Climate Anxiety: From Doom to Connection

Sustainability Matters a show, from CUNY TV, invited Voz to participate in this month’s show dedicated to mental health. Sustainability Matters is hosted by Tria Case -the University Executive Director of Sustainability and Energy Conservation. This studio show comes monthly where Tria interviews leading experts to explores climate change and its impact, renewable energies and sustainable practices in New York. There is a segment at the end of the show where Caera Beigtol, producer and Climate Communicator, provides recommendations to the audience on how to apply the learnings the episode.  Tria and Caera joined Gisela to meditate with sound vibration, aka Voz practice, on a sacred circle at Central Park.

To understand mental health from the perspective of what Voz offers it is important to reflect on the following. What we often call anxiety—especially in the face of the climate crisis—is not simply something to fix or silence. It is information. It is a signal asking us to pay attention. When we listen closely, anxiety reveals where we are overwhelmed, disconnected, or trying to solve something with only one tool: the mind.

The mind is powerful, but it is not enough on its own. Like an overused muscle, it can exhaust itself when it cannot find resolution. This is when anxiety, depression, or a sense of doom can take over. What we need is not more thinking—we need an embodied outlet, one that includes pleasure, expression, and presence.

This is where Voz comes in.

Rooted in my training in Voz Esencial, a chanting meditation I learned from my teacher Virginia Gascón, this practice invites us out of the mind and into the body through the vibration of our own voice. I came to it during a time of deep anxiety, panic attacks, and physical pain. What I discovered was not escape, but a way to face crisis differently—as a teacher asking for change and guiding us through.

When we vibrate with our voice, we stimulate the vagus nerve, activating the parasympathetic nervous system—the body’s “rest and digest” state. This reduces stress, lowers cortisol, and creates a sense of safety and calm. But beyond regulation, Voz offers something more: relationship as a tool.

Through sound, breath, and attention, we attune to our surroundings —first by listening to ourselves, to each other, and to the land, then by going beyond that first layer. Everything vibrates. From atoms to ecosystems, we are part of a living field of energy in constant motion. When we quiet the mind and attune to this subtle vibration, we begin to feel our place within it.

When we listen to the ground, we become aware of the life beneath our feet. When we listen to the wind and all that it carries, we begin to notice how far seeds have traveled, how birds gather and move above us. We sense how trees and plants care for us—offering oxygen, shade, herbs, and flowers that meet us with scent and presence. This awareness that we are part of a system enhances. We begin to feel that the land is not separate from us, and rather, we belong to the land. This land loves us.

With practice, our inner vibration meets the vibration of the world around us. We enter into a conversation—not through words, but through resonance. Sometimes it is hard to describe these encounters because they go beyond words. 

In group practice, something else happens. Our voices begin to move together, like a flock of birds—an example of what biology calls emergence, where the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. Without forcing it, we align. It is another confirmation that we are part of a system.

As we deepen this relationship with the land, with each other, and with ourselves, the vibrational frequency of our experience shifts. What once felt like doom begins to open into connection and possibility—not as an idea, but as something felt in the body.

Voz does not remove the reality of the climate crisis. It changes how we relate to it.

From fear to presence.
From isolation to connection.
From paralysis to vibration.