21. How introverts can awaken The Warrior Light in their voices (with Dominique Oyston)

In this episode, Serena and Dominique Oyston discuss: 

• Why more introverts need to speak up and share their stories, their intuitive gifts, and their voices
• Negative beliefs and traumas that hold introverts back from growing
• What archetypes are and how they help us in our personal growth journey
• How the warrior archetype helps introverts access courage and take inspired action
• How to develop the skills you need to deliver and share your message even if performing and speaking are not your innate nature
• How Dominique helps women find the light in their voices and learn who they are, so they can speak their truth confidently and shine their spirits through their voices

Guest Bio:

Dominique Oyston is an international soprano, voice and performance mentor and visionary at the leading edge of the awakening voice of the Feminine.

Dominique's unique intuitive vocal skills evolved within her professional operatic career, alongside years of training in Yoga, Steiner teaching, sound healing and in dance, acting, mythic history, body language and archetypes. 

After a 20 year international career, Dominique founded the Goddess Voice Academy, a global teaching to return feminine wisdom of the voice, banished since ancient times, to the public speaking arena. Dominique supports conscious leaders to embody the creative power and potential of their full spectrum voice.

Resources and Helpful Links:

Goddess Voice Academy: https://www.goddessvoiceacademy.com/

Join Dominique’s online community:

FB page: https://www.facebook.com/goddessvoice

FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/327329514332337/

Ways we can connect further:

• Join my facebook community: Global Introvert Network 
• Connect on instagram: @serenalow_quietwarriorcoach 
• Have a meaningful conversation on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/serena-low/

This episode was edited by Aura House Productions

Transcript

Transcript – Interview with Dominique Oyston

[00:00:03 Serena]

Welcome to another episode of The Quiet Warrior podcast. I'm excited today because I have so many questions I've always wanted to ask someone who knows something about the voice.

You know how introverts always get told, “You have to speak up. You have to speak louder. We can't hear you.”

Well, today I've got a very special guest. Her name is Dominique Oyston, and I first met Dominique years ago when she was working as a vocal coach in her own business. And I took some lessons from Dominique because I wanted to know how I could be heard, but also how to use my voice better and perhaps, you know, stop being so easily talked over and maintain some kind of presence when I was actually speaking. So welcome Dominique. And thank you for being here.

[00:00:51 Dominique]

Ah, it's a pleasure. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

[00:00:55 Serena]

Yes, I've been looking at your journey with sound and with the voice. And I know that you've had years as an opera singer, and you've got a lot of interaction with the classics and philosophy, because every time I read your blog or listen to you speak, there's some references to the classics and mythology and all that can. Can you tell us more about that?

[00:01:20 Dominique]

Yeah. Well, my father was a theatre director and he was a Shakespeare expert in the Stanislavski method. And so and my mother was a historian and a dancer. And so my whole world as a child was the world of language and imagination and the arts and creativity. And so I guess I ingested that love for mythology and the love for ancient literature at a very early age, but I then had a particular passion for myth and legend and ancient wisdom and the stories of the goddesses. And yeah, that spiritual aspect to it, perhaps was quite strong, a strong calling for me. And so I had that and everyone in our family, we sang, we just sang because you know, my dad used to have Bach and Vivaldi playing all the time in the house.

And yeah, so it was very sort of natural for me to, I think, connect, be involved with that sort of area of the world and that kind of way of thinking.

And then when I decided to become a singer myself and go on to the operatic stage and train my voice in that way, I actually had a very quiet speaking voice.

And so I wanted to be on the stage because that was really familiar, but I didn't want to be an actress because I knew that my voice wouldn't hold up.

And so it seemed to be that people said “Oh, you can sing!” And so I started to train my voice to sing, and I found that singing and opening up the power of the voice as a singer was a pathway that made sense to me, whereas I've never really been able to create a a substantial amount of volume with my speaking.

But the skills that I've learned from being a singer have actually made it easier for me to work with a quieter, more introvert nature and a quieter, more introvert voice.

So yeah, those singing skills gave me more confidence and more just skill sets, technical skill sets, and technical know-how around how to support a voice that essentially is quiet, quiet-spoken voice and comes from an introvert personality.

Does that make sense?

[00:04:01 Serena]

It does make sense. I almost feel like every introvert perhaps needs some singing lessons, those of us who have that tightness around the voice, who find it very hard to speak up.

It's not that we don't have anything to say. It's more like how do we convey it in a way that's powerful and that comes from inside.

I think that's that's the challenge I feel that a lot of introverts have.

[00:04:26 Dominique]

Yeah. And we learn our vocal patterns. We learn to speak between nought and three basically, and we learn the muscular patterns of expressing and speak.

Talking is set up in our body at a very young age and they're modelled from the people that we are closest to, you know, usually our mother or father or primary carer. And so if the vocal pattern of our primary carers is quiet and slightly tense in the larynx, for instance, or tight in the jaw or tight in the back of the tongue or held back and you know, just reserved, and don't you know all those messaging around “Don't speak up, don't be seen, and don't be heard”, that's what we're going to set in place in the muscular setup of our speaking voice. And so singing, singing training can teach your larynx new patterns of resonance, and accessing resonance that perhaps you may not have been had access to through the people you modelled, speaking from as a child.

So yeah, singing lessons for introverts is really, really, really helpful just to have some extra skill sets.

[00:05:51 Serena]

And perhaps I was just thinking, not just the extra skill sets, but also one more avenue or one more outlet for self-expression - things that we might find difficult talking about perhaps come up more easily with music.

 
 
 [00:06:06 Dominique]

Yeah. And I find with the introvert nature, the introvert nature has such a big internal world and we have these conversations with ourselves in our own head and we can happily chat to ourselves and imagine and go on sort of journeys of imagining scenarios and imagining conversations. And so when it comes to an actual conversation, the idea of then, I guess, making our voice more seen and heard, because we so easily converse in our own heads.

Yeah, there's a little bit of a shift to: “I can't talk the same way that I talk to myself in my inner landscape and that I talk to my intimate friends one on one.”

I can't talk in that way. If I want to be seen and heard by more than one person or more than myself, I actually have to bring my voice into a little bit more presence.

I have to bring my voice into a little bit more embodiment. I have to show up more deliberately and almost like broadcasting yourself.

And that is not really natural for the introvert nature. We're not broadcasters of who we are.

Yeah. And so, but the voice needs that, it actually needs that. Does that mindset shift around, it is safe and it is okay and it is a good thing to step into that space where I allow myself to be heard by more people.

Am I making sense with that idea?

[00:07:55 Serena]

Yes, very much so. It does answer one of the unasked questions, and that is that you mentioned the word safe and safety and psychological safety, and it brings to mind all the times when people have wanted to say something, quiet people, but they are filtering and processing: is this okay? Is it safe for me to say this thing? Is it the right group to say this thing to? 
 
 You know, if I say this thing that could be challenging to someone else or that is going against the grain, is it going to get me in trouble or am I going to be judged? Are people going to like me less? So I guess maybe there is that self-imposed fear of judgement as well.

[00:08:37 Dominique]

Absolutely. And I I think when you said the word filter, like all these filtering mechanisms they've done. I mean, you probably know this, but they've done tests and the introvert nature tends to be slower and process more and filter more and before they actually deliver the thought. And so it can take longer to actually contribute the thought, and if you're in a conversation with a group of people, the conversation may have already moved on, and so by the time you have the thing that you want to say, and it's been run through all the filters, then yeah, you may feel like, oh, everyone else is five minutes ahead, and so what you have to say which may be really beautiful and really meaningful and powerful and important, yeah, it can be kind of like no longer in the centre of the conversation that is happening, that is moving along at quite a speed and many introverts sort of talk about this situation where let's say you're in a circle and everyone's going around the circle and saying the thought. You're an introvert, you say your piece, you say something that you think has meaning and you don't get much of a reaction.

And then like five people around the circle, someone else says exactly the same thing in a slightly different way, and everyone goes “Oh yes!} And this sort of mic drop moment and there's this incredible response.

 And I find that sort of situation really fascinating, and it's very common for introverts to have that experience of actually not being the value of what they have to say, not being heard adequately unless it is in that more intimate situation, like in a conversation that we are having now where suddenly, you know, all the words start to flow, don't they?

And so there are skill sets of trusting yourself that I think the introvert nature needs and the introvert person tends to need: trusting your voice, trusting that even if you don't get the kind of feedback that you're looking for, that what you have to say is important.

It is valuable and it is relevant, and there's almost like this is where the warrior comes in.

And I think introverts need to call on their inner warrior, that warrior archetype, to support themselves as speakers, as contributors to the conversation, because there are so many, as you say, these filtering mechanisms that keep them silent.

And so the warrior strategies and the warrior archetype. We need backup from our inner warrior. We need backup from the warrior skillsets.

We need to cultivate a courageous nature when it comes to the voice and when it comes to speaking. And I think you're very familiar with the need to do that, but it has to be quite deliberate.

Yes, to face our fears and to overcome them and do that deliberate work.

To I guess find a way to support ourselves because the warrior skill sets of the voice of the introvert, you know, we have the ability to deliver intuitive-based guidance and instinctive-based guidance and thoughtful guidance.

We have these skills to see, you know, vision, a vision and the mission. We have these skills to I guess connect to the heart, to speak from a level of compassion, to speak from our emotional power. To receive, if we're brave enough to connect to it. We have these skills around enduring pain, enduring suffering. We have these skills around being inspirational.

But if we don't support ourselves to, I guess, gather the courage to say yes, I do have these skills and I will give voice to them, and I will back myself to go into that more vulnerable space with my voice and step out from behind the veil and step out from hiding and acknowledge that, yes, these skill sets that I have as an introvert are useful, even though they're not always as exciting as the extroverts’. 
 
 They are very, very important, and we have to learn to back ourselves. And so this warrior nature is very important, I think.

When it comes to the voice and speaking up and our message and being heard and our communication, I don't know what your thoughts are about that.

[00:14:04 Serena]

I do actually have two questions around that. The first is for those of our listeners who are not familiar with archetypes. What would be the simplest way to explain that?

[00:14:15 Dominique]

Okay, so an archetype is traditionally an idea that is universally recognised as a sort of, almost like a model of being. So let's say the femme fatale.

We kind of know, everyone has an idea of what a femme fatale is. That is collectively agreed upon and that the femme fatale is an archetype. The warrior: everyone has a collective agreed upon idea of what a warrior is.

And that is an archetype. So an archetype is this concept of identity that is collectively agreed upon.

People generally have an agreed upon collective idea of what a teacher is, or an artist or a singer you know. So these ideas of and that collective agreement means that we can actually communicate and say, ohh, call on your inner warrior and immediately people know generally what we're talking about. 
 
 We're talking about calling upon the skills of courage, the ability to face an enemy.

The ability to handle a weapon, the ability to go solo and advocate for someone or have a team to advocate. The ability to protect yourself. A warrior knows how to defend an idea or territory. So these are the generalised agreed upon ideas of a warrior. And so that's an archetype. 
 
 An archetype is something that exists in the collective consciousness that people can relate to, to inspire them to take action. So archetypes inspire people to take action and inspire people to gather,. I guess, a greater sense of self-identity.

They're tools that that help us self-identify and take action based upon that self-identification.

[00:16:40 Serena]

From what you've said then, identity is not just one thing that we attach ourselves to or see ourselves as. It sounds as though there are multiple archetypes that we can call upon and tap into as the situation requires.

[00:16:57 Dominique]

Absolutely. And this is one of the fascinating things about human beings, is we have this tool of imagination.

And it seems we have this flexibility to step into the role of the mother or the role of the tyrant, or the role of the submissive, or the role of the advocate.

Yeah, we have this incredible range that we can simply switch on.

My dad, who as was mentioned, was a theatre director, he used to work with his actors with a technique called The Magic Gift.

“And so if I were the king of France, I would walk through the, you know, the courtiers. And I would expect them all to bow to me.

And if they did not, you know, I could happily say ‘chop off their heads!’, get rid of them, or I could actually, you know, so that we suddenly say, if I were the King of France, the magic if.

If I were a witch, I could say “hubble bubble toil and trouble”. Do you know what mean? We can immediately go into these roles and we know it's not ourself. We know it's not us, but we can still call upon the qualities of an archetype to strengthen what we might perceive as weaknesses in our own nature, or deficiencies in our own nature to back us to do certain things. 
 
 And so the introvert who wants to build their voice and wants to, you know, use their voice in the public arena more confidently, say this, I think that's kind of what we're talking about here.

And who knows that they would prefer not to turn up to a Facebook Live, would prefer not to step on stage, would prefer not to stand up and speak in front of a group. How do they move past those fears, those things that go against their innate  nature, to take the action that is purposeful for their mission, their task, their goal, the thing that they know they need to do, and so they call on archetypes, they call on skill sets, they call on mentors and coaches to help them overcome fears and yeah, so there's a there's a range of tools that we can use to give us the courage to do the things we need to do that aren't easy, that aren't part of our innate natural nature, but we can develop as an acquired nature.

[00:19:54 Serena]

I like your concept. I like your concept of the acquired nature because a lot of us, if people stop at the label, the self-identified label, they might say I'm an introvert and so I can't speak and so it doesn't come to me.

You know, it's good for them, good for the extroverts, but I can't think on my feet and I can't make it up as I go.

[00:20:18 Dominique]

And these are things, they're simply things that can be learned. And so there I think there's a kind of cop-out in a lot of ways where we can say, yes, this is who I am and really acknowledge the self. And that can be a really self-affirming, self-accepting, self-loving journey. But then when it gets to the point where it becomes an excuse for not taking the action that we know we

need to take to grow, or to do what we're here to do in the world, then yeah, we need to realise that, okay, so it's not innate and natural, but I can develop the skills to develop an acquired nature that I use to perform in certain circumstances to achieve my goal. Yes. And this is a really important, I guess, differentiation, not to make excuses if and as you say, say I can't because I'm an introvert, well, okay, it's more difficult because you're an introvert.

But we are designed as human beings to grow. Life on Earth is about growth and transformation, and if we're not growing and if we're not transforming, and if we're not learning, then what's the point really of having this amazing mind, this amazing imagination, this amazing ability to to learn about the world.

You know the gift of being human is an extraordinary gift because we have multiple ways of learning and growing.

But it's not easy to go to learn and grow beyond the unnatural nature, unnatural personality, or the belief systems that have been programmed into us that restrict our self-identity. You know, we call them negative beliefs or negative programmings or traumas that stop us from stepping out beyond the comfort zone.

And so yeah, there are tools and skill sets that I think we have to really embrace as needed to grow beyond the comfort zone of our natural nature, our self- identity as an introvert and yeah, to really just embrace the warrior, the courage needed to do that and to face our fears. There's a lot of fears to overcome as we grow, yes.

[00:23:01 Serena]

And I love that you keep bringing up the warrior because I facilitate an introvert community, and what I'm doing is helping quiet achievers to go beyond that, to be able to evolve into the Quiet Warrior. So the idea of the warrior is that, as I explained it to them, it's that they can speak up when they need to speak up and lead when they need to lead.

So when there's something important enough that's bigger than their own fears and insecurities, then that's their opportunity to shine.

So, talk us through the process of how would someone who is innately quiet, introverted, reserved, maybe a bit anxious or doubtful about their own competence, or even their worthiness to speak. We hear a lot on social media this phrase, you know, speak your truth. And speak truth to power. What do those phrases mean?

[00:23:59 Dominique]

I know. In a way, it's absolutely ridiculous, isn't it? Oh, yeah, I'll just go and speak my truth.

I have no idea what my truth actually is, and our truth can sort of shape-shift depending if we're in our trauma self or whether we're in a highly emotional state or whether we're in, you know, really grounded state or whether we're teaching or whether we're sort of sharing, you know, the wounds of our heart. The truth is a shape-shifting thing but I guess the process, in the way that I teach it in my programmes, I have a platform of teachings and trainings called the Goddess Voice Academy, and I work with women to find that light in their voice that actually gives them the motivation to speak the truth and the ability to know what that truth is, and then to articulate it through language.

And so I think the starting point really is to know the self.

If I know that essentially I am someone who is a bit of an enchantress, I like talking about magic, I like talking about transformation, I like talking about how we can shape-shift and change ourselves.

I like singing to people's hearts to change, to raise their vibrations so they can actually feel different. I like working in that world of transformation and a little bit of magical, you know, magic to it. 
 
 So if I know that about myself and I'm actually saying that is who I am, I'm not going to hide that part of myself, then I can show up as that, and confidently express that part of myself and not shut it down. So I think knowing the self so we don't shut down that core nature is really important to start knowing it, loving it, accepting it and getting to the source of this, the strengths within that innate nature. So I think that's the starting point and that's inner work.

So that we have inner work and outer work in in I guess gathering skills to speak up and speak our truth.

You have to start with the inner work. You can't avoid the inner work anymore. We have to know the self because knowledge is power, it is absolute power and knowledge about yourself is power.

Then the next step is once you've developed that, I guess that core confidence about yourself and how you can show up personally, then your next step is taking a message. What is my message? What is the thing that I want to step out and teach with? 
 
 What is my core teaching point to the world? What is my purpose? 

And I think that's the next step, to actually really start to say, if I had to teach one thing to the world or one thing to one person, what would it be?

And for me, at a very basic level, my message is how to shine the light of your spirit in your voice.

And I don't mean in a fluffy light, you know. That can be physical power. It can be emotional power. It can be personality, radiance. But that is the core of my message. How to shine your spirit, your light through your voice, and all the ways we can teach that.

So the next step is to really nail down the message, the core piece of teaching.

You combine that with “This is my identity. This Is who I am.”

I like to hide out a lot of the time and then when I get in front of someone it's like, ooh, sparkle sparkle sparkle - that's natural for me.

But I do have to be invited because I'm not gonna naturally step on the stage. I have to be called out of hiding.

Then the message. So I've got my message. The next thing is, I guess gathering the skill sets, the external skill sets at speaking in public, sharing in public and turning up, with, I guess, that feeling of being safe.

So the knack of developing the skills around, how do you create a situation where you feel safe to turn up as you with that message?

Because the core message can come from a place of you that feels quite vulnerable. Like, five years ago, there's no way I would have said, “That's my message, to shine your spirit through your voice.” There's no way. It felt very unprofessional. It felt way too sort of woo-woo and fairy.

And I just would not have had the courage to reveal myself at that deeper level. And I think for introverts, this is where they then need to do. They need to build the skills of feeling safe to reveal the deeper parts of themselves.

Does that make sense?

[00:29:39 Serena]

Yes, because I think you've given introverts who generally can be quite into their left brain, something that they can start with when, because when you said gathering skills and then you also mentioned doing the inner work and the outer work, which I thought was a very good way to summarise how the entry point for somebody who is not familiar with this kind of work, that there is an inner component which cannot be escaped there and skip over that level and then try to do the outer work, which is where a lot of focus is, you know, just go to more training, sign up for another course, do this programme, get this certification, get recognised.

And that is more of the outer, that is the external validation. But what you're saying is that we need the inner foundation to support that, and that foundation needs to be solid so that we are inside ourselves and we need to be strong inside ourselves.

[00:30:32 Dominique]

Yes, and you have to have both sets of skills. You have to have the inner skill set to be approving of yourself on the inner and daring to share those deeper thoughts with a wider audience, and then the external skill sets of how to speak to an audience. We will note they're conventional speaker skill sets. They're conventional gathering more information, more pieces of information to share.

And if we gather 1000 million pieces of information to share, it does not necessarily give us the courage to share the deepest truth.

And really, human beings are at a point now in the world as people are looking for their purpose. They are looking to share those deeper truths.

We're starting to understand that this is exciting. It is an exciting frontier.

For you know, warrioring and becoming more alive and becoming more life filled and becoming more interesting to an audience. If you're just sharing, you know, Google, you can Google anything now, so just sharing more information is not as interesting as sharing your, you know, the way you've…

What's the source of you, your vulnerabilities, your stories, your knowledge, your authority?

All mixed in together. That's the truth I think that people are looking for now. And then shaping that in a way that it's like, oh, that's interesting. Oh, I didn't know that. And so, you know, the mind is satisfied. The mind is interested in gathering information, but it comes through this channel of someone who's interesting, not someone who hasn't dealt with their own fears and their own insecurities, and who is essentially masking who they truly are.
 
 We want to know who people are now. We just do. And that means stepping into that inner landscape of “Who am I?”

I have to find that out first before I can share that with an audience, yeah.

[00:33:03 Serena]

Exactly. Exactly. I love that because that is something we can all do today.

Regardless of where we are in this personal journey of, you know, growth and transformation, we can sit down, we can make time with ourselves and ask ourselves some honest questions and sit with those answers and sit with the uncertainty. Sit with the not knowing, and I do believe that you know, out of that process something floats up, something comes out of that.

[00:33:31 Dominique]

Well, just as a I guess an example of how an introvert can learn to speak their truth confidently. When I was a teenager, I hardly spoke at all. I was so full of, I guess, torment.

And you know all the stuff that teenagers go through. I could not speak. I just could not articulate the complexity of the confusion of who I was.

And not that we expect to know ourselves as a teenager in our teenage years, but I kind of made this vow, to find out how to unravel all the stuff inside me and be able to speak that deeper truth clearly and be seen and heard.

Because I felt so ashamed and so guilty and so self-critical about not being able to articulate what I thought, what I felt, what I imagined. I just didn't have the language for it.

And it's taken me, you know, 40 years to get to that point where that now flows through me and I do know how to say what I feel in front of 30,000 people or two people, say what I think in front of you know, a bigger audience or one person and say what I imagine and, you know, who I am, and the message that I have to share about who, how we become more, how we grow.

So I can do that now, but it's taken a long time.

And along the way, I guess I've learned those shortcuts and the biggest shortcut is really, really know who you are, self-identify and then get the courage.

To the courage, add skill sets. Courage doesn't just happen. You actually have to develop the skill sets of courage to, yeah, share that, and not keep hiding.

[00:35:47 Serena]

Yes, and wouldn't it also be true that a lot of reasons that introverts hide is that fear of, there is this dilemma going on. I want to be seen, for instance, if I'm a business owner, I know I need to get in front of people. I need to talk about my business and share what is that I do, but I also want my privacy and I don't want to be judged. So if I put myself out there, I will get scrutinised and I might find that actually I'm not that confident inside myself to be able to defend myself, so I suppose that's where you call upon your inner warrior, isn't it? Because you didn't mention that.

One of the things a warrior does is the ability to defend yourself.

[00:36:30 Dominique]

Yes, and we need to start in small arenas. We need to actually practise. So it's actually really quite debilitating and quite traumatising to go from having these conversations inside your own head or with, you know, a trusted friend where you feel safe or in these environments where you feel safe, to go into an environment where you don't feel safe, and then make mistakes.

And so we have to practise. The voice is this Instrument. It's a little bit like, use it or lose it.

We find out by doing it and so it's a very important recognition step to say if I want to learn to speak to market my business, I absolutely have to practise speaking in environments where I can make little mistakes and make a lot of mistakes.

And it doesn't matter so much. We've got to practise and say, for instance, at the moment in the Goddess Voice Academy, I've got a a 12-week training with women to create your signature programme, and module 3 is all about teaching them to practise sharing their message, even if it's in what they call MVP form, minimal viable, you know performance or product, form. Practise it and what happens is the voice is a really interesting feedback centre. A lot of people don't realise this about the voice when we use it.

What happens is the voice, because human beings are programmed for truth and lies, like we know that lie detectors work.

The voice is programmed as a truth mechanism, and so if we say something that feels muddled or doesn't feel quite right or doesn't feel quite true, we get this immediate feedback of uh, uh, that's not right. Like it's a physical response and most people what they do when that physical mechanism to say that wasn't true comes into play in the body.

Most people go back into hiding. “I can't speak.” Rather than realising that their voice is an actual tool for giving them the feedback about what isn't true and then they go oh okay, I need to rework that, cause that bit wasn't true.

So rather than self-judgement, realising that actually this is a really great feedback tool, so I'll go in, I'll do the work, I'll you know, try writing it out a few more times, try speaking it to my row of stuffed toys at home.

A few more times until it feels more true.

Then going out there and trying it again and getting the next level of feedback and then the next level of feedback. So our voice is such a sort of place where we self- identify and self-criticise that we don't realise that it's an incredible mechanism in a neutral way, emotionally neutral way for giving us feedback of the truth alignment. Speaking our truth alignment.

And this is one of the things that I I absolutely focus on teaching, is giving people the confidence just to do it, so they can get the feedback and then they can do the work to bring them closer to the truth of their message. The truth of who they are.
 
 I just don't see anybody teaching the voice out there as this fantastic feedback mechanism, absolutely fantastic.

[00:40:18 Serena]

That is so interesting because you are talking about, I'm thinking of introverts, especially when they start to speak, does it always mean that every time a person's voice gets hoarse or the throat tightens up or they feel like they're going to lose their voice, it's because they are disconnected from their truth? Or is it also because they haven't learned the proper vocal techniques to protect their voice and use their voice appropriately?

[00:40:48 Dominique]

It's both, but the two sides are the same point. So if your voice gets tight, it can be either primarily that you have a muscular pattern of tightness that you've learned, as I said, when you were nought till three, when you were little, and that you've been speaking for the last 20 years with that low-level tightness. And then when you're in an emotionally charged or hyper-vigilant situation where the nervous system is charged, then the throat tightens up even more as a natural defence mechanism, and so you get more tired and more sore, tight, and more hoarse.

And the emotional charge may come from the fact that simply, you're in a new situation that's unfamiliar, or the emotional charge may come from stories of self-criticism. You know, that the messages of self-criticism, the messages of doubt, the mindset and the, you know, the thoughts and emotions.

So you can approach the same problem of, let's say vocal tightness or vocal hoarseness or vocal lack of resonance and power.

Like if I pick my voice up into my front resonators next to my nose that it changes my voice.

And if I pull my larynx back and drop it slightly low, that changes the tonality of my voice.

If I actually put it more in the middle and more in the centre, but still low, I'm accessing chest resonances and my voice changes again.
 
 If I pick it up, lift my larynx and tighten the back of my tongue like that and my oh then Oh my God, I can hardly speak.
 
 So this, we can approach it emotionally and resolve emotional issues. We can approach thought-based issues like “I'm not a good speaker”. That mindset, that mental inhibition. So we have emotional inhibitions, mental psychological inhibitions.

But I like to go to the physical first.

Because if we can teach someone before they have to speak just to kinda make those, oh, to stabilise the voice in the body because your adrenaline comes from the body, it doesn't come from, you know, outside somewhere. The whole nervous system charge and the adrenaline charge that tightens up the larynx comes from the body.

So if we can teach our body that it's safe, it's safe for me to speak by touch. Touch is a really … See? People can't see on the podcast at the moment. But what I'm doing is I'm actually stroking my neck and my throat very slowly and gently down to my heart. And I'm saying to myself “I'm safe”. It's safe for me to relax in my voice, into my body … ahh … I'm using the breath, sigh a little bit, and just to kind of making the whole thing a little bit, yeah, having this humming tone in the voice.

And just continually creating this physical reset, so that these are activities you can do to tell the body that it doesn't need to go into fight and flight.

So when the mental thoughts or the emotional charge comes in to go into fight and flight or freeze, what you're doing is, you're then going, no, no, it's okay, it's alright. 
 
 You put your hands on your chest. Put your hands on your shoulders. Say “I'm safe. I'm safe. Calm down. All is the breath”. Slow everything down and to just dispel the charge, the adrenaline charge, the nervous system charge.

And bring everything, bring the body back into homeostasis.

And then particularly focusing on the larynx and lowering the larynx, softening the jaw hinge, softening the back of the tongue, letting the voice be a little bit more at the front in the frontal resonators.

Can you see how they’re physical skill sets? Yes, I'm working with the physical first and you know, there's a lot of mindset work out there which really, you can do all the mindset work in the world, and if you don't speak to your nervous system in your body and say “I have a body and my body is the thing that is messing with my throat”, then it's nonsensical. It's not logical.

Your voice is in your body and the nervous system is the thing that is messing with it and the tension in the jaw is the thing that is messing with it.

[00:45:58 Serena]

It sounds to me that what you're saying is that the nervous system for some people is dysregulated for various reasons. So I think you mentioned past traumas perhaps or self-criticism, maybe somebody made one of those comments and you've taken it away as something personal that's affected you and you carry it throughout your life. And so it becomes internalised and so your nervous system is perhaps out of harmony with how it should be. Is that what you're saying?

[00:46:28 Dominique]

Yes, to some degree. And then there's also the immediate situation of the system. So I know the system is designed to, I guess, register threat.

That a threat to our survival and anytime we speak a deeper truth, that is actually a vulnerable thing to do. That is actually a threat to our survival.

Because every time we speak a deeper truth or every time we say something that we're not 100% confident about, our nervous system is just gonna fire. It just is because that's how it's programmed because it registers every nuance of potential threat, so an unfamiliar situation, unfamiliar people, never having said that exact speech before. Like, there's a lot of things in this situation that I'm saying that I, you know, I could be quite sort of self-critical about.

I know that I haven't explained things perfectly because I'm just going with this sort of flow of response and flow of information. I haven't prepared this speech, so my nervous system is constantly firing in this situation because there are new factors.

But because I've done the work, the inner work to say, you know, I'm okay with who I am and the fact that it it can be a bit muddled at times, I still have the ability to get my point across and I still have the ability to share something that has meaning for people, so I've done that inner work and I've also done the outer work of working with my own physical voice, my own messaging, and the language around it, and yeah, those factors offset the immediate situation, which is the potential for me being anxious because this is an unknown situation, well, it's a new situation. So there's there's two: there's what has been built up over the past, and that even inherited genetic lineage trauma comes through about, oh, we don't speak up in our family.

You know that's a genetic inheritance and if you want to go into the whole spiritual zone, we can have karmic wounds.

We come in with the feeling that, like we always feel like we're being strangled when we, you know, speak up. Those are karmic, all stories.

And then there's the experience of this lifetime.

And so those 3 components, all you know, they're all in there.

And yeah, but if we offset them with skills and self-knowledge, then any situation where we find ourselves in that is, you know, new, unknown, unfamiliar, it's okay. We can keep resetting the nervous system and go: “It's okay, it's alright. It's alright to turn up with all the stuff, all the baggage and still speak our truth.”

[00:49:52 Serena]

And I wonder if also there is that element of, I think you mentioned it a while ago, about self-trust and would self-trust also come?

To me it seems that self-trust originates in sel- love. So if I love myself unconditionally, even though I’m accepting that I'm imperfect and accepting that I'm still growing and haven't figured it all out, and nevertheless I still love myself, so there is that core foundation there, that core truth that I love myself and on that I can build, I trust myself and I trust this situation to unfold perfectly. And I trust that I will.be able to respond or handle, you know, this uncertainty that I'm going through right now and so then do you think that also helps with the introvert who's trying to express their version of what's true?

[00:50:43 Dominique]

There is a little bit of a, I would put a caveat on that. And so that idea of you know that everything will work out perfectly. Often it doesn't work out perfectly and often we get that physical body response of, oh that was really like, oh, that was wrong.

And it's in our body. And so you talk about the self-love.

There's a huge journey towards actually getting to the place where you do love yourself, but along the way there's self-kindness, self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-affirmation. You know there's all sorts of degrees of accompanying yourself on this journey of to learn to speak your truth and acknowledging that you're going to probably have quite a few situations where you feel like “I really didn't do what I wanted to do there”. Or “that was ridiculous” or “I said the wrong thing completely”. You know, I've had so many situations where I said something and I look back and I go, what did I say?

That was stupid.

What did I mean, like really?

Just no, I didn't want to say that.

Yeah, having compassion for ourselves and not being unrealistic about the fact that along the way to honing a perfect message, there will be a lot of stumbles and falls, and yet we must warrior through that and not look back, and say yes, I did stumble and fall then, and I did say something, and maybe I did lose the job because of what I said. Or maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person and I accidentally hurt them.

As long as we warrior through that and keep ourselves learning and growing and going, and self-educating, then, while we are saying I will have compassion and I I will set a goal that I love, I love who I am and I love the way I speak and it's sort of a, you know, it's sort of all these paths slowly converging to a place where actually, you know, I'm good.

It's not perfect, but this is good. I'm where I actually need to be.

To say what I'm here to say in the way that I enjoy, and I know I've got a pretty good idea that a lot of people enjoy as well.

There's a lot of ups and downs on the way to achieving that, and it's a really important that we don't stop.

[00:53:43 Serena]

Yes, I I really appreciate what you said about not looking back, and also about being realistic.

And accepting the journey as it is, because there's no way we can control or predict that. And sometimes we try too hard to control and predict, but there's also an element of surrender in there as well, isn't it?

Along with the trust, so not that things will work out perfectly, more that we can accept how it is right now, without knowing how it is going to be.

[00:54:16 Dominique]

And this is where there's a great courage to face the unknown. And this is where I think we have to sort of almost like: this may not be relevant for everybody, but we have to tap into that inner source, that inner light, that place in us where we do feel that call to purpose, call to the mission, call to contribute something of meaning, the place that we know in us is light, that does have the ability to inspire. Everyone has that. Everyone has a light, and to use that as a resource, until you keep tapping into, yeah, I do feel called to contribute something of meaning, and not pretend that we don't, because we all do.

And sometimes it's really hard to get there, to the source of what that thing that I and him are here to contribute is. And so we say oh, you know, oh it's too hard.

And this is where, again, the courage, the warrior nature is vital. It's such a beautiful archetype to strengthen us along the way.

And one of the things about the warrior is the warrior clears the field of that which does not serve us.

The warrior lays waste to and clears all the dead wood, so to speak. It has the capacity to destroy the things that are the enemy inside us to our own mission, our own purpose, our own light, our own gift. The treasures that every human has inside them, and to sharing those with the world. So the warrior has that ability to clear away the things that aren't serving our light, I suppose, the thing that we really want to say from our hearts.

 
 
 [00:56:31 Serena]
 
 It sounds to me like what you're saying is also that the warrior pathway is perhaps the solution for the introvert who's thinking about how do I use my voice in a way that's energetic? How do I protect that energy at the same time being authentic?

And at the same time, it also has to be sustainable, because what I've noticed with the energy cycle is that it fluctuates.

So sometimes one might start off, you know, full of enthusiasm, feeling that call to mission, the call to purpose, and  you embark on that journey, the warrior’s journey, and then along the way, you feel like the energy falters. So then how do you maintain and protect your energy and keep that energy so that you have energy to sustain you all the way to your goal?

[00:57:21 Dominique]

It comes back to that self-care and self-love factor and just that real acknowledgement that this is who I am. I only have a certain amount of energy.

And it depletes through the day and this entire world of achievement and push-through has programmed me to ignore the fact that my body is telling me that I'm flagging. And so what I do is I, you know, this interview is in the morning.

So I know that I've got a certain amount of charge in the morning and so I do the interview.

And then after an interview or after something, wherever I can, I'll lie down horizontally and rest because I've had adrenal fatigue three times in my life. Severe adrenal fatigue, where I felt like I was drugged all day, every day.

And it was torture. Dragging myself through life. And so I've learned through these incredible sort of times of burnout. One of them went for 18 months, was literal torture.

Yeah. So our energy is incredibly precious and to take our stand to defend and protect and be the guardian of our energy. So yes, the warrior is important because this protection, this guardianship of our energy is this precious resource, incredibly precious resource, which means that we have to say no.

We have to say no, I can't stay up late tonight.

No, I can't watch that TV programme tonight. No, I can't go out with my friends even though I really want to. No.

And gee, that's hard.

But the things that are hard to do like that, like protecting our energy, learning the skills to acquire, to develop an acquired nature, speaking nature, they're yeah, they are the things that the warrior can support us with.

 
 [00:59:32 Serena]

And one final question: what would you like introverted women to remember the next time they open their mouths to speak and share their truth?

[00:59:46 Dominique]

I think the introvert, I think that women generally underestimate their power.

I think they generally undervalue themselves, generally underestimate the impact that they can have if they do the inner work and do the outer work.

I think there's an incredible amount of self-doubt along the way.

I work with introverts - pretty much all the people I work with now are introverts.

But they all need this incredible acknowledgement of yes, you can. Yes, you are. Yes, you are this light. Be that light, be it in your way.

And protect your energy and allow yourself to... (Sorry, I had a really late night) and allow yourself to take the time that you need to develop your presence. Develop your message.

And it may take a bit longer to dive down into the power source cause it's not so on the surface and readily available, so it may take more work to get into the depths and then bring those depths of light and power and authority and self-confidence out up to the throat centre, and then out through that distribution centre of the throat, language speaking.

Yeah, just to really self-affirm the power of the introvert, I would love introverted women to really start to, say, walk around the house going: “I am an incredible power in the world.”

And not have that concept of ohh it has to look like this. It has to look like this in external push.

But simply to walk through the world, being that light, being that power, being that magnificence.

And just the vibration of that creates change, we know it does. We know when we're sitting near a confident person, their breathing is different, their presence, their energy is different.

And then do the work to build the messaging. But however long it takes is however long it takes.

And not to put false expectations upon when and where and how that should be achieved, but to use the warrior, rather than to say, I need to be doing this by this time with the warrior energy, use the warrior energy to say “I am”. I am this incredible light and my voice will win through.

That sort of messaging. Does that make sense?

[01:03:01 Serena]

It makes so much sense, it makes so much sense.

And thank you for sharing all that. Now you did mention that your signature programme is the Goddess Voice Academy, is that right?

[01:03:11 Dominique]

I've got a lot of programs in the Goddess Voice Academy, but the two that I think are really important are these. Create Your Signature Program which is a 12-week mastermind and that's all about the tools of speaking a message with something to sell at the end of it, and then the other programme, I think that is really powerful, is The Heart Chakra Voice Journey.

And when we actually anchor our voice into our heart and develop this self-love and self-compassion, all these sorts of spontaneous miracles start happening. It's actually really fun. The clients in that programme (tell me) this happened and that happened. And someone just came up to me and said “Oh, you look so beautiful today”. And this, this is spontaneous heart experiences. And when we connect the voice to that, that's really fun.

[01:04:11 Serena]

Well, thank you so much, Dominique, for what you do in the world and especially on behalf of introverts who are listening to this podcast episode.

I'll be posting your links in the show notes, but you can also go to goddessvoiceacademy(dot)com to find out more out about Dominique Oyston's work.

So thank you, Dominique, for your wisdom today and for showing us how being a warrior can help us, you know, access that inner courage that we need to show up as introverts with a message, and the right voice to share it in.

[01:04:45 Dominique]

Thank you, Serena. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[01:04:50 Serena]

Thank you.