Through your voice, you can express all your emotions – and your needs. Do you find this easy or difficult? Arts therapist Karen de Kock explains that every emotion has a sound, why we may feel silenced, strangled or blocked, and mentions processes and techniques that can bring relief. You can use your voice to activate or calm your nervous system – even to save your life!

If you are new to podcasts, simply click on the arrow to listen to Karen and Mariette, or on the download button to download the conversation onto your device.

In ep. 184 of the weekly podcast series Calm, Clear and Helpful, arts therapist Karen de Kock touches on

• the story of herself, her sister Andria, and song & rhyme  

• Karen’s profound Maasai encounter in Kenya

• the vocal ensemble at an NGO for persons with severe cognitive impairment and physical challenges

• why our voices are essential to our being and well-being - e.g. communicating our needs through sound

• how the arts therapies - art therapy, drama therapy, movement & dance therapy, and music therapy – give people “a vocabulary”

• working with high levels of depression, anxiety and trauma

• how depression silences, anxiety strangles and trauma blocks people  

• every emotion has a sound!

• why every emotion should move out of the body

• why you can “use your voice to save your life”

• working with an individual client - using a vocal interaction, drumming improvisation or guided visualisation - or in groups or corporates

• the voice as a bridge

• techniques we can use as daily practices to improve the quality of our lives.

  In this episode, Karen mentions Jonathan Goldman, an American sound healing pioneer.

Scroll down to About for more info on Karen, including her contact details.

The free podcast series Calm, Clear & Helpful is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Player FM and Iono.fm – I hope you’ll subscribe!

About Karen

Arts therapist Karen de Kock is based in Centurion. She does psychiatric hospital work at the Vista Clinic, is a part-time lecturer and clinical placement supervisor at the University of Pretoria, and consults individuals in her private practice.

She offers corporates resource-orientated, arts-based group processes for team building, psycho-social support, well-being and debriefing. Interventions include de-stress drumming, guided visualisation, voice work, art-making and storytelling.

Karen's arts-based interventions are supported by a Post-Masters certification in Crisis Debriefing and Trauma Counselling. She is an HPCSA-registered arts therapist.

She worked as a part-time lecturer and clinical placement supervisor at the University of the Witwatersrand until December 2023 and spent 15 years at an NGO for persons with severe cognitive impairment and physical challenges.

Karen is a classically trained singer with an Honours degree in Ethnomusicology and a Clinical Masters degree in Music Therapy.

Email address: musictherapy@telkomsa.net

Original music by Mart-Marie Snyman

Thumbnail image: Unsplash

Photograph of Karen de Kock: supplied