“Man’s body is a problem to him that has not been explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man’s very insides—his self—are foreign to him.”

                                  Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Nowhere is this more evident than in learning to find one’s voice. What we do unconsciously is the best part of our being. However, to learn to sing, one must become aware of how the body itself coordinates. As children we had this coordination, but very soon we learned to become fearful and cautious. We soon learned to shut down our energy and speak softly. In effect, we lost our true voice. Most of the great singers of the past were peasants—used to yelling to call the cows in from the pasture, scolding the chickens at egg gathering time, and shouting to a neighbor out in the fields. Now we muffle our voices by speaking into telephones and cell phones. TV has almost made us mute. We no longer even talk to one another in the house. Interesting how they call this communication when there is no rapport between the TV set and the person watching. We have become very accustomed to not participating. We are being spoon fed thousands of pieces of information, or entertained by silly sit-coms that do not require us to take an active part in them. We have become collectors of mental debris that never gets processed and remains in our intellect. Our bodies never understand it as knowledge. Most of the time there is nothing worthwhile to digest anyway.

Information in singing can be the same thing. We can know all the bones of the body. We can study all the charts of the anatomy and videotapes of the larynx and pharynx, but the question is—how does he/she sing? Babies were not given an instruction book on how to walk or talk, but by experimenting time and time again, came to learn these moving instincts. Singing also is a moving instinct that must be learned. Therefore, we have to get in touch with our bodies personally—not by looking at charts and videotapes. It seems too simple, but that is the process. Intellectually studying all these charts usually gives us too much information to sing well. Again, it overloads our intellectual circuits and keeps us away from actually experiencing our bodies. Learning to drive a car requires a certain coordination which, when repeated over and over again by our conscious mind, becomes a habit. This habit will now program our unconscious mind, and we really have to think very little to drive the car. To pass a driver’s test in Germany one is required to know the inner workings of the engine. Maybe that’s why their singing has become more and more mechanical.

“We do not like to look at the shadow-side of ourselves; therefore there are many people in our civilized society who have lost their shadow altogether, have lost the third dimension, and with it they have usually lost the body. The body is a most doubtful friend because it produces things we do not like; there are too many things about the personification of this shadow of the ego. Sometimes it forms the skeleton in the cupboard, and everybody naturally wants to get rid of such a thing.”

               C.C.Jung,  Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice

In our bodies is contained the story of our rejections and fears. The body tenses up and becomes wooden and muscular. When our bodies are rigid we have hidden away what we don’t want to “see.” When the body has been not been allowed its natural energy because we have over-intellectualized things, we lose our spontaneity and the more primitive and natural vitality. We have lost our joy. This shadow keeps us from enlightenment. Therefore, we must go inside, take a realistic look at ourselves, and once and for all make a determination to stay with our intuitive mind. There must be some information to sing well. But in actual fact very little is needed. Some of us have part of it, some have the information in the wrong order. Just like a computer, the way to get to information we want is a process of pushing the correct buttons in the correct order. Others have too much information to even observe what the body wants to do. It’s amazing how little one must do, and yet, until one sees it, the conscious mind is in conflict and confusion. When this happens, the ego takes over again and starts to do. This immediately stops the body from doing what it was built to do without our interfering. Maybe we should say interfearing. How desperate we get to make the information do the work. We cut ourselves off from our bodies. Our energy is blocked. We put our bodies back into the shadow again. The express purpose of Vocalway is to present a new philosophy of singing based on Natural Law and common sense. Singing must make sense. There is an end to the confusion once the conscious mind understands the process. The job is to finally give it over to the unconscious mind and make it part of our body integrated with the emotions and the intellect.

As the world becomes more and more a macho society, we put more bars and locks on our windows and doors. This is to keep intruders out who would do us harm. We go inside. In the same way, we must look at our diets to see if we are keeping these intruders away from our own insides. Junk food is plentiful and seductive. So is information. We get seduced into thinking that if we accumulate enough information we can solve our problems. It takes very little to keep the body healthily fed. It takes very little information to sing well. Too much of anything simply clogs our bodies and our minds, and we end up in a confused state because we have not fed the body what it needs to function properly.

We have not fed the conscious mind what it needs to sing freely. We must be very careful what we allow into our inner space. Wrong thoughts are just are invasive and injurious to healthy singing as junk food is to our physical bodies.  

Any work one can do to find the proper alignment of the body is essential. Body work is not only helpful, but crucial to getting our bodies awake again. The body lives in such fear and intimidation by the intellect that our emotions are also blocked. The more our emotions are blocked, the more our bodies are blocked. Cities create a terrible strain on our physical well being. Just walking down the street can be traumatic. Dodging the crowds of people, stopping our flow of energy at traffic lights waiting to cross the street, always being watchful of cars and bicycles and people on skates whirling around us—all this takes a toll as we stiffen our bodies without consciously being aware of it. Most creative people have come from a quieter lifestyle. They arrive fresh and aware of who and what they are. Little by little they succumb to the noise and hubbub. In New York City everyone has an opinion—but one must be very alert to who is expounding his/her beliefs. It’s all done for your own good, but is it really correct information? It’s amazing how bad information can be made to sound so terrific! {Junk food!} One must constantly be on the alert to gather the proper information or else we fall into a terrible trap. Much  information is doled out to feed our ego and line someone else’s pocket. We all need nurturing, but not at the expense of losing our own energy and wasting our money. Not many survive the immense amount of information flying around any large metropolis. The body just sort of stiffens up and sleeps in its shadow. Our own unique identity can so easily get swallowed up. We can become a slave to our intellect and leave our bodies behind. It’s as though we’re dragging our bodies around with our heads. We cease to be grounded.

The real task of the body is to keep our feet on the ground—literally. When we fly up into our fantasy world without being grounded we are in danger of losing our real selves. Everything starts to be external, and our very insides are disconnected. As the real joy we felt as children starts to elude us, the intellectual blocks and emotional blocks create a false self. This false self becomes motivated by our ego. In singing, it becomes a false sound. Your real sound is the total lack of ego. Ego is needed to sing well, but it must come from moving energy, not manipulated energy. Our conscious mind tells the body it must work harder to achieve our goals, when in actual fact, it is the brain—not the conscious mind—that must be the ruler of the voice. When this is accomplished, the ego is not stuck, but delights in being once again connected to the body. We become alive again. Our energy starts to draw through the body without any stoppages. Your singing becomes alive again, your life becomes alive again. It is like releasing the emergency brake when you are driving. What a struggle the engine has to make if you have your foot on the accelerator and still have the emergency brake on. When the body has full access to our energy, our mind can return to its creative state. Anytime the body does the work of singing, it is wrong. The body must always be free and moving. Grounded doesn’t mean rooted. Just as a car is judged by how well it holds the road, it is always moving.

Whoever created the body was very clever. It is such an efficient machine that we must stand in awe of the efficiency with which it operates. If the unconscious can keep our heart beating, our blood flowing, our organs doing their duties, etc., then we can surely trust singing to the same fantastic computer that takes care of us to without us having to think about it. The above are built into our brain, but singing must be learned. We must allow the conscious mind to take an active part in seeing what Nature already has for us to enjoy. The voice is hidden away from us in a very secret place. Nature in its wisdom did this to insure longevity of the instrument. How we have abused Nature’s plan! Instead of going inside to find this amazing phenomenon called the voice, we have instead decided to make it do what we want it to do. As if we could improve on Nature! Most of the great singers didn’t have a clue what they did. They just did it. Perhaps they were a struggling singer in a past life and got close to it back then. Then somehow they broke through the barrier and appeared on the planet with the mechanism in place. Just as some bodies are coordinated to play tennis, swim, or hit the baseball out of the park, little coaching is needed. We call this a natural. As one of my students said, “It’s better to be born with it.” But remember, the work you do this lifetime will make the next life so much easier, and vastly improve your stay here this time. As we’re in the here and now, how much fun it is to discover this phenomenon. It’s a journey—and one that will help unlock one intellectually, emotionally, and physically. “Who could ask for anything more?”

     From “I Got Rhythm” George and Ira Gershwin

                                          “We shall not cease from exploration

                                           And the end of all our exploring

                                           Will be to arrive where we started

                                           And know the place for the first time.”

              T. S. Eliot Four Quartets      Little Gidding

 E. T. looked into the sky, and we all teared up as he pointed and said, “Home. Home.”  Somehow we all related to that word. That is where we want to return and make the cycle complete. We can now claim the body that was once such a problem to us, find our inner selves, and “know the place for the first time.” Our job is to remember.