Voice is inseparable from emotion because it is implicitly present in the message that accompanies it, gives it shape and meaning. Emotions guide us and characterize our personality and identity. They contribute to our perception of the world, to the way we discern it and express ourselves according to our own emotional code.
What distinguishes us from the animal or plant world is precisely this capacity to produce a message impregnated with feelings and intentions that allows us to express ourselves and share the emotions that inhabit us. This need to communicate our feelings with our environment is the origin of the development of language and communication.
Emotional speech therapy: the voice cannot be dissociated from the emotions
Emotional speech therapy places the voice at the heart of vocal exercise. During voice feminization training we enrich our ability to convey emotions with the voice, but also with the face, eyes, facial expressions, etc., in order to nurture the communication process and develop our ability to explore our communicative intentions and how we convey them.
To do this, it is important to distinguish expressiveness from expression:
– Expressiveness is the ability to convey emotions. There is a subjective willingness to share a message. It is a voluntary and intentional act.
– Expression is an objective factor. In this case, facial expressions are muscular movements made with the face: raising of the eyebrows, smiling, opening of the mouth, etc.
For example, expression would be the smile, but expressiveness would imply our ability to express sarcasm through that smile.
The emotional code
Each of us has an emotional code linked to our personality, to who we are, to the way we perceive and express the world. This emotional code is specific to each of us and differs from one person to another. However, there is no single emotional code for everyone, but each of us perceives, feels and expresses our emotions according to our own personality, identity and emotionality, all impacted and influenced by our experiences, as well as by our education, our genetics, our experiences and our culture.
We are all different and evolve differently. It is what makes us unique and what pushes us to defend our unity, as well as what enriches our existence and mixticity.
The emotional work of voice feminization
During speech therapy sessions for emotional voice feminization training, it quickly becomes clear that each trainee is unique. They experience their emotions differently even though there is a general emotional facial code that helps the understanding of the message and its correct interpretation.
Femininity and masculinity are not expressed in the same way. Without going into generalities, feminine beings have a deeper, more intense and more sensitive perception of the environment, although, of course, there are masculine beings with the same expressive characteristics. There are, therefore, female expressive traits of general spectrum that can be trained and developed taking into account the points mentioned above, the personality of the trainee, her education, culture and experiences.
During my sessions, I guide my trainees in shaping their facial expressions. I accompany them during the process so that they can develop their expressiveness and emotionality in a feminine way according to who they are, how they perceive the world and, above all, how they want the world to perceive them. I help them to become aware of their body, their face and how they can transmit emotions through them. During this process, my trainees get to know themselves better and discover their emotional side, getting to express themselves freely without feeling self-conscious or enclosed within an impersonal emotional code. The goal of the emotional voice work is to explore their inner world in a free, feminine and personalized way.
Releasing femininity and emotion
My goal during voice feminization training is not to teach femininity or emotions, as these are innate concepts, specific to each of us and above all evolutionary. My role consists in guiding them to discover their emotional expressiveness and to open up to the world in order to let their femininity and emotionality show through.
I consider it extremely important to give free rein to the trainee in all that concerns the expression of femininity. For this, I provide tools and exercises, as well as a relationship based on mutual trust and the possibility of being free to express ourselves by exploring our full potential and who we are.
In conclusion, during the training, we do not only work or train the voice as a set of sounds, but our main objective is to help the trainee to explore her emotionality in order to achieve a voice and a way of speaking coherent and in total adequacy with her personality, her identity and her emotions.