What is Voice Work?
Voice work encompasses a range of somatic and therapeutic practices that use conscious vocalization—from breathing exercises and toning to vocal improvisation and extended-range singing—to explore the relationship between voice, body, emotion, and psyche. Unlike classical vocal training aimed at performance mastery, voice work treats the voice as a gateway to psychological integration, trauma release, and authentic self-expression. Practitioners work with sounds ranging from sighs, grunts, and groans to sustained vowel tones and full-range singing, often accessing vocal registers and emotional territories outside habitual speech patterns.
Origins & Lineage
Modern voice work traces its origins to Alfred Wolfsohn, born in Berlin in 1896, who served as a stretcher-bearer in World War I trenches and was buried alive under corpses during a bombing raid. Upon leaving the military hospital in 1919, he remained physically and mentally shattered, haunted by auditory hallucinations of wounded soldiers’ cries. Unresponsive to conventional treatments, Wolfsohn’s healing journey began with voicing his trauma through spontaneous improvised singing. Through his own experience and inspired by Jungian depth psychology, Wolfsohn initiated his theory and approach to voice in the 1940s and 50s. He became a pioneering voice teacher, working in Germany in the 1930s and in London from 1947 to 1962. Wolfsohn saw the voice as the most revealing part of the human psyche and, in developing his philosophy, he embraced art, creativity, dream, self understanding and concepts of a saviour and God.
Roy Hart was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1926, studied psychology and English at Witwatersrand University, and gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His chance meeting with Alfred Wolfsohn was decisive and he abandonned a promising career in the ‘West End’ theatre to study with Wolfsohn. After Wolfsohn’s death, one group continued to train under Roy Hart’s leadership, extending vocal demonstrations into full public performances, including Eight Songs for a Mad King composed by Peter Maxwell Davies. This group formed the Roy Hart Theatre, leaving London in 1969 and migrating to Hampstead. In 1974 the Roy Hart Theatre moved to the south of France to establish a permanent rehearsal studio and school. Roy Hart died in a car accident a year later, but the remaining members continued producing experimental theatre and teaching the vocal expression approach initially established by Wolfsohn.
Parallel developments emerged in the 1970s. Music therapists were introduced to toning through Laurel Keyes, whose 1973 book Toning: the creative power of the voice is considered a seminal work in therapeutic vocal sound work. Keyes’ technique focused on grunts, growls, and ascending vocal lines. A popular technique introduced by Jonathan Goldman in 1992 relies on sustaining one pitch on an open vowel for the length of the exhale. Simultaneously, Kristin Linklater (1936-2020), a Scottish vocal coach who trained at LAMDA, taught voice there for six years before relocating to the United States in the 1960s to work with the Guthrie Theater and Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Her work was designed to liberate the natural function of the vocal mechanism as opposed to developing a vocal technique.
How It’s Practiced
Toning is a form of vocalizing that utilizes the natural voice to express sounds ranging from cries, grunts, and groans to open vowel sounds and humming on the full exhalation of the breath. At its core, vocal toning is the practice of making elongated sounds, such as “AH,” “OM,” or humming, while staying aware of the breath. Unlike singing, the goal isn’t melody or performance—it’s resonance. Sessions typically begin with breathwork to regulate the nervous system, followed by sound exploration that may include humming, vowel tones, sighs, or full-range vocal improvisation.
In the Roy Hart tradition, practitioners work to access the full emotional and sonic range of the voice—often extending beyond the typical three-octave range to four or five octaves. As a consequence of Wolfsohn’s extended vocal technique, students developed highly flexible and expressive voices, some in excess of five octaves. During the three years prior to Wolfsohn’s death, this group began to demonstrate the artistic use of their vocal expressiveness in vocal music, poetry, and drama. The work integrates vocal exploration with movement, psychological inquiry, and improvisation.
It is well known that extending an exhale longer than the inhale will slow down the heart rate and calm the nervous system. When we’re singing, toning, humming, and extending the length of that sound, we are essentially extending the length of the exhale to be longer than the inhale. This is why singing IS breathwork taken to the next level with the sound of your voice.
Voice Work Today
Contemporary seekers encounter voice work through multiple channels. The Roy Hart Centre in Malérargues, France, continues as an active teaching center offering residential courses. Today the Roy Hart Centre welcomes people from all over the world who come to find unique approaches to voice, body, movement, and psychology, applicable not only in the performing arts but also in everyday life. The work is based on a history of more than 80 years of research, study and practice.
Voice work has also entered mainstream therapeutic contexts. Music therapists are increasingly utilizing toning in their clinical practice for a variety of therapeutic aims. Toning is used to improve respiration and enhance relaxation, regulate breathing, control pain, and enhance focus and concentration. Contemporary facilitators often combine voice work with breathwork circles, sound baths, and somatic practices in retreat centers, wellness studios, and private sessions.
Common Misconceptions
Voice work is not vocal training for singers or actors seeking technical mastery of pitch, diction, or projection—though professional voice teachers like Cicely Berry and Kristin Linklater work at the intersection of technique and liberation. It does not require musical ability or “a good voice”; in fact, the attachment to sounding “good” often represents the conditioning the work seeks to release.
As Cicely Berry’s work points out, ‘technique’ as such is a myth, for there is no such thing as a correct voice. There is no right way—there are only a million wrong ways, which are wrong because they deny what would otherwise be affirmed.
Voice work is not a shortcut to catharsis or a guarantee of emotional breakthrough. While sessions may produce release, the work is equally concerned with building vocal capacity, breath awareness, and embodied presence over time. It is not exclusively spiritual or therapeutic—practitioners range from actors to trauma survivors to those simply curious about their vocal potential.
How to Begin
Begin with simple humming. Sit comfortably, take a full breath through the nose, and on the exhale, produce a sustained hum with closed lips. Notice where the vibration travels in your body—the face, chest, skull. Repeat for five to ten breaths.
For formal study, Kristin Linklater’s Freeing the Natural Voice (1976) remains foundational. Cicely Berry’s Voice and the Actor (New York: Hungry Minds, Inc., 1973) offers another essential text. Seek teachers trained in the Roy Hart lineage, Linklater technique, or certified sound healing practitioners. Look for offerings that emphasize liberation rather than correction, exploration rather than performance, and integration of breath, body, and emotion. Many practitioners now offer online sessions, though in-person work allows for hands-on somatic support.
Avoid practitioners who promise rapid transformation or who lack training in trauma-informed facilitation, especially if you have a history of vocal or psychological trauma.