Find Your Sacred Creative Voice
Below, please find my thoughts on therapeutic creativity and its place in helping us to heal ourselves and to rekindle our sense of adventure and fun.
Please note that although the information below deals primarily with singing, any form of creative expression can be utilized to find healing, wholeness and the possible path. Additional essays on different forms of creative expression and Therapeutic Creativity (writing, drawing/painting, and dance) will be forthcoming. And here are the links to the "
Find Your Sacred Voice" workshop, the "
Learn to Sing" class series, and
private lesson information for guitar, voice, and violin.
As infants, our voice was the first manner in which we communicated. We used it to communicate our pleasures (the coos and gurgles of a satisfied baby) and needs (the cries of one who needs food or changing). Over time, as we developed language, we began to use our voice to communicate more complex concepts, and we began to articulate our desires. Unfortunately, as we learned to speak, one of the things that we lost was our ability and desire to communicate purely with our voice - to use it from the depths of our being in order to show others how we felt.
Language, which is a left-brain activity ¹, supplanted the more right-brain activity of gurgling and vocalizing (pure communication) of infants. This meant that pure, honest emotional sound took a back seat if it did not disappear entirely. As we have progressed through our lives, many of us have forgotten how to open the lines of communication in this manner.
Singing is our sacred birthright
One of the best ways to reconnect with that pure, honest sound is to sing. Our bodies were and are our first instrument and they allow us the ability to share our sound with others. In essence, singing allows us to communicate in one of the oldest ways possible. As infants, vocalizing was the first sound we made, and parents have been singing lullabies of one sort or another since time immemorial.
People have been sharing song for millennia, and many countries today have cultures of singing. Many countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa all have singing as a daily part of life. To some extent, this is a tradition that has been passed down through the generations. In our current society, in the US, we have lost that culture of singing. People no longer sing either around the dinner table or while they conduct their work or for just the pure pleasure of the song. While we appreciate the music that is made by those involved in the professional music industry, few of us attempt to make our own music. This is a concern because song is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to one another.
In addition to being a gift that we can share, singing is a gift that we give to ourselves. For example, many adults sang as children but because of negative comments or other reactions, they have developed the belief that they cannot (and therefore should not) sing. I wish to contest the notion that people who believe that they cannot sing actually cannot sing. I believe that the vast majority of people who believe they cannot sing have simply not been given the opportunity to learn how to listen and also how to produce sound.
Certainly there is a small percentage of the population that is truly, physically tone-deaf. (For more information on tone-deafness and my ideas about it, please go to the Pitch page.) However, that is a miniscule number compared to the number of people who can recognize notes and with a bit of coaching listen to and then produce the correct tones.
Other people believe that their voices are not pleasing to the ear. It is my belief that this is subjective and that we can all create sounds that are pure and clear and worthy of being heard. However, while this is a subjective viewpoint, it is also possible that the singer is not utilizing the best techniques in order to produce the optimal tone when she or he sings. With the application of some very simple techniques, voices that appear to sound to sharp or nasal, for example, often can be broadened to have a full, rich, resonant sound.
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Reconnecting With Breath
When we were children, we likely breathed fully and deeply - we filled our lungs starting from the bottom and we breathed utilizing our diaphragms. However, as we grew, and daily stresses became a part of our lives, many of us relinquished this full breathing in favor of the more shallow breathing that so many people use as adults. I have worked with many people who breathe only into the top third of their lungs. This shallow type of breathing takes place mostly in the upper part of the chest and lungs. People who utilize primarily this type of breathing tend to raise their shoulders and collarbones in order to draw in air.
The correct breathing techniques for singing utilize more of the lungs (top, bottom and middle) and the diaphragm. The benefits of utilizing the lower part of the chest and lungs are that we take in more air and a greater percentage of air will reach the alveoli in the lungs and our breathing will be fuller and more efficient. These breathing techniques will aid both in singing and also in the day-to-day activities of our lives.
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Breathing, Singing, and Yoga
Although this discipline has been in existence for millennia, yoga has recently come into the popular culture as a beneficial and healing discipline. Many yoga practitioners and schools of thought stress the importance of taking full breaths and in many ways, breathing techniques for yoga and singing are strikingly similar. Both encourage students to utilize their full lungs and muscles in the inhalation/exhalation process, and the benefits to the practitioner can be wondrous and myriad.
Breathing methods and how to deepen the breath are one of the first techniques covered in Therapeutic Creativity.
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Self-Esteem and Sel
f-Confidence
At some point in their lives, many people, who feel that they cannot sing, were told that they could not sing or to stop singing. Often, a well-meaning friend or family member said these words, and sometimes we heard them as insults from other children. As a result, the person to whom these words were said may have taken them to heart and her/his self-esteem may have suffered.
When we hear something derogatory about our singing voices at a young age that remains with us. I have taught many people who felt that they could not sing. The reason that they believed they could not sing was only because at some point someone had told them that they could not sing. While on almost every occasion it has proven to be untrue, and indeed they could sing and quite well, they carried those words into their adult years. I have seen that people's self-esteem has suffered due to those long-standing and erroneous beliefs.
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Therapeutic Creativity
I view therapeutic creativity as the chance for us to find our creative selves and to re-connect with our childhood sense of adventure and possibility. It is one of the most intimate and beneficial things that we can do for ourselves because it will get us back in touch with the happiness that we had as children when we played and made-believe and sang to our hearts' content.
There are a number of ways in which we can utilize our own creativity in order to re-connect with that playful self that we buried in the process of growing up. If we utilize our own creativity as singers, we get the double benefit of working on our own healing, self-esteem, and the creative spark while all the while developing our singing voices.
We can then take these newfound parts of ourselves and move into the world at large. The benefits of increased self-confidence are myriad and the benefits of a healed relationship with our singing voice are also untold. Both are possible with some careful study and the willingness on your part to embark on the adventure of finding your sacred voice.
If you wish to embark on this sacred adventure, please get in touch with me at 301-437-2730 or izolda@healersarts.com.
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1. Here is a description of the two hemispheres of the brain from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Preferences of the Two Sides of the Brain
Description of the Left-Hemisphere Functions
- Constantly monitors our sequential, ongoing behavior
- Responsible for awareness of time, sequence, details, and order
- Responsible for auditory receptive and verbal expressive strengths
- Specializes in words, logic, analytical thinking, reading, and writing
- Responsible for boundaries and knowing right from wrong
- Knows and respects rules and deadlines
Description of the Right-Hemisphere Functions
- Alerts us to novelty; tells us when someone is lying or making a joke
- Specializes in understanding the whole picture
- Specializes in music, art, visual-spatial and/or visual-motor activities
- Helps us form mental images when we read and/or converse
- Responsible for intuitive and emotional responses.
- Helps us to form and maintain relationships
At the time she conducted this research, Carol Philips, Ed.D, was an associate professor in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she designed and directed a professional development program for teaching fellows. She is currently a faculty member at Walden University http://www.waldenu.edu/c/About/Ponder_7302.htm#philips
