Sam Alty

Explore your gift of voicefulness and unleash the potential of your expressive creative power. Discover the nature of your voice and the voice of your nature.

"Sam's work is deeply connective and playful" - Rachel Sweeney, Program Leader for the MA in Movement Mind and Ecology at Schumacher College

"We were bubbles, geese, future species,  shape shifters, gurgling , vibrating, harmonising, foolish and divine" - MA Student Schumacher College

People come to the voice ecology workshop for different reasons. Some because they want to open their voice, some are interested in self-development and self-awareness, some because they love the soul nourishing opportunity to be with wonderful people away from the city and be in an intensive creative process, some from pure curiosity to try something new.

A common issue that we all encounter (sooner or later) is feeling limited in the ability to express ourselves fully. It is very common for people to have limiting belief patterns.

We can’t develop our voices because of the beliefs and the beliefs won’t change because we can’t develop our voice. We have a self-reinforcing negative pattern, or block.

I think that this is probably very common across people everywhere in every country, and not only in the case of using the voice or expression, but through many aspects of our life.

But what to do?

I deeply understand this because it was (and sometimes still is!) also true for me. Since I was a child, I’ve had music as an integral part of my life. I loved playing instruments and performing, but when I opened my mouth to sing, the happy supportive environment around me, dramatically changed. With all the best intentions, friends, family and teachers would kindly advise me that it would be better that I don’t waste my time with singing.

But I couldn’t give up.

I developed my own way of finding my voice. I learnt how to adapt insights and techniques from martial arts, theatre, improvised dance, meditation and learning musical instruments to ultimately develop my voice to the level where I now have songs played on the radio, on television, I perform regularly, I run voice workshops and I receive an immense satisfaction from being able to write that.

Because it wasn’t easy for me, because I wasn’t born with a beautiful voice, because learning to find my voice has been deeply challenging, I have an intimate understanding and empathy for people who also want to explore and develop their voices.

However, my journey didn't finish with finding my voice.

As my awareness of our climate crisis grew I searched for ways that I could respond. I became very inspired to deepen my explorations of ecological consciousness work, as a way to better understand the unsustainable way in which we live with the planet. This coincided with being invited to lead a voice retreat with a group of environmental activists and the two topics of voice and environment joined together into what I call Voice Ecology.

It is my belief that self-expression and self-awareness are deeply connected. In the process of applying our attention to the ecology of our voice, and the voice of our ecology, we gain access to profound and boundless creative possibilities. The limits of our voice are quite literally beyond what we imagine them to be, and do not exlude but rather unite us with our biosphere and indeed the entire cosmos.