by Francie La Flow

Your voice and your womb are mirrors of each other. They’re two of the most powerful centers of expression in your body, the places where something moves from deep inside you out into the world.

I first shared this as the 3V Connection, in a live conversation and then a masterclass with Sofia Araújo, founder of Swara Yoga School, all about the voice, the vagus nerve and the womb. This is my guide to how your womb, your heart and your voice are linked in your body, what researchers have found about sound and pleasure, and a simple practice you can try tonight with your own two hands.

Your diaphragm and your pelvic floor breathe together

Your diaphragm is a dome of muscle under your lungs. Your pelvic floor is a hammock of muscle at the base of your pelvis, and it cradles your bladder, your bowel and your womb. The two of them work as a pair.

When you breathe in, your diaphragm drops and your pelvic floor lowers and softens with it. When you breathe out, both lift. In 2011, a team led by Helga Talasz watched this happen on MRI and saw the two moving in parallel, breath after breath.

So when your breath stays high and tight in your chest, your pelvic floor tends to stay held too. Let your breath drop low and soft into your belly, and the whole base of your body gets permission to let go.

Your voice feels the difference straight away. Sound sitting on a high, held breath tends to come out thin and pushed. Sound sitting on a low, soft breath has somewhere to land, so it comes out lower and fuller.

Your jaw and your womb soften together

Clench your teeth for a moment and notice what happens low in your pelvis. Now let your jaw hang loose, lips soft, and notice again.

Many midwives, doulas and bodyworkers see the jaw and the pelvic floor soften together, which is why a loose, open mouth and long, low sounds are so often encouraged in labour. It’s widely observed and only lightly researched, so hold it as something to feel for yourself.

For your voice, your jaw is the gate. Clamp it and the sound squeezes through. Soften it and the sound can pour out.

Your vagus nerve runs from your throat to your belly

The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It runs from your brainstem down through your throat, your heart and your belly, and it plays a big part in how your body moves between feeling on guard and feeling settled.

The nerves that move your vocal folds are branches of your vagus nerve. So every hum, sigh and song you make happens right in its neighbourhood.

It may carry messages from even lower down. Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple spent years studying women with complete spinal cord injuries, some of whom could still feel sensation from the cervix, at the neck of the womb. Their brain imaging study, published in 2004, suggests the vagus nerve can carry that sensation from the cervix to the brain, bypassing the spinal cord.

Your throat and your womb are on speaking terms!

Your heart follows your song

Your heart speeds up a little every time you breathe in and slows a little every time you breathe out. A long sung phrase is one long, slow out-breath, so singing shifts your heart rhythm while you sing.

Singing with other people adds something sweeter. In 2013, Björn Vickhoff and his team in Sweden measured the heart rates of choir singers and found them rising and falling together as they sang, shaped by the structure of the song.

Maybe that’s why a circle of women singing one simple song can feel like one body breathing.

Sound and pleasure: what the research shows

When I say pleasure, I mean aliveness: sensation, warmth low in your belly, a flush across your chest, the kind of joy that makes your hips want to sway. Your voice can take you there quickly, and researchers have been measuring some of why.

• Music you love releases dopamine. In 2011, Valorie Salimpoor and her colleagues at McGill, my old university, found dopamine released in the brain at the most moving moments of music people loved, and in the moments just before them.
• Singing together raises your pain threshold. In 2012, Robin Dunbar’s team at Oxford found that singing, dancing and drumming raised people’s pain thresholds, an effect they linked to endorphins. Passive listening didn’t have the same effect.
• A singing lesson can raise oxytocin. In 2003, Christina Grape and her colleagues in Sweden measured singers before and after a lesson and found their oxytocin rose, and the amateur singers said they came out of it feeling more joyful.
• Humming changes the air in your nose. In 2002, Eddie Weitzberg and Jon Lundberg found that humming raised nasal nitric oxide to about fifteen times the level of a quiet exhale.

A body that feels safe can feel pleasure

A body that feels safe can feel pleasure, and pleasure tells your nervous system it’s safe. Each one opens the door to the other, and sound is one of the fastest ways into both.

When you’re braced, your breath climbs, your jaw clamps, your pelvic floor tends to grip and your voice goes thin. When you soften, they tend to let go together. A low hum is often the easiest place to start, because any note at all will do, and how it sounds is nobody’s business but yours.

Sometimes the first sound that comes is a sigh you’ve been holding for years, or a few tears. Let those come too. Through the darkness is how we get to the light.

So relax into sound instead of reaching for it. Reaching is effort, and effort tells your body there’s still work to do. Relaxing into sound tells your body it can stay.

Your cycle and your voice

Understanding the four seasons of the menstrual cycle instantly changed my life. Living in rhythm with my own cycle helped me feel more aligned and more joyful.

In this yogic and energetic way of seeing, your bleed is your inner winter, the days after it are spring, ovulation is summer, and the days before your next bleed are autumn. Your voice can follow the seasons too. You might play with:

• Winter: soft humming and long sighs, with very little effort
• Spring: playful, curious sounds and new notes
• Summer: big, open, joyful singing
• Autumn: lower, slower tones and honest words

Hold this as an invitation to listen. If you don’t bleed, many women follow the phases of the moon instead.

A womb-to-heart practice

Give yourself five quiet minutes somewhere you feel comfortable making sound.

1. Place one hand low on your belly, over your womb, and the other on your heart. Let your teeth come apart and soften your jaw.
2. Breathe down into your womb and your pelvic floor. Feel your belly and the base of your pelvis widen as you breathe in, and lift as you breathe out. Take five or six slow breaths like this.
3. Hum a low “mmm”, as low as it wants to go, and feel for it under your lower hand. Let your hips sway if they want to.
4. Open your mouth into “ahh” and let the sound rise. Feel it move up into your chest, under your top hand, into your heart.
5. Follow what feels good. Slide between notes, sigh, laugh, go back to humming. Whatever it sounds like is right.

When you finish, keep your hands where they are for one more breath and notice what feels different.

These breath and sound practices work in every body, so men and anyone without a womb are so welcome to try them too. Rest your lower hand low on your belly and breathe into your pelvic floor.

One gentle note. If you have pelvic pain, pain during sex, or hoarseness that lasts more than a few weeks, please see a doctor or a pelvic health physiotherapist first. These practices sit alongside that care.

Keep going

If you’d like to be guided, my free Somatic Voice Starter Kit is a gentle place to begin. It has a Permission to Sing meditation, a vocal care ritual and a playlist to sing along with, and nobody hears you but you.

If your throat tends to tighten before the words come, read how to balance your throat chakra. If your voice goes quiet under stress, read trauma and the voice. And to feel how all of this lives in your whole body, read cultivating embodied resonance next.

Tell me, when you hum low with one hand on your womb, where do you feel it?

About Francie

Francie La Flow is a voice healer, somatic guide, bhakti musician and retreat leader based in Ubud, Bali, with more than 15 years of experience. She holds an E-RYT 500 with Yoga Alliance and a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from McGill University, and is trained in Compassionate Inquiry. She works with people all over the world through 1:1 sessions, online programs and retreats in Bali and Thailand.