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 canbreathe again, and realize that your voice, disguised as an instrument designed to vibrate air into sound waves, is an amazing powerhouse of love.