Understanding the Impacts of Childhood Sexual Abuse on the Voice: A Pedagogical Guide

The impact of childhood sexual abuse alters a person's relationship with their body, emotions and senses. Many survivors are experiencing the need to seek for the next potential threat, dissociation, lack of safety in the body, and a mistrust of other people as a result of their experiences. Being that learning to sing involves a connection to the body and a 1:1 working relationship with another person, this creates challenges that often go unspoken, due to fear or lack of language.

This workshop will discuss the five pillars of the voice (posture, breath, resonance, phonation and expression) and how experiencing childhood sexual abuse impacts each of them individually. It will outline ways to work with and around the blockages that the effects of the abuse creates in these areas.

Whilst not a diagnostic tool or treatment plan, it can help support singers and teachers in making more sense of their experiences while singing, and provide a supportive framework.

As we go through each area, exploring the physiological and psychological challenges it presents, we explore all the potential ways that through acknowledgement and working with patience the voice can ultimately be reclaimed, and used as a powerful tool for one's self-esteem, connection to themselves, others and something bigger than themselves - a necessary part of recovery from the traumatic effects of childhood sexual abuse.

This course will feature Dr Elisa Monti, who will be giving an overview of her published research that examines whether perpetrators can differentiate (by listening to the voice) those female speakers with and without assault histories, in terms of their vulnerability to further victimisation.