Description of Voice Mapping:

What follows is a general description of voice mapping that hopefully will answer your current questions and possibly a few more. I would like to begin by saying I am not the inventor, I am a practitioner. I don't have a scientific background; I have a general idea and a metaphoric way to describe the voice mapping process.

For example, I believe that each day of our lives is recorded in some way akin to a tree growing a new ring each season. In each ring is recorded stressful or traumatic events you experienced and, very important, the coping skills you called up or invented to respond to the stress. At the time, that particular coping skill was the best tool you had available. For example, if a child grew up in an environment of extreme criticism, she or he may have coped by disconnecting from their emotions or becoming self critical as well. While that subconscious mechanism helped them get through their childhood, most likely it caused problems later in life when they had problems with self confidence or trying to form intimate relationships.

That ring of history, and many hundreds more, is still active somewhere within you. Hyper-vigilant, whenever you encounter an element connected in some way to that early experience, at some level, alarm bells go off and your subconscious initiates behavior for you to avoid or escape the moment. There is a saying, "Fish don't know they are wet." When you've lived with a behavior or stress response most of your life, it may not seem out of the ordinary to you. If you notice anything at all, you may say, "that's just the way I am." However, when you've cleared early forming memories connected to parental or other experiences, you stop that behavior and often realize numerous ways in which you feel better being in the world.

Voice mapping is proving to be an effective process for helping people process and release stress and trauma. (Note: while I use the word, "release", quite a bit, I believe what is actually happening prior to a feeling of release is that a memory/muscle connection is experienced as a place where the body's energy is unbalanced. What is experienced as a shift or a release is actually a balancing of a piece of the body's energy matrix.)

Calvin Young is the scientist who initially developed voice mapping. He studied sound and healing globally and historically. His research included the work of Shari Edwards who has an exceptional sense of hearing. She can hear when and which frequencies are missing in a person's voice. In her work as a healer, Shari uses tuning forks and other instruments to play those frequencies back to her clients – the toning evidently helps in the healing process. This pointed Calvin in the direction of study of the human voice that eventually led to voice mapping. A collaboration with Vaughn Cook of Zyto, Inc., resulted in an integration of voice mapping with the style of biofeedback stress assessment used by doctors, acupuncturists and naturopaths to assist in physical healing of the body – an exquisite partnership of blending mind/body resources. Vaughn recently released the EVOX, the newest technology in the realm of voice mapping. You can learn more at http://www.zyto.com

In deep tissue massage, such as Rolfing, there are times when the practitioner is working on a particular muscle location when the client suddenly experiences a powerful emotion that seems to come from out of nowhere. Some scientists believe that the memory resides in some facet of muscle tissue such as the fascia.

Many muscles of the body are involved in creating the voice. Many of the muscles from the pelvis up through the skull contribute to the workings of our larynx and voice.

If you are thinking about something that is connected in some way to one of those events recorded in a memory/muscle connection, that connection is stimulated, the muscle is affected and, in turn, that muscle effect shows up in the frequencies expressed in your voice. Calvin and his researchers have determined which frequency combinations are connected to which emotional states. This is visually represented in the pie chart voice map that you can see on my web site.

Those frequencies are then fed back to you in a form of biofeedback, stimulating the memory/muscle connection allowing it to be surfaced, processed and released (balanced). In the process, you are permanently remapping your brain, breaking the connection between subconscious memories and your present day behavior. The result is a reduction in stress and an ability to respond to life more in the moment rather than being stuck in old behavior patterns.

One example comes from a client who said that whenever she visited her mother, they always wound up fighting. In her session, she recorded a brief description of her mother (about 20 seconds long.) The resulting voice map showed extreme intensity in anger and in depression. It also show high intensity in repetitive thinking (which I refer to as subconscious repetitive behavior.) As she prepared to do the six minute meditation while the frequencies were being fed back to her, I suggested that she think about the connection between anger, depression, and her mother. She replied, "Oh, I know the answer to that."

I said, "You are referring to what you know that you know. However, you're stuck in repetitive behavior with your mom – that is being driven by something you don't yet know that you know. See if you can be open to find out what you may not know that you know – in other words, be open to learning from your subconscious wisdom." I left the room to give her privacy.

When I returned in six minutes, she was crying and she was happy.

The client said, "I got it! I figured out that Mom is depressed and angry about the failures in her own life. All my life, she's been channeling that frustration into the criticisms that she throws at me."

The combination of voice frequency feedback and the congruent insights helped the client in two ways. The first was that she felt a great weight leave her body – it was the release of a lifetime of stress freed by learning that "it's not my fault and it has never been my fault." (that's why she was crying.) The second came later when she went to visit her mother:

"Mom started those innuendos, those snide remarks usually hurt me very deeply. This time I did not get triggered. At a deep level I knew that they were really about her, not about me. I sat quietly and let them go right by. When I didn't rise to the bait as usual, after a few minutes, Mom's behavior changed – and I don't think she knew that she changed. We had a very pleasant visit."

In a voice mapping session, another client learned how she was enabling her father to continue controlling and manipulative behavior because she felt, at a subconscious level, that if she didn't allow it, he would have nothing left in his life. The next day she called to say that a particular health issue that had been chronic for a year had suddenly disappeared. She closed her call saying, "I just realized, I'm not afraid of money any more." Her experience helped me better understand that memory imbalances can contribute to stress in numerous ways intertwined both physically and emotionally.

Several times, men working working on their fathers have said, "Whoa, I just realized that I'm doing to my kids what my father did to me. No wonder I get so much resistance from them!" Women have said, "I just realized that everyone I date has my father's behaviors - no wonder these relationships don't last!"

Each client responds in their own unique way to the process. Many feel lighter in some way, many feel calmer and more relaxed. Some say that the chatter in their minds is reduced or gone. Some have experienced reduction or cessation of physical pain and symptoms. It is often said that one's emotions have a direct impact upon one's health and I believe this is demonstrated in voice mapping.

I have worked with Vietnam vets, victims of rape and holocaust survivors. Many clients have not suffered such extreme forms of abuse but in their lives, they experienced significant stress. Maybe they grew up with extremely critical parents or suffered a family loss or went through a difficult illness that changed their lives in ways they don't realize. In other circumstances, athletes have overcome physical or mental blocks and improved their ability to be at peak performance. In Utah, a golf center is using voice mapping to help its members improve their scores.

What these clients all have in common is a desire for positive change and an intention to take responsibility for their lives and the changes they want. This is not a therapy for the person who wants to be fixed by taking a pill or a magic injection. I am not a therapist, I am a facilitator who helps my clients use voice mapping to better understand what is behind and beneath their emotional condition. I believe two things work in conjunction with each other to help people gain relief. One is the actual frequency feedback process stimulating and releasing/balancing places where a memory/muscle connection is stuck. The other is working with the insight and understanding gained in the process. A mechanism that has delivered years of hidden, subconscious stress has been shut down. (balanced) The reduction of internal stress combined with insights to the origins of that stress empowers the client to continue healing, growing and enjoying a more fully realized life.

In the way I work, the first session may take as long as two hours. After that, sessions tend to run about an hour. The first half of the first session is spent recording a genealogy of significant people in one's life, stressful or traumatic events and current challenging conditions or health problems. The second half of the session is devoted to either the person's mother or father. Generally people need one or two sessions per parent. Pending the data in the genealogy, it may be helpful to also voice map a grandparent and/or a significant other. For many folks, that is enough release – between four and six sessions, they feel their lives are sufficiently improved. Others want to do more sessions on additional issues and experiences.

My practice is in Northern California and in Dallas, TX. The fee is $125 per session. If you book a block of sessions, I can work out a discount with you. If a client has financial challenges, I'm always willing to work out an arrangement that works for both of us.

USING VOICE MAPPING TO IMPROVE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

The insights clients have received about themselves and the nature of the relationships they tend to form have been very helpful in a number of ways. They have seen how they have contributed to chronic conflicts in their families and made changes that greatly reduced or eliminated those conflicts.

I have been a professional family mediator since the mid '90's. I recently designed a program for couples who want to progress significantly in their relationships. The program includes an initial mediation with the couple, four to six voice mapping sessions each (held individually), and a closing mediation in which the couple shares what they've learned about themselves and each other in the voice mapping process. The positive result can be deeper intimacy and more compassionate understanding of each other. The challenge is that either or both parties could come to a realization that they need to either significantly change or move on from the relationship. It may be a good thing to figure this out before thousands of dollars are spent on weddings, lawyers and other intense investments.

This is a brief overview; I hope it has been helpful. Feel free to ask more questions; I often learn as much as you do in answering them.

All the best,

  read our blog