Chloë Goodchild, founder of The Naked Voice, is a singer, music philosopher, and voice teacher. Her Your Naked
Voice is a collection of three CDs and a 26-page booklet that teaches meditative listening and singing skills.
This is not a practice for trained singers, though it can benefit them. It is a practice for ordinary people to
reclaim not only their true voices - without conditioning from society - but also to get in touch with their
authentic selves.
In the first CD, "Session One: The Deep Listening," Goodchild explains the background behind her programming and
the techniques of listening. She sees a link between silence, speech, and sound. Goodchild came to this understanding
after suffering temporary deafness for three years as a child. The silence she experienced awakened an awareness
in listening, singing, and music when her hearing was restored. She feels that we need to experience deep listening
through meditation first before we engage in vocal exercises.
The second CD, "The Seven Sounds of Love," teaches sounds for the seven chakras combined with mudras, or sacred
hand gestures. She says that we will "fall in love with our own voices, our own selves."
In the last CD, "In A," Goodchild presents a soundscape in which we can play with our voices. We can either do
some of the exercises she has taught us, or we can explore our voices freely in a playful way. It also is a fine
piece of meditation music.
According to Goodchild, she intends to restore honor to the ear, rediscover ancient knowledge of sound, and
redeem and redefine singing and sound to help us realize our true nature.
Her British-accented speaking voice and her lovely singing voice guide the listener through instruction and
practice. Though she is talking about a deepening spiritual awakening and self awareness, she also is
definitely talking about singing, with speaking bound up with it. Unlike expressing the primal voice in energy
chanting or the groaning voice Buddhist chanting, Goodchild is talking about real singing and breathing. She
believes that anyone can sing and can express and observe himself/herself or someone else without judgment. She
calls this "the witness consciousness."
Your Naked Voice is a powerful tool to help us discover more of who we are. We can then speak more
authentically and with more love.. And, some of us may even begin to be not so frightened of singing. Excellent.
Highly recommended.