Julie Jewels Smoot

I know what I have accomplished. I know the hours behind the writing. I know the vulnerability behind the music. I know the effort behind advocacy. I know the quiet discipline behind personal growth. I know the moments when choosing myself required more courage than anyone else could see.

This can be hard to accept, especially for people who learned early that peace depended on pleasing others. If every no once caused tension, disappointment, punishment, or withdrawal, then the body learns to cushion every decision. It learns to manage everyone else’s feelings before stating its own need.

No amount of self-care can fully compensate for living in a place where my boundaries are routinely ignored. As someone living with Complex PTSD, trauma is not simply a memory of what happened years ago. Trauma also lives in my body. My nervous system is constantly evaluating whether the present moment is safe or unsafe. Every interaction either reinforces safety or reminds my body to stay on alert.

For some nervous systems, sustained tones can feel overwhelming, disorienting, or intrusive. This is especially true for people with sound sensitivity, migraines, tinnitus, or certain trauma histories. This does not mean the body is “resistant. "It means the body is communicating. Trauma-informed sound work does not override that communication.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not only a condition of memory or thought. It is a nervous system response shaped by overwhelm, threat, and loss of safety.

People often ask what is supposed to happen during sound healing. They want to know what they should feel. They want to know if they’re doing it right. They want to know how they’ll know it’s working. These questions make sense. Many of us have learned that healing looks a certain way—calm, emotional release, insight, lightness, peace. But trauma-informed sound begins with a quieter truth:

I am a First-Degree Nia Black Belt and a Sound Alchemist, but that was not always a comfortable truth to live inside of. When I first walked into a Nia class and later into Nia training, I carried something many people could not see: a deep fear of using my voice.