If you’ve ever felt afraid to let yourself be truly heard, this conversation might change the way you understand why.

There’s something about the voice that holds more than most of us realize.

It’s not just sound. It’s not just communication. It’s the place where our conditioning lives – all the ways we learned to shrink, to soften, to perform, to sound like someone other than who we actually are.

I’ve felt this in my own body. The worry about being too loud, too bold, too much. The way my voice would shift depending on who was in the room. The fear of judgment that would rise up right when I was ready to express something true.

And what I’ve come to understand is that healing the voice isn’t really about the voice at all. It’s about healing our relationship with expression itself – with being seen, being heard, and taking up space in a world that taught so many of us to make ourselves smaller.

We were never taught to trust our own sound

So much of what we carry in our throats is inherited. The messages we absorbed as children about what was acceptable to say and how we were allowed to say it. The moments we were told to be quiet, to tone it down, to not make a scene.

For some of us, expression became dangerous. For others, it became performative – something we learned to shape for approval rather than truth.

And then we wonder why it feels so hard to speak up in a meeting, to sing in front of others, to share our real voice in our work or our relationships. The conditioning runs deep. It lives in the body. And it doesn’t just disappear because we decide we want to be more confident.

It takes intention. It takes practice. It takes a kind of devotion to ourselves that most of us were never shown.

When music becomes the anchor

This week’s conversation brought me into territory I’ve been curious about for a long time.

Dominique Zuniga is a medicine musician, vocal alchemist, and facilitator based in Bali. I’ve actually been her student – I took her looping course and was struck by the way she holds leadership. There’s a fierceness to her presence, a groundedness, and a realness that you don’t always find in spiritual spaces.

What I didn’t fully know until this conversation was her story.

Dominique grew up in California with a childhood marked by instability, abuse, and eventually foster care. She moved through trauma that most of us can’t imagine – and in the middle of all of it, music became her lifeline.

She shared a moment that hit my heart. She was in a foster home, feeling like she wanted to take her own life, when she heard a girl playing guitar in another room. Something about watching this girl – eyes closed, completely in her own world, connected to something untouchable inside herself – shifted everything for her.

Dominique picked up a guitar, started teaching herself, and started playing on the streets for money to pay for lessons. She began a journey that would eventually lead her to Bali, to medicine music, to facilitating transformational vocal experiences for thousands of people around the world.

But here’s what struck me most – it took her five years of trying to sound like other people before something broke open.

Singing to discover who you are

There’s a moment Dominique described where everything changed. After years of searching outside herself, trying to match what she heard on the radio, trying to perfect her sound – she had a spiritual awakening. And her entire relationship with her voice shifted.

She stopped trying to sing for perfection. She stopped trying to sound like somebody else. And she started singing to discover who she was beyond this third dimension.

That reframe landed in my body like medicine.

How many of us are still trying to sound like someone else? In our content, our conversations, our creative work? How many of us are performing a version of expression that we think will be acceptable rather than letting our actual voice come through?

Dominique spoke about the balance between technique and surrender – how there’s value in studying your craft, building the muscle, learning the tools. But when it’s time to actually express, you have to let all of that go. You have to trust that it will flow in the way it needs to.

She also offered an invitation that felt both simple and radical: explore the full spectrum of your sounds. The ugly, the raw, the beautiful, the shy. And love yourself there.

The fierceness required to hold space

One of the things I asked Dominique about was something I’ve personally struggled with – how to hold boundaries as a facilitator. How to protect your energy when you’re serving large groups. How to navigate the archetypes that show up in containers wanting to take more than what’s being offered.

Her answer surprised me.

She said she doesn’t lead with compassion. She leads with fierceness.

Not harshness – but a deep awareness of the responsibility she holds. When you’re guiding people through transformation, you have no idea what they’re carrying. Someone might be going through a divorce. Someone might have just lost a family member. The opportunity to impact lives is real – and it requires energetic hygiene, clear boundaries, and radical self-awareness.

She talked about how in order to show up in her highest integrity, her cup has to be full. She needs to feel nourished, rested, solid. So she sets boundaries – don’t ask questions right after a vocal journey, talk to her team, let her rest and recharge.

It was a reminder I needed. You can’t hold everyone if you’re not holding yourself first.

Fear disguised as questions

There was a moment in our conversation where we both got really honest about something that happens in the online space.

Dominique named it perfectly – there are the words people speak, the technical questions they ask, but underneath there’s often a frequency of fear. People wanting hand-holding, wanting reassurance, wanting someone to make the decision for them.

And she doesn’t have space for it. Not because she doesn’t care – but because her role is to hold the pillar, hold the frequency, and invite people to rise and meet her there. She can’t reach down to pull everyone up. That choice has to come from within.

I felt this deeply. Technology has become such a channel for fear and entitlement. The expectation that leaders should be endlessly available, endlessly accommodating. And the truth is – you’re not entitled to someone just because you paid to be in their space.

The more sharp Dominique becomes with honoring her body’s yes and no, the more refined her containers become. That’s the lesson. Boundaries aren’t walls – they’re the riverbanks that allow the water to flow with power.

What the world actually needs from you

Near the end of our conversation, Dominique shared something that’s been moving through her strongly this year – a call for leaders to drop the performance.

She said she’s hungry to see our humanity. Our tears. Our pain. Our messiness and rawness. The journey of what it actually means to show up in leadership while still being a human going through your own struggles.

You don’t have to put on a mask to be a teacher, a guide, a healer. You don’t have to pretend you have it all figured out. You’re allowed to take the mud you’ve been sitting in and alchemize it into gold – together with the people you’re serving.

That permission feels important right now. For me. And I imagine for many of you reading this.

We all desire to bring beauty into this world and to die knowing we left it a little bit better than when we came. That doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence. It requires honesty. It requires the courage to let yourself be heard – as you actually are.

A closing invitation

If your voice has felt stuck, if expression has felt scary, if you’ve been performing a version of yourself that doesn’t quite fit anymore – you’re not alone, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with you. You’re just carrying conditioning that was never yours to begin with.

The path back to your authentic voice isn’t about getting it right. It’s about exploring. It’s about loving yourself through the ugly sounds and the beautiful ones. It’s about remembering that your pure nature is as wild as birds and as unapologetic as the sea.

Click below to tune into this powerful episode!

Xoxo, Lauren

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