Episode Summary

This one was spontaneous — I wasn’t planning to record today, but something came up that I couldn’t stop thinking about, and I knew I had to talk about it.

I’ve been sitting with this tension for years: the difference between people who have experienced real trauma and are doing the work to heal, and people who have learned to weaponize the language of trauma to avoid accountability altogether.

I draw on my own background working in trauma crisis environments as early as 1999, my personal experience navigating this in my own life, and the work of psychiatrist Dr. Hannah Spier — one of the few voices I’ve found willing to name this dynamic clearly. Because the cultural rise of trauma awareness, while deeply needed, has also created permission slips for certain people to stay stuck, stay cruel, and never take responsibility for how they treat others.

This episode is not about minimizing trauma. It’s the opposite. It’s about respecting the people who have been through real hardship enough to say: You are stronger than your story. You are not your wound. And you don’t have to stay there.

In This Episode:

* Why I still put “trauma-informed voice coach” on my profile — and why I expect some people to roll their eyes at it

* The difference between PTSD as an injury (recoverable) vs. a chronic mental illness (managed for life)

* How certain people use a traumatic history as a badge of honor — and why that’s a red flag

* The “woe is me” personality type and how to recognize it in your own life

* Why compassion and pity are not the same thing — and how I confused the two for years

* My own decade-long battle with PTSD and the 10+ years I didn’t sing on stage

* How I found my way back to my voice, and why I built the Voice Liberation Method

The Voice Liberation Method is a self-paced course for people who know their voice has been holding something back — and are ready to find out what.

Seven weeks. Nervous system science. Classical technique. Chakras and Guided Visualization. Hero’s Journey. Trauma-informed somatic work. All in one place.

This isn’t about sounding better. It’s about coming home to the voice that was always yours.

→ Get the VLM for $97

Mentioned in This Episode:

* Dr. Hannah Spier — a psychiatrist whose work challenges overly permissive trauma narratives and one of the few credentialed voices I’ve found naming this dynamic clearly

* The Voice Liberation Method — my signature course for people who want to reclaim their voice in a safe, step-by-step environment → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

Journal Prompt

Is there anyone in your life — or any version of yourself — who has used pain as a reason to stay small, stay angry, or stay stuck? What would it look like to honor what happened and refuse to be defined by it?

Work With Me

Ready to stop whispering and start singing? Book a 1:1 coaching session → calendly.com/hello-bellapayne/75 Intro session: $100 | Follow-up: $150

Join The Healthy Voice Community

A space for people who are doing the work — healing their voice, their nervous system, and their lives. I’d love to see you in there. → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

Singing Through the Shadows — My Memoir in Progress

I’m serializing my memoir on Substack — a raw and honest account of the years I lost my voice, and how I found my way back. → www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com

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If this episode resonated with you, leave a comment or a review — it helps more people find the work.

In this episode I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for a while: breaking down the chakra system in plain language for people who were raised with a Western mind.

Because the truth is — the chakras aren’t that hard to understand. They just need to be explained the right way. And that means meeting you where you are, not where someone who’s been deep in Eastern philosophy for twenty years is.

I also share a personal update: last week was my final week teaching piano students. It was a hard decision, but I’m now 100% focused on The Healthy Voice — which means more content, more depth, and more time to actually serve you the way I want to.

In This Episode

* Why Western minds struggle with the chakra system (and what actually helps)

* My East-meets-West philosophy: Italian classical technique + Indian energy healing

* The human being as a musical instrument, the chakras as the notes — and why I use “in tune / out of tune” instead of “balanced”

* A breakdown of all seven chakra points and what each one represents

* How the Law of Entrainment explains why one out-of-tune chakra affects the whole system

* Why “it’s just a coincidence” might be the most effective piece of sophistry we’ve ever been fed

* Where to start if you want to begin working with your chakras

* How the Voice Liberation Method uses sound healing to tune each chakra point

The Seven Chakras — Quick Reference

Root — Survival, safety, basic needs (food, shelter, money, stable relationships)

Sacral — Creativity and sexuality (same energy, different expression)

Solar Plexus — Personal power and will — your ability to make decisions and stand behind them

Heart — Love, especially love for yourself — the bridge between the lower and upper chakras

Throat — Expression and truth — where your voice actually lives

Third Eye — Intuition and self-trust — your inner compass that the school system tried to train out of you

Crown — Connection to everyone and everything — the one we’ve been told isn’t real (it is)

Resources Mentioned

🎓 Voice Liberation Method — sound healing sessions devoted to each individual chakra point → Get it here

💜 Join The Healthy Voice Community → the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so

🎁 Free Voice Guide → bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

📓 Unsilenced — 52 weeks of journaling prompts → Get it — $22

Journal Prompt from This Episode

Pick the chakra that made your ears perk up while you were listening. Not the one you think you should work on — the one that made something in you go quiet. Spend a week with just that one. Look up other interpretations. Find art that represents it. Ask yourself: where did this go out of tune in my life, and when did it start?

Don’t rush it. One chakra. One week. That’s the starting point.

If this episode helped you, subscribe, leave a comment, or share it with someone who’s been trying to find words for something they can feel but can’t explain. That’s exactly who this is for.

The Healthy Voice Writes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this voice note, I get personal about something I’ve been noticing across my community — in the comments, in my private coaching sessions, and in my own life: the impact of narcissistic abuse on the voice.

I talk about what experts call a “shared fantasy” — when you’re living inside a narrative created by someone else, and you’ve subtly agreed to never challenge it. I share my own experience of being in a relationship for over 20 years where I couldn’t speak my perspective without a fear response kicking in: jaw tension, tight shoulders, a swallowed voice, a closed throat.

I also talk about the macro and the micro — how I first noticed these dynamics playing out on the world stage, in institutions, and in communities before I had the courage to look at my own closest relationships. And I share what’s helped me when those old patterns still get triggered: singing.

In this episode, I explore:

* Why I put out content in so many formats (and the teaching philosophy behind it)

* The sociology of shared fantasy — from governments to friend groups to intimate relationships

* What covert narcissistic abuse looks like when the person doesn’t fit the “loud and aggressive” stereotype

* How living in someone else’s reality creates physical symptoms: jaw tension, throat tightness, blocked resonance, and fear responses

* Why healing keeps hitting a wall when you haven’t addressed the dishonesty in your life

* How singing — especially moving from minor to major keys — works as emotional modulation

* The role of harmonics in shifting your emotional state (and why I teach this in the Sound Healing course)

If this resonated with you, here’s where to go next:

🎤 FREE Voice Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

🌀 Join The Healthy Voice Community: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

🎓 The Voice Liberation Method (7-week self-paced course): $97 https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

📰 Subscribe to The Healthy Voice Writes: www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

The Healthy Voice Writes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Have you ever avoided your instrument? Stopped singing? Felt triggered the moment you tried to create?

You’re not broken. You might just be in musical jail.

In this episode I get personal about something I’ve never fully said out loud before — the years I couldn’t pick up my guitar because it took me straight back to a before time I wasn’t ready to face. Heartbreak. Criticism. Shame that wasn’t even mine to carry.

I talk about what it finally took to come home to it, why our earliest musical wounds can lock us out of our own creativity, and why reclaiming your instrument — or your voice — is one of the most powerful healing moves you can make.

In this episode: → Why painful early experiences with music can create an unconscious “ban” on creating → How shame gets attached to the things we love most → The moment I finally admitted my guitar was triggering me — and what shifted → Why your instrument isn’t the enemy — it’s a portal back to yourself → How to take the first small step back toward your own expression

Journal Prompt: Is there something you stopped doing — singing, playing, creating, speaking up — because someone made you feel you didn’t deserve it? What would it mean to pick it up again?

🎓 Voice Liberation Method — 7 weeks of trauma-informed voice work to help you free what’s been held back. $97 → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

💜 The Healthy Voice Community → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

🎤 Work with me 1:1 → https://calendly.com/hello-bellapayne/75

🎁 FREE Voice Guide → https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

🌐 Subscribe → www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com

📸 Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

🎤 Get the Voice Liberation Method — $97: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

💜 Join The Healthy Voice Community: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

🎁 FREE Voice Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

WORK ONE-ON-ONE WITH ME: https://calendly.com/hello-bellapayne/75

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

A voice note about the power of silence — the intentional kind. How going quiet helped me find myself, why I recommend the Walk and Talk practice to everyone I work with, and a post-launch update on how everything is going with the Voice Liberation Method and the community.

Also: why I’m starting to talk about nutrition again, how classical vocal technique and sound healing need each other, and what’s coming next.

00:00 The Power of Intentional Silence

03:30 The Walk and Talk Practice

07:00 Nutrition, Veganism, and the Healthy Voice Path

11:19 Post-Launch Update: VLM and Community

15:00 Why Classical Technique Matters for Sound Healing

📖 Read Singing Through the Shadows on Substack: www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com

voice note, podcast, silence, intentional silence, walk and talk, voice healing, trauma and voice, voice liberation, vocal technique, sound healing, classical singing, voice teacher, healthy voice, vegan singer, nutrition for singers, vocal recovery, self discovery, introvert, healing path

THE HEALTHY VOICE NOTES — Valentine’s Day Episode Love for Humanity, Love for the Self

Happy Valentine’s Day. In this episode, I’m talking about why we do this work — why we heal, why we dig into the uncomfortable stuff, why we fight to free our voices. And every time I ask myself that question, the answer comes back to love. Love for the self. And love for humanity.

I also share about being filmed for a short documentary yesterday — a film about artists and their creative process. We talked about my life as a singer, how The Healthy Voice took off, and my connection to John Lennon, whose raw honesty and deep love for humanity have always inspired me.

I get into the tension between healing as a “selfish” act versus healing as service — and why I believe taking care of yourself is one of the greatest things you can do for the world. I talk about shadow work, why I don’t trust the “love and light” crowd who refuse to admit they have darkness, and why 30 years into my own healing journey, I’m still not done. And I’m okay with that.

And I share a piece of my song “Great to Be Alive” — a song my husband wrote the lyrics to after a near-death experience, set to music I wrote inspired by 70s gospel rock operas. It’s a love song to another person. It’s a love song to yourself. It’s both.

In this episode:

— Why healing yourself is an act of love for humanity

— The documentary film experience and what it unlocked in me

— John Lennon, Imagine, and the “War Is Over (If You Want It)” posters

— The difference between real shadow work and performative positivity

— Why I don’t trust people who claim to be fully healed

— Sharing “Great to Be Alive” and the story behind the lyrics

— What’s coming in the community: Letters Never Sent, Yoga for Singers, Sound Healing, Courage Circle

Links:

🎙️ Voice Liberation Method — 7 weeks of guided healing for your voice: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

💜 Join The Healthy Voice Community: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

📘 Free Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

The number one mistake singers make is comparing their voice to someone else’s. It’s the fastest track to failure — and I did it for years.

In this episode, I share the story of how I started singing in the first place. How my family lost everything when I was 10, how three girls harmonizing in my apartment complex changed my life, and how I spent years trying to sound like Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey before realizing the whole approach was wrong. I even tried to switch to the alto section in choir because I wanted to sound like Nina Simone. My teacher sent me back to the sopranos in about 15 minutes.

What I talk about:

* How losing gymnastics, dance, and art led me to discover singing out of necessity

* Why copying your favorite singer gets you only so far — and why it makes you forgettable

* The model analogy — embracing your freckles and blonde eyebrows instead of trying to look like everyone else

* Why sensation and feeling matter more than how you sound

* If you feel good when you sing — no strain, vibrations in your face and chest, energized afterward — you sound good. Full stop.

* The documentary being filmed this Friday about me and The Healthy Voice

* Singing “I Want a Voice” for the first time in front of an audience — a song I wrote 15 years ago after leaving a destructive relationship, and how it feels completely different in my body now

* A teaser of the original recording (the full song is coming in a future chapter of Singing Through the Shadows)

Your voice is a product of your genetics, your culture, your environment, the people you’ve been around, the music you’ve listened to, and everything you’ve survived. Stop trying to trade it in for someone else’s.

🎤 THE VOICE LIBERATION METHOD: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1-e9c083

🌟 JOIN THE COMMUNITY (songwriting workshops at Practitioner + Mastery levels): https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

📖 SINGING THROUGH THE SHADOWS: www.thehealthyvoicewrites.com

🎁 FREE VOICE LIBERATION GUIDE: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

📱 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

It’s official — the Voice Liberation Method course is here. In this voice note, I’m sharing the behind-the-scenes story of what it took to get here, what’s inside the course, and the deeply personal journey that made it possible.

What I cover:

* What launch day feels like after a month-long pre-launch adventure

* The first review (before anyone’s even started the course)

* Why I hid behind piano teaching for years — and what changed

* How Go Play Piano vs. The Healthy Voice taught me that real success comes from facing your demons

* The Friday shadow work practice that transformed my healing

* Why the course is built as a hero’s journey, not a therapy session

* How the chakras, sound healing, and vocal work all connect

* What’s coming next: Part 2 — Shadow Work

Inside the course: 8+ hours of content across 7 weeks, plus PDF guides, guided meditations, journal prompts, and step-by-step vocal practices.

What’s next: The Voice Liberation Method Part 2 — going deep into shadow work and what’s really blocking your voice.

🎤 Get the Voice Liberation Method: GET LIBERATED

🌟 Join The Healthy Voice Community: JOIN THE COMMUNITY

🎁 Free Voice Liberation Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

✍️ Singing Through the Shadows — my memoir, serialized here on Substack

The Healthy Voice Notes Podcast — Show Notes

Episode: Voice Liberation Method Update + The Power of Resonance

In this voice note, I check in with you on a Thursday to share some exciting news: I’m about to record the very last video of the Voice Liberation Method course. It’s been weeks of intense work and I’m really proud of what’s inside.

What’s in the Voice Liberation Method: Each of the 7 weeks includes approximately 75 minutes of content broken into short, digestible videos covering a psychological/mindset lesson, a vocal technique exercise, a speech exercise, and a guided visualization set to original music. Each visualization is inspired by a different chakra point and a stage of the hero’s journey — starting with the root chakra and safety in Week 1, and building toward arriving home transformed by the end.

This Month’s Community Theme: Resonance. Resonance is the ability to be heard across a room with ease — using your natural resonators (the bones in your face, chest, and skull) to project sound without strain. I also think of resonance as your vocal “sparkle.” When you’re feeling dull or shut down, your tone goes flat. When you lift your cheeks into what I call the “phony smile,” you unlock that bright, resonant quality.

In the community this month, we’re exploring questions like: What makes you unique? What lights you up? What could you talk about for hours? And — do you still have access to those things, or did you stop at some point?

The Personal Story Behind the Work I share how my own vocal sparkle disappeared when I was around people who didn’t want me to succeed — and returned when those people were gone. I talk about discovering that my smile muscles had become stiff and frozen from years of controlling my facial expressions in an unsafe relationship, and how breaking through that tension felt like the shaking you experience in an intense yoga pose.

I also reflect on my years as a classical soprano — music scholarships, being a paid first soprano — and how chronic shoulder tension from growing up with a father with severe PTSD made a professional singing career feel impossible. None of my voice teachers thought to look deeper at what was causing that tension. That experience is exactly why I built the Voice Liberation Method the way I did.

Course Launch Details: The Voice Liberation Method launches February 7th. Pre-order pricing is available for two more days, then it goes to full price (still a great deal). Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered — you made this process so much easier.

🎓 Get the Voice Liberation Method: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1

🎤 Join The Healthy Voice Community: https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

📘 Free Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

📺 YouTube: The Healthy Voice

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

SHOW NOTES:

I’m taking a small break from editing the Voice Liberation Method to share something I’ve never talked about publicly.

It starts with a yearbook. My senior year of high school. A co-star who went on to star in Hamilton. And years of wondering why I couldn’t hack it.

In this voice note, I share:

* The math teacher who changed my life in 8th grade — and what I found when I looked him up decades later

* The rabbit hole of scandals that unraveled at my performing arts high school

* What it’s like to watch classmates become Broadway stars and TV actors while you’re still “just a music teacher.”

* The belief system I carried for over 20 years — and the weekend I finally let it go

* Why I launched The Healthy Voice the very next week

This is the story behind the story. The thing I wasn’t sure I’d ever be comfortable sharing. But I think there’s something in here for you.

📣 Less than a week left to get the Voice Liberation Method at 50% off → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page-1

🔓 Mastery flash sale ends Monday at midnight Pacific — founding member pricing, 5 spots only. Code: MASTERY2026 → https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so/untitled-page

💜 Join the community:

https://the-healthy-voice-community.circle.so

🎤 Free Voice Guide: https://bella-payne.kit.com/freeguide

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_healthy_voice/

Journal Prompt: What old belief about yourself are you still carrying? Where did it come from — and what would happen if you let it go?