#17 The Healing Power of Voice: Where Art Meets Medicine with Christina Shewell
In this compelling conversation, voice specialist Christina Shewell explores the profound intersection of art and science in voice work, drawing on her unique career spanning speech therapy, theatre voice training, and private practice. She discusses how voice is both a physical, mechanical phenomenon and a mysterious, healing force that affects our bodies at a cellular level. From working with stroke patients who’ve lost their speech to training actors at prestigious institutions like the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Christina reveals how voice work can unlock emotional release, facilitate healing, and transform wellbeing. The discussion ranges from the science of sound vibrations to the therapeutic power of expressive writing, illustrating how our voices, and our willingness to use them, are fundamental to both physical health and emotional healing.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Voice is taken for granted but profoundly healing. While 2.14 million people in the UK sing in choirs and experience the wellbeing benefits, most people don’t realise they can use voice release, through groaning, stretching, or making sound, to change their body’s energy and reduce stress.
- Sound has measurable physical effects on the body. Research shows that voice vibrations affect us at a cellular level, and studies demonstrate that patients’ perceptions of surgeons’ voices correlate with malpractice suits, revealing how we’re primed to detect safety and trustworthiness through vocal cues.
- Grief and trauma can become trapped in the voice. Conditions like conversion aphonia, where people completely lose their voice despite having healthy vocal cords, often stem from unconscious grief or conflict, demonstrating the deep psychosomatic connection between emotion and voice.
- The ‘voice skills approach’ provides a framework for vocal health. Christina’s method examines eight aspects of voice: body, breath, vocal tract openness, vocal fold function, resonance, pitch variety, volume, and speed, offering a systematic way to identify and address vocal limitations.
- Expressive writing and speaking have proven healing effects. Research shows that people who wrote about emotional experiences before receiving puncture wounds had 52% complete healing after 10 days, compared to only 15% in those who wrote about neutral topics, demonstrating the physiological power of emotional expression.
- Cultural suppression of sound limits healing potential. British culture discourages vocal release during grief, labour, and stress, yet opening the throat and making primal sounds, from bellowing in childbirth to operatic sobbing, can facilitate both emotional and physical opening and healing.
About our guest:
Christina Shewell, MA, FRCSLT ADVS, is an internationally known spoken voice teacher, speech and language therapist and communication skills coach, with long experience in both voice development and therapy. She has been senior lecturer in voice and counselling skills at University College London, voice teacher at major acting schools and continues to work in a variety of ways, including as a coach for RADA Business. As an international lecturer and course leader, her writing, presentations, and workshops are eclectic and exploratory, and combine science-based fact with experiential body and voice work. This is exemplified in her core text, Voice Work: Art and Science in Changing Voices (2009/2025), and in her journal article, Poetry, Voice, Brain and Body (2020). She was recently given a life time achievement award by VASTA (the international Voice and Speech Trainers Association)
Christina has a particular interest in the link between how we express ourselves through sound in voice and words, and its connections to the emotions and physical body; this has led her to long exploration of voice as healing, and she has designed several ‘Voice and Well-being’ courses, the first of which was run through NCIM, where she has long been a board member.
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