Voiced Bodymind and Psyche
"As a man thinketh so is he"
anon
The all Sensing, all Seeing, all Dancing Voice
(originally published in The Cambridge Psychotherapy Notebook, 2008)
Felicity Cook
Do you ever wake up in the morning and not utter a sound or a word to anyone or anything and begin to wonder if you actually still have a voice? I do. That might seem strange coming from a voice specialist but I can tell you, it’s true. I can sit here with thoughts going around in my head, my body present and feeling but there is no evidence of my voice until my breath and vocal folds decide to work together in sympathetic vibration with one another. It is what brings this all alive that interests me. Here I find layer upon layer of reasons why the audible voice does or does not function and these are about external and internal factors, which have influenced the bodymind, and the voice we have in the world.
What is VOICE? I often pose this question at my workshops and in individual work. Most of us think of voice as the sound which comes from our mouths, our throat our bellies. All of this is true but how often do we stop to really consider - “What is voice?”
What is it that we hear at the end of the telephone which gives us so much information/ We can’t see the person, touch them or sense them in any other way than through our ears and, because of the sounds we hear and that mysterious ‘something’ embedded in the vibrations of their sound, their energetic “soul print”.
The voice tells what the body knows and the body holds a myriad of voices from the past the present and even the future. I am not referring to accent, grammar, whether their diction is clear or not… I am referring to the qualities within the sound, which make my spine tingle with delight, or my toes curl in fear.
A young client came as a hospital referral with vocal nodules. She was 19 years old, wanting to have a career as a Musical Theatre Singer so applying for training in the UK. She had been receiving speech therapy and had come to me to work on the singing voice, which I was happy to do. Vocal nodules or a pre nodular condition are an all too frequent occurrence in the world of professional voice users and need to be tackled from various angles.
First hearing her speak and then sing I had a distinct impression that she had received an energetic blow between the shoulder blades which would inevitably cause the chest to go forward, head back, chin forward, tightness in the sternum and surrounding musculature as well as pressure on the larynx. The sound was of air being forced through constricted vocal folds. This was clearly her physiological response to her psycho-emotional trigger. I knew I needed to delve further to discover more about this situation as losing her voice after a cold, was not in my opinion, what had been at the root of this nodular problem. As I questioned my client I discovered three of her school friends had all died suddenly in separate incidents within six months of each other. This had occurred within the 6-month period prior to the onset of the vocal problems.
The true vocal folds are protected by the false vocal folds which are part of our fight and flight mechanism. When under stress, these false folds will constrict, preventing the larynx from ‘popping out” (their belief!) of the throat and or protecting against foreign particles from entering the body. The sound is distinct – tight, husky, hoarse – not round and smooth. It is difficult to describe this on through the written word. Verbally it can be demonstrated as described and you will have all heard it in your clients, in public, in family and friends and of course, in yourselves. Shock and trauma will cause us to freeze experience in the body and this in turn freezes the vibration and resonance in the soft tissue and skeletal structure thus producing varying degrees of vocal qualities and even vocal dysphonia. So I question, if this gateway is “frozen” are then the other two gateways, i.e. the diaphragm and the genitals frozen and indeed other parts of the body. Yes, I believe they certainly can be. My ears give me the answer and this comes from the subtle qualities I hear and the not so subtle.
Most of us reading this article know that observing the breath is an essential part of working with our clients and ourselves. It is certainly central to good speaking and singing but goes much deeper than this. When I first encounter a potential client/student one of the first things I see is what they do with the breath. With my singing teacher hat on, in the capacity of vocal advisor to the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, I work with individuals as young as 13. I am interested to see how many at this age are already blocking the breath and are unable to breathe into the lower belly, the subconscious. At birth this isn’t the case. A baby has the capacity with its free voice to drown out anyone speaking in the room. The breath is low in the body and the belly is expanding and deflating with no inhibitions. How long it takes for this to begin to disappear is possibly, in some cases, minutes or hours. A sudden scary moment and the breath changes, fixes and something is possibly then embodied creating the matrix for life.
Recently, I had a person come to me wanting to improve her singing. I knew from the telephone conversation there were things here to deal with which were going to be more than straight forward singing. I could hear tightness in the throat, incredible projection and oral resonance being produced by a tight tongue root and a quality which suggested this person was between 16 -19 years of age. I knew from the way she phrased things and the content of the conversation that she had to be older. When she arrived for her consultation with me, she turned out to be in her mid 30’s. Her breathing was up around the shoulders with nothing happening below the heart at all. This method of breathing does in fact ‘freeze’ the heart also. When she sang to me, she sounded 12 years of age - prepubescent. My remit was to teach her to sing and that is how I structured the session but, what I “know” could not be ignored so some of this was addressed. In this particular situation I would not be delving into the depths verbally as she was already in therapy, but addressing it primarily via the voice.
“ As a man thinketh, so is he” I came across this in the 70’s in a book. I think it may originally be from Proverb 23 in the Bible which says: “As a man thinketh in his Heart, so is he” . I am sure this is cross referenced in many Religious and Spiritual traditions. I hear this, see this daily as I am sure we all do in various ways, from individuals to the collective. An experience tells us we are “no good” – we believe we are no good in our mind and then in our body. Our body language shows this and our voice tells what the body knows. There is a sound for shame, a sound for guilt etc etc and, as with all things, it is never as simple as that. With one sound comes many others – a multifaceted sound, a multifaceted voice a multifaceted Human – Just Being.
When we work on the breath we become grounded on the planet and in our bodies. This then enables us to bring the sound into the lower belly, connecting us with our creativity and life force. The voice goes from being tight and squeaky to being lower and fuller. Lifting the soft palate which lifts the self esteem and loosening the tight tongue which loosens “control” serves to create more pharyngeal space – more space for the soul to be present. Widening the back (connection with the diaphragm gateway) for the breath which then in turn anchors the larynx, the throat chakra gateway, it also connects the root gateway, the genitals and reproductive centre…. the pelvic floor; our ground. When we do all of the above plus other things we are creating space. Space in the body for the heart. Space to allow the heart to be heard, our soft and tender part of the loving self.
During the last thirty years I have worked with hundreds (possibly even into the thousands) of singers and speakers who all, without exception reveal their inner psyche to me through their voice. Sometimes training will have eradicated a lot of their authentic state but the voiceprint of the Self is still apparent. The Self, according to Jung, is realised as the product of individuation, which in Jungian view is the process of integrating one's personality. For Jung, the self is symbolised by the circle, the square, or the mandala. The voice can be observed in this way, as an auditory Mandala. I look at Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and I hear voice - the all Sensing, all Seeing, all Dancing Voice of the Human – Just Being.
July 1st 2008