Curing versus Healing

  As I was walking down Broadway looking at the books laid out on tables by the street vendors, I spied a book called, “Beyond Technique.” The subtitle was “Psychotherapy for the 21^st Century.” How could I go wrong for $1.50? The notes on the author, Lawrence LeShan, turned out to be very interesting. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern study of mind-body interaction. Now I knew I had some kind of a winner. Here is an excerpt from this book.

    “The goal in the medical model is to cure; to relieve symptoms or system failure. Health is seen as present when there are no painful or disturbing symptoms or indications of danger of system failure. Health is defined as the absence of sickness.

     In psychotherapy this has essentially been translated to mean that health is present when there is no special psychic pain and there is effectiveness of functioning in society. Freud expresses this {on what we may assume was a gray and gloomy day in Vienna} when he said that the goal of psychoanalysis is “to remove the special pain of the patient and return him to that unhappiness common to mankind”! Freud had, as we see, his bad days, even as you and I.

     One problem with this definition of health—the absence of special psychic pain and effectiveness of functioning in society—is that it defines as healthy the successful manipulative psychopath and the chameleon of the other-directed personality. One the other hand, the struggling artist, groping and suffering to express a dimly perceived vision, trying to help the world’s inhabitants see themselves and the rest of reality more deeply, is defined as sick. He or she often suffers much psychic pain and may not be very effective in functioning in society. A Van Gogh or a Mozart is seen as more sick than a junk-bond Milliken or than the rich and successful corrupt ex-presidents of many failed savings and loan companies for whose failure the rest of us are paying in our taxes.

      We as psychotherapists do not really believe this definition of cure, but it does influence us and makes many of our problems worse. It confuses us as to what we are really trying to do in our work and therefore the methods we use to accomplish this.

     We all know what it means to cure. It means to apply a procedure or a substance that will stop symptoms or system failure, that will, in our terms, “ease psychic pain and/or increase social effectiveness’: the ability to survive and prosper in society.

     That is what is means to cure. But what does it mean to heal? In our work it means to help the patient grow toward greater zest, enthusiasm, joy in life. To become more and more fully him-or herself and unique. Karen Horney expressed this in her definition of psychotherapy: “the attempt to help the patient take his neurosis, his uniqueness, his individuality, from the front of the face where it acts as blinders and move it around to the back of the neck where it can act as an outboard motor.” Freud’s definition was that of curing, Horney’s was that of healing.”

          “Beyond Technique Psychotherapy for the 21^st Century    Lawrence LeShan, Ph.D.

 Therapy of any kind should be the quest not to cure, but to heal the whole individual. We can cure one or two isolated problems, but when we direct our work properly, we can heal the whole. Taking an aspirin for a headache may cure the headache, but if they are persistent, the cure is only a stopgap measure. The headache will come back again. We have not gone inside far enough to heal. Taking a drug to cure a symptom only masks it and makes us feel more comfortable for the time being. We must find the real culprit.

In singing, fixing a note here or there may ease our anxiety and make us less afraid to sing the song or aria, but have these “fixings” cured the problem?  If the note remains isolated and not part of the whole voice, then the conscious mind must always calculate how to sing it, as opposed to actually knowing how it fits in the total scheme of things. We must get into that higher mind to solve this puzzle for us 

Our conscious mind can think up thousands of ways to cure a problem. However, until we get in touch with our intuitive mind, our brain, it will always be a cure, not a healing. We remain with the rest of the crowd, in that “unhappiness common to mankind.” The job of the singer then, is to find a way to rise above this, and become more him/her self. We know intuitively that something is wrong. But do we listen to this intuition, or blind ourselves to the truth? If the high note is a problem, the middle voice doesn’t carry, or the low notes fade away-- common complaints--one is led to believe everyone has these problems, we’re just one more in the long list. This belief is not true. There is a way to understand the voice to heal these problems, not patch them up. The voice is healed by knowing--not by doing. Only by experiencing our true sound can we get some idea of how to go about this business of healing. But how do we get there?  

Don’t try to fix it! Our solution to every problem seems to be a doing one rather than a being one. Again, be a human being, not a human doing. The only way to find your singing voice is to allow the body to show you what it wants to do. We must get out of the way—with our conscious mind—and begin to listen to our bodies. Since we have pulled our bodies along with our head for so long, it is a daunting process to stop this ingrained habit. There are many ways to get in touch with our bodies, and all are valuable, and all are absolutely necessary to great singing. In this age of sedentary living, where most of the work is being done for us by  machines, the body goes largely unused in our everyday life. Now there is a great need for gyms, exercise classes, and running tracks, because we don’t get enough exercise. I have a dog, and what a blessing that has been because I at least get out and walk three times a day. Otherwise, I would probably continue to play the piano, write on my computer, or lie down and take a nap whether I needed it or not.

Singing requires an alive body. Our cardiovascular system needs a workout all the time. We must always be in touch with our breathing. Proper alignment of the body is an absolute requirement for proper singing. The body is the instrument, and if it is not in good condition, we cannot expect the voice to emerge. This does not mean you have to have a great physique, it does not mean you have to even be your ideal weight—although there is no call for obesity--it means that the body needs to be flexible and supple to allow the inner mechanism to coordinate properly. Only then will the breathing work properly. The alignment of the body is foremost on the list for proper breathing. Body work of any kind will be a great benefit for this alignment of the body and keeping the inner mechanism free of the outer skeleton. Only by breathing properly can we think properly. The body and mind must both be open. This opens our emotional center as well.

Yet, between the body and the self there lies a cloud of thoughts and feelings, which neither serve the body nor the self. These thoughts and feelings are flimsy, transient and meaningless, mere mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and destroying.”

   “I Am That”   Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj  Translated by Maurice Frydman

Vocalway concerns itself with this cloud of thoughts and feelings. No matter how healthy and aligned your body may be, if the wrong thoughts are in the way they do obscure and destroy a singer’s voice. As long as one believes the cure to singing lies in manipulating that healthy body to sing, there is going to be no healing—only fixing and fixing and fixing of the same old problems common to most singers. After a while, even the singer should tire of being afraid of high notes, or low notes, or whatever, and start going inside to find the solution. If the concepts and perceptions of how the voice actually functions are obscure or even non-existent, we have no data on hand from which to do this work. On the other hand, some have too much information, and that, too, blinds and chokes us. Often a singer will go to a teacher to fix the high notes, or they go to with the intention to fix those pesky low notes. The middle octave of the voice is the most important, with the low and high voice extensions of the same sound. We sing most of our music in the middle range, so if that is in place, health begins to return and the body begins to experience the sound. Now the conscious mind will begin to accept that sound, and awaken to the fact that every note is in the same place—it’s only the air and cords that change the pitch, not our efforts to put those notes in a special place. If the latter happens we get a voice that sounds like it is in three places, and indeed it is because that’s how the conscious mind has put the puzzle together.

In both the above excerpts the words “blinds” and “blinders” are used. This is exactly what the conscious mind does to us. It literally blinds us to the path to freedom. We hold so much information and fear in the front of our face, that it blocks the path to free singing. We stubbornly hold on to the jaw, the tongue, the shaping of the lips, thinking they are the ones that should do the work and not the inner mechanism. Our thoughts are holding these things in place. As Karen Horney says, “move it around to the back of the neck where it can act as an outboard motor.” This is such a profound statement about singing, that I can’t believe it is a quote from a much respected psychiatrist. Again, all roads lead to Rome. All truths are the same.

The throat is in the back of the neck! It is behind and below the tongue which should be elevated to give access to the windpipe and allow the air to pass through this tube on its way to inflating the diaphragm. Allowing the breath to be taken behind the elevated back of the tongue allows the deepest breath, the most relaxation in the body, with no relaxation of the facial muscles or the tongue. These should maintain their integrity, not held up, but the face should look like a normal human being in speech—not a slack-jawed gaper where all the facial muscles are collapsed in a heap. Dropping the jaw simply collapses all the muscles of the face, and disturbs the inner mechanism totally. A complete breath cannot be taken with a dropped jaw. The body is in the wrong alignment for this to happen. We can gulp a lot of breath with a dropped jaw, but we have blocked the whole singing mechanism in doing so. Cures such as “catch breath”, “take a big breath”, etc., only satisfy the conscious mind. They never really heal the problem of proper breathing. The body knows how to do this, but we must be reminded on a daily basis to allow the breath, not take a breath. The old ingrained habit of taking a breath is hard to let go of, but when the mind finally gives up and allows the body to show us what it wants to do naturally, it becomes disgustingly simple to have breath for even the longest of phrases.

I’m sure that right now the conscious mind is having a fight to accept the above words. We live in that land of “mental dust that blinds and chokes”, and we must get out of that land or forever remain in the darkness of our intellectual mind. The conscious mind is constantly having us do things. The intuitive mind—the brain—allows things to happen. If we have a problem with a high note, the conscious mind wants to rush in and fix it. It tells the body to batter away at the throat until the note is nailed to the wall. Now we pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves how clever we are. We are blind to the fact that this was only a stopgap measure to get through the piece. There was thought of the high note only—not that it was a part of the whole phrase that includes the note before it and the note after it. Somehow the attention was only on that one note, and if accomplished was enough for us. The secret to all great singing, or playing, is legato. If this legato is interrupted by placing a particular note in a certain place, the legato suffers and hence the flow of the music is disturbed. Music must be sung horizontally, not vertically, or else we have lost the very essence of making music. Great music making is “beyond technique.”

No amount of explaining can teach us how to sing. A book can only give us an idea of the right mental state to be in before we launch into a song or aria. This mental preparation will begin the healing process. When the correct information has been accepted by the conscious mind, a change will occur in our singing experience. Our control system will begin to relax, the body will stop resisting or helping, and the natural flow of energy through our body will occur. This transformation is the healing. Now our conscious mind can think of what we are singing about, not how we are singing. The brain will take care of the voice. The conscious mind can now say the words, color the vowels, sing high notes and low notes with ease, act, and be our of fear. So many times we hear this fear in a singer’s voice, and it comes from the voice not being grounded in the body. When we connect with our bodies, all is right with the world. We can now experience a “greater zest, enthusiasm, and joy in life.” We are in our own space. We feel protected and loved as long as we remain in our own space. Being there becomes the new habit—one that gives us renewed energy and power. We are now becoming more confident and relaxed. In this state we can do anything because the worries have left, and since erroneous thoughts have been put aside, energy is not being wasted.

When the voice is healed, the words now become a language because the brain is saying a sentence. The color of the sound can change in an instant because of our thoughts about the sentence we are singing—not because someone told us to sing a note in a certain way. We can change things on the spot, and this is our control and our freedom. Once we are free, and we are in this creative space, we can make the aria or the composition ours. The secret is to first let the composition be what it is, and let it show you what the composer had in mind. Listening to records can be disastrous. Because singers are great parrots, they can learn a song or aria from a recording and the voice can unconsciously take on the identity of the artist singing it. Now we have imposed that singer’s idiosyncrasies and uniqueness on our own voice. Where are we in that picture? Where is our uniqueness? Have we really looked at the music to see what the composer had in mind, or simply made a carbon copy of the performance on the recording? Our job is to get in the same channel as the composer when he wrote it, again flowing in that same energy. The healing comes when we look at the music, get into that channel, and understand what the composer had in mind. Only by honoring what is on the printed page and realizing we are part of something more than us can we become an artist. This is our healing!

“Because of the fact that we have believed that in the therapeutic process we are searching for the truth {“And the truth shall make you free!}, we have devoted very little time and effort to a major question: “Under what conditions will the patient be able to give up his old story and emotionally accept a new one?” We know a little, a few of the parameters involved here. It helps if the patient feels loved, cared for, and understood by the therapist. It often helps if the patient is in a good deal of pain and the old story is therefore no longer tenable. It helps if the patient comes to therapy committed to change and growth as a few of our patients do and not, as the majority, simply looking for new techniques to manipulate others more effectively. Beyond this, we know little and have much to learn.”

                “Beyond Technique”    Lawrence LeShan

The Way is open to all. It is only a matter of how much we dare to leave old thoughts, habits, and manipulations behind. We can keep making up excuses for our confusion, allowing the conscious mind to keep us in bondage with these old habits and perceptions, or we can begin to let go and face reality. We are enough. We need not pump ourselves up to get the job done. Less is more. It is not an easy path, but the only path. It is the path to freedom.