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With deep apologies to my grammatically excellent mother for allowing my preposition to dangle (sorry Mom!), I offer you this question:
What more can you let go of?
'Well, I've been learning to release my tongue,' you say. Or, 'I'm figuring out how to keep my larynx stable and low.' These are both fantastic things, but really, they're the visible surface of much greater things. I just read this excellent blog post by massage therapy student Kate Barlotta entitled Eight Things I Learned From 50 Naked People. She hits the tip of the iceberg on the head, so to speak.
Here's my favourite bit:
Your successes hold your shoulders high. Your losses pull your chest inward. You hold your sadness in your throat, your anger in your jaw and your fear in your belly. Your happiness rises and falls in your chest. Love rolls in and out on the tides of your breath. It’s all there, all the time.
Boom.
In the past 10 years of teaching people to sing, I've learned the same thing.Yes, I can teach you how to physically release this bit or that bit, or smooth out these few notes, but deep underneath, it's never about that. It always comes down to this:
My job is to help you let go of all the underneath junk that is hanging around in your body: the hurt in your chest, the sadness gripping your larynx, the fear impeding your breath. My job is to help you remember that you are okay, and in fact, wonderful. My job is to lead you down a path of safety where you can breathe again, and realize that your voice, disguised as an instrument designed to vibrate air into sound waves, is an amazing powerhouse of love.
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If you're going to be in or near Canmore, Alberta in March, I'd be delighted to teach you in person! I'll be offering private instruction as well as the workshop below.
Free Body, Free Voice Workshop in Canmore, AB
Learn how to let it all go and LOVE your voice!
March 24, 2012
12noon-4:30pm
The Yoga Lounge - 2nd floor, 826 8th St.
Workshop: $99
Early Bird Rate (before March 1): $89
Buddy Rate: two for $169
Click here to register. |
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Singing, like many other things (everything?) is best done when fully present in the moment: totally accepting of what's happening, no judgment. This is a major challenge for nearly everyone I know!! It seems that a lot of anxiety about singing comes from analyzing it, and specifically, analyzing our feelings about it. According to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), when you look down, you are accessing your emotions - they live down in the gut, so that makes sense. If you look up to your left, you're accessing visual memory, and up to the right you're creating new pictures in your mind. Looking toward your left ear is a signal of remembering a sound, and toward the right ear, creating a sound. So much action going on! No wonder we have a hard time staying present when we sing: we are remembering things, creating the next sound in our minds, looking at what the music looks like, maybe watching a mental movie (real or created) associated with the song, and the whole time judging ourselves when we do it. So - how to stop the judging?
Keep your eyes busy with a task - distraction helps to take some of the focus away from controlling everything. Look out a window and see what's there. Find something beautiful and admire it as you sing - instantly your body relaxes as your mind gets off the 'Am I okay? Do I sound nice? Am I doing this right?' track. And we already know that a relaxed body allows to you sing better.
Psst - once you can reliably stop the judging, it's time to start accessing the story in as many 'modes' as possible. More on that next week!
SQUIRREL!
Try this!Close your eyes. Did you automatically look downward, and start accessing your feelings about things? I know I do. This time close your eyes and, with them closed, gaze far off into the distance. What do you notice? When I do that, the noise in my head stops. My effort shifts to creating that distant focal point, and because I'm not looking downward, I'm free from noticing and judging my emotions. Peacefulness! A very good place to start. |
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Before you get to the yawning like a lion bit (I know that's why you're here!), remember last week when we released our tongues and felt the throat relax, too? Let's take it a step further. With one hand on your throat and the other on your solar plexus (high abdomen just below your sternum/ribs), exhale and release your throat downward.
Did you notice your solar plexus drop and soften too? Cool, isn't it? Notice how you feel when you let go that way? Most people I have asked have said they feel peaceful, safe, and relaxed. Can it be that easy to let go of stress and feel immediate effects? I guess so! Just let go of your throat - you know, where you hold all the junk you want to say but don't.
Now here's the superfantabulous part: if you can learn to drop and release the throat and solar plexus on your inhale, it will set you up perfectly to sing well. Low larynx, open vocal folds, soft belly, high soft palate, all on a bed of peaceful physicality. What's not to like?? Go on, give it a go.
Try this!Yawn. Yeah, just do it, for real. No faking! Feel how your soft palate lifted up really high and your larynx dropped way down? That's awesome for singing! However, did you also feel your tongue squash up in the back of your mouth, or pull down into your throat? Not awesome for singing. Felines have got it right: yawn with your tongue all the way out of your mouth, and THAT is the right feeling for the space required to sing well. (And it's nearly impossible for humans - the tongue almost always pulls back in - but a good exercise nonetheless.) Practice accessing that openness, and you'll easily be able to find it when you need it to sing, whether for a high note, some help smoothing your register transitions, or just a little extra beauty and resonance.
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