History Of VMT

Voice Movement Therapy (VMT) is a form of Expressive Arts Therapy that was developed in 1992 by Englishman, Paul Newham, who was inspired by the experiences and teachings of many pioneers before him. It began with Alfred Wolfsohn, a German-Jewish soldier who, during World War I, was deeply affected by the horrific and extreme sounds (voices) he heard on the battlefield which stayed with him post-war. Wolfsohn sought help but nothing relieved his suffering, until he decided to literally give voice to the very sounds that were troubling him.

From that, he finally found relief and began teaching his newly found method to others- acting as a singing teacher and psychotherapist in London. One of Wolfsohn's students was Roy Hart, who further developed Wolfsohn's teachings, applying them therapeutically to theatre, dramatic performance and expressive arts. The Roy Hart Theatre, which he founded in France, still stands today.

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​While Hart focused primarily on performance and personal transformation through extended vocal range, Newham saw a potential to formalize this into a therapeutic practice—one that could be systematically used in psychological healing. Newham recognized that voice was not just an artistic tool, but a deeply psychosomatic one: it connects breath, body, emotion, and memory. He drew from Hart’s emphasis on expressive sound but added a structured therapeutic framework, combining elements of psychotherapy, developmental psychology, movement analysis, and expressive arts therapy. Newham was also influenced by Paul J Moses's psychological voice theory, who in the 1950's studied the human voice, and scientifically examined how vocal patterns can reveal unconscious conflicts and emotional tensions, seeing the human voice as a window into the soul. Moses's work was theoretical and clinical  whereas Newham's VMT is experiential and therapeutic.

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Another pioneer who influenced Newham was Wilhelm Reich- a student of Sigmund Freud, who broke away to explore how emotions are held in the body:

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He developed the concept of "body armor"—the idea that emotional repression manifests as chronic muscular tension. Reich believed that to truly heal psychological wounds, you had to work through the body, not just talk about the mind. He pioneered body-based psychotherapy, which later inspired disciplines like bioenergetics (Alexander Lowen), somatic experiencing, and other modalities that emphasize release, breath, and expression through movement and sound.

​Reich's influence on the body-mind relationship in psychotherapy runs through Newham's work through the focus of expanding and releasing the breath, frees the voice and with it, emotions. Furthermore, working with posture and movement to release emotional blocks, including Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic exercises of compressions and massage are embedded in VMT.

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Crucially, Newham integrated many theories and approaches, which gave birth to Voice Movement Therapy, a discipline where movement and voice are consciously interwoven to explore and resolve emotional and psychological issues.

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