A voice changes long before a woman notices anything is wrong. It drops, it thins out, it rises higher than it should, and it stays even and polite in situations that are anything but. Where that tightness comes from and how to hear it in yourself was explained by Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
The feeling of a tight collar
“Practically every woman on the planet lives with the feeling of a tight collar around her neck,” says Peruquois. Something presses lightly on the throat, something scratches there.
The sensation is so familiar that it slips past attention. A woman blames it on a cold, on dry office air, on being tired by evening. It holds for years and becomes background noise she no longer navigates by.
The throat still works. She can talk, negotiate, read to her child, sing in the car. The tightness lives a layer below that, in the place where it gets decided whether a thing will come out whole or trimmed.
Where the tightness comes from
Peruquois traces it to what she calls the good girl syndrome. A girl is taught for years to sit quietly, not make noise, not ask awkward questions and stay sweet, and parental love is offered in exchange. The throat learns that bargain long before the mind can explain it.
The grown woman carries the setting forward. She drops half of what she meant to say, softens the other half, and delivers a sentence that offends no one and tells no one anything. Her throat muscles do their part of the job honestly: they hold what was never said.
Controlling that from the inside does not work. The good girl is not easy to bring into the open, says Peruquois, but it can be done, and the first practical move is taking your voice back.
Record yourself
The fastest way to hear your own state from the outside takes a minute and needs nothing but a phone.
“Try recording your voice. Listen to it. How does it sound, do you hear your heart speaking through your voice, or do you hear tension, irritation and fatigue in it?” says Peruquois.
There is no point recording a prepared text, it comes out as a performance. Any live speech will do: how your day went, a work voice memo, a phone call you were going to make anyway.
Most women find listening back unpleasant. A recorded voice always sounds different from the one you hear inside your own head, and the first reaction is almost always the same. Sit through that reaction and listen a second time, this time without arguing with yourself: where the sentence runs on one breath and where it breaks; where the voice rests on the belly and where it hangs in the throat; how much warmth is in it and how much polite flatness.
Five sounds on the exhale
The second part is shorter still. “Take a deep breath in and on the exhale sound out a loud AAAAAA. Do that about 5 times. You may start coughing, that is a signal that a lot of tension has built up in the throat,” says Peruquois.
The sound rides a full exhale, with no attempt to hit a note and no verdict on whether it came out beautifully. Volume matters more than pitch here. The breath goes deep and low into the belly, the exhale is long and open.
Coughing on the third or fourth round is common, and it means exactly what she says. The throat is responding to the first free movement of air and sound it has had in a long time.
For many women tears come up along with the cough. Same mechanism: tension held for a long time leaves with the first sound it was allowed.
What this is for
“This is the tension that needs to come out, so that through your voice, which is the bridge between you and your soul, you can begin to shape your own reality, your own world,” says Peruquois.
The voice holds the central place in her work. “The voice is the most powerful instrument. They say in the beginning was the word, I am certain that in the beginning was sound,” she says.
No vocal training is required. What matters for a woman reclaiming her voice is authenticity of sound. Technique and pitch accuracy solve a different problem, and so do public speaking courses, because the cause sits deeper than delivery.
Women who get their sound back notice the change in ordinary places first. Sentences finish. A refusal comes out calm, with no rehearsal and no explanation afterward. The speaking voice drops and steadies, and the person across the table hears a human being.
Your voice shows how much of your life has gone unsaid, and it is also the first thing to give that back to you. A minute of recording and five open exhales give you a baseline you can measure from.
If you want to work with your voice calmly and in order, take the Peruquois course Vocal Yoga, available on her website under Courses.
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