice are formed. We work with negative self images, especially negative physical images that affect how we hold our posture and how we breathe. A comprehensive breathing technique is taught. Exercises to open and strengthen the child voice are described. Practices are offered to open and work with the heart, to empower and contact the authentic self. Simple chanting and toning in the heart is described.

Chapter X: Reverend John and Ben: the Weak Voice That Gives out and the Forced Monotone Voice
In this chapter we meet Reverend John, a priest, whose voice is weak and regularly gives out on him during the service. Through Reverend John's story we encounter issues around the voice and personal empowerment, specifically giving your power away to others. We also meet Ben, a man whose voice is forced, over-deep and harsh, and who, through suffering abuse as a child, became trapped in a cycle of anger and throat grabbing.
In this chapter we journey with both of these men, through their personal healing experiences of confronting deep seated wounds. Eventually, by claiming empowerment back to themselves, they heal their lives and the voices.

Chapter XI: Exercises to Heal the Weak or Monotone Voice, Issues with Anger, Empowerment, Toning in the Lower Body Centers and the Heart
In this chapter we explore, heal, and strengthen our weak or monotone voice. We work with our emotional and spiritual issues with anger, so as to claim our empowerment. We work with allowing ourselves to "want." By allowing desire, (a sacred Sufi principle that the Universe is the outcome of the Desire of God ) we stimulate empowerment of the authentic self. We work with an exercise to take care of our own needs. We also learn to feel the energy of the voice, and our own presence in the lower chakra centers, and the heart.

Chapter XII: Someone Digging in the Ground: (from a poem by Jelaludin Rumi) Evelyn and Joyce -The Heavily Constricted Voice, and the Small, Dull, "Existentially Held" Voice
In this chapter we meet Evelyn and Joyce, two women who must each work through a deep healing process to retrieve the sense of self that was taken away from them as children. Both women were compelled to dig into the ground of their true natures in order to retrieve the birthright of the natural voice, and, as well, to retrieve the whole and empowered self. Evelyn, suffering and limited, with her deeply constricted, monotone voice, and Joyce, frustrated and lackluster, with her dull, flat voice, embark on dual journeys to the sound god. Through working with the soul child nature - the exuberant, positive, effusive essential nature - they are able to awaken latent healing and transformative energies within themselves and overcome negative self images.

Chapter XIII: Exploring Your Soul Child
In this chapter we work with an exercise to remember our precious soul child nature. We recall the voice of our soul child as we work to reconnect with this exuberant, lively - totally positive nature - ourselves - at age five, six, or seven. We work to heal and reconnect with this source of creative and flowing energy.

Chapter XIV: Sounding: We are Gongs Waiting to Be Struck: Awakening Sound in All the Chakra Centers
This chapter offers a guided sound practice through the chakra centers. The meditative sound practices are described simply but precisely.

Chapter XV: Conclusion: The Story of Your Voice
This chapter offers a recap of the main themes presented in Journey to the Sound God. It guides the reader through a self-healing exercise to "tell the story of your voice." Readers journal through the memories of their voices, from the experience as a young toddler, to that of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. They are instructed to sense what they would like to do in the future: find a teacher, join a choir, or to just pursue whatever is most meaningful to them.