Finding My Voice: From Hip Pain to Personal Power
It started with my hip—a nagging ache that seemed to appear out of nowhere, the kind of discomfort that makes you hyperaware of every step, every movement. Like so many of us facing unexpected challenges, I found myself spiraling into catastrophic thinking. What if this gets worse? What if I need surgery? What if this is the beginning of something serious?
Then came the news that shattered my heart: another school shooting, this time in Minneapolis. Two children were killed while praying during a school mass.
As Bob Dylan wrote, "How many deaths will it take till we know that too many children have died?" I felt that familiar wave of helplessness wash over me, that desperate wish for someone—anyone—to ride in on a white horse and save us from this madness.
But what if, rather than waiting for a white horse, I could take a lesson from the blue whale?
Ecosystem-Wide Stress Signals
The decline in whale song is more than silence in the ocean—it is a signal of imbalance across the seas. Blue whales act as sentinels of marine ecosystems, reflecting the health of the waters that sustain them. When their voices fade or shift, it is a red flag pointing to deeper disruptions: warming oceans, collapsing food webs, and harmful algal blooms. Their silence is not just absence, but a call for us to listen more deeply to what the Earth is telling us.
As we grapple with personal and collective trauma, nature is sending us urgent messages about resilience and recovery. Blue whales—nearly driven to extinction by 20th century whaling—are slowly rebuilding their populations from a devastating low of just 2,000. Scientists have also documented changes in whale songs, with some populations experiencing shifts in their vocal frequencies. The whales are teaching us something profound: even after near-extinction, recovery is possible when we find and use our voice.
Your Pelvic Floor is The Root of Your Song
The hip discomfort I experienced wasn't just physical—it was my body drawing attention to my foundation, both literally and metaphorically.
The pelvic floor functions like a hammock of muscles at the base of the body. When balanced—neither too tight nor too weak—it stabilizes the pelvis and spine, naturally relieving pressure on the lower back.
The pelvic floor is also the launching pad for our voice and our personal power. It stores tension, fear, and unspoken emotions—especially those around safety, creativity, and belonging. It's connected to the diaphragm through a central energetic channel. When breath flows freely through this channel, our authentic voice emerges from this grounded base. Think of it this way: the pelvic floor is the drumbeat, and your voice is the melody.
Stop Waiting for the White Horse
There's a pervasive belief that someone will "come save the day"—that a metaphorical prince will rescue us from school shootings, personal pain, and global chaos. This belief, comforting as it seems, actually leads to feelings of defeat and hopelessness.
The antidote is learning to empower ourselves through intentional vocal practices. When we hum, tone, or sing with intention, we activate the vagus nerve—that crucial pathway connecting the brain to the body's major organs. Our nervous system shifts from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest mode, and dense, stuck energies begin to transmute and release.
The WhaleBreathing Practice: Your Gateway to Vocal Empowerment
Here's a simple practice toward empowerment:
Step 1: Grounding Breath
Sit comfortably. Place one hand on your belly, the other over your lower back. Breathe into your belly and imagine the breath gently expanding into your pelvic bowl.
Step 2: Pelvic Floor Release
As you inhale, feel your pelvic floor soften like ocean waves. As you exhale, let it gently rebound and lift—naturally, like seaweed swaying with the tide.
Step 3: Voice Awakening After a few grounding breaths, let out a soft hum or "ahhh" on your exhale. Feel how the sound vibrates from the base of your body, carried upward like a whale song.
Step 4: Your Personal Mantra Try repeating: "I am supported. My song rises from the deep." Allow the sound to shift into free toning, trusting whatever wants to emerge.
Rising Above the Chaos
When I feel overwhelmed by news like the Minneapolis shooting, or when my hip aches with mysterious pain, I remember: getting caught up in chaos and catastrophic thinking actually contributes to manifesting more of what we fear.
Vocal practices offer a concrete way to shift our vibration, to literally tune ourselves to a higher frequency where healing and solutions become possible. When we ground this voice in the pelvic floor, support it with conscious breath, and release it without apology, we become a living bridge between our physical foundation and our highest creative expression.
The world needs our unique songs now more than ever. It's time to stop waiting for someone else to save us and recognize that the power to transform our experience lives within us—in something as fundamental as the sound of our own voice.