Album Review: “Emotional Cleansing: Feminine Sound Practice with Peruquois”

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by an emotion that your body gets tense and your voice box literally closes? Have you felt tightness in your throat, a dry mouth, fatigue or digestive upset as a result of emotional impact? This physiological response is common in human beings, and many people who do not know techniques to reset their nervous systems — either intuitive or learned — tend to remain in this state of tension even after the mind has decided to not feel the intensity of the emotion anymore. There is a saying that’s going around in yoga and other somatically-based therapeutic practices: “Your issues are in your tissues.” This concept contributes to the strong foundation of what vocalist and voice therapist Peruquois has created with her album “Emotional Cleansing: Feminine Sound Practice with Peruquois.” This album has indeed been created specifically for people in female bodies. But as Peruquois says in her video introduction to the album’s concept, the benefits of women doing these practices ripples out to positively affect all their relationships.

As Peruquois notes in the introductory video, the listener is meant to engage with this music both vocally/vibrationally and bodily. She has created an embodied movement practice to help your process along. However, this guided movement video fails to address the grief tracks. Perhaps this was considered a poor selling point for an otherwise empowering album.

If this music resonates with you, take a moment to be conscious of the power of your own capacity for intuitive self-healing and insight — it has brought you this far. Close your eyes, let the music enter you, and trust yourself. It is only when we can drop into a self-honoring and authenticity that we can stop resisting parts of our truth, and welcome them into a broader awareness of how our pain helps us understand suffering in the world. With a personal connection to this awareness, we can explore how to connect with others tenderly and honestly.