The Where of it All…
If you’ve been following along on my socials, we’ve been talking about the WHY, the WHO and the HOW [you can click on through for a recap!]…now we’re going to talk about the WHERE. I See You, I Hear You, I Know You, I Get You is not just a slogan, friends…it’s a commitment. And it’s one that I got to after many years of going through the exact same things you all have gone through. Not understanding why it wasn’t working, making hurtful comments to myself about my personal failings, and generally pooping all over myself for not getting it faster, more immediately, more perfect. Well, perfect is the enemy of progress…and practice makes permanent. Read that one more time. Take all the time you need.
I’m going to share a story…because story time is my favorite! Meet H.
H was a student of mine who came to me with pretty significant tension and stress in their vocal delivery. Lots of tongue involvement, and high breathing. They were an extremely hard worker, and very diligent in doing what I asked them to. There was a tremendous sense of urgency in their learning, as they felt they had wasted a lot of time. While motivation is a good thing, and I will never hate on someone for practicing regularly and efficiently, fear based motivation never really helps us in the long run.
The amount of negative reinforcement and self talk they practiced was very difficult to overcome - our inner critic honestly believes it is helping us, but in reality it cripples us. You have to be willing to forgive yourself - you didn’t know how to do the thing before, so how could you possibly have known - while singing can feel like magic, it’s not ACTUAL magic.
Ultimately, the sense of panic and fear of missing out on something was extremely challenging…ironically, it is very hard to sing when you are gripped by panic. This particular student started to have more success once they were able to focus on the sequence of muscular involvement when they breathed, and quieted down enough to see what muscle memory was kicking in unconsciously. They were doing a lot of things out of unconscious habit. Muscle memory is a lot like our inner critic - it thinks it’s helping, and maybe at one time it did, but now it is out of date, and just getting in the way.
This is why we focus on raising awareness, and consciousness. It’s NOT about learning that new skill and then never making the mistake again - it’s about parsing out what the old habit did, and replacing it with the new habit that is more helpful - and choosing that every time till it overlays the old!
First, we notice we are doing a thing - ex. “Wow, when I take in a breath, my shoulders go up. Huh. Weird”
Then we find an alternative action/movement - ex. “What would happen if I didn’t allow my shoulders to raise up, but instead let the air flow down and feel as if it’s flowing into my abdominal and lower back area?”
Once we’ve applied a different action/movement, we practice that very deliberately and specifically several [many!] times in a row.
We notice the difference this makes in our sound production, and if we like it, we keep doing it. We make THAT the new habit.
Eventually, it becomes a part of us…and we forget to do it so deliberately. We notice after a while that our shoulders are rising up again, particularly when we are tired, distracted or upset…and our sound feels strained/difficult/not right. What happened? Oh, we lost our awareness/consciousness of that new habit, and so the old habit popped up again to “help” us…little bugger!
We recommit to the new habit, noticing it, and making the deliberate/specific changes that made us feel so much better…and we continue to reinforce the new habit this way. Eventually, the new habit subsumes the old, and except for cases of extreme fatigue or illness, we are now successfully using the new habit over the old.
This is essentially how we learn to sing [and really, how we learn to do anything that requires skill!]. Whether you are aware of it or not, this is the process your body is going through when you are learning a new coordination for anything]. Now, if you are lucky enough to not have developed any less than ideal habits in the pursuit of singing - that’s awesome! You just need to follow from step 2! If you are like the majority of people, though, you’ve been singing/using your voice your whole life - and you will have made unconscious adjustments to your voice in order to adapt.
So the trick here is not to be upset that there are bad habits, or that you have achieved mastery, and then it has diminished over time [use it or lose it, right?!] It’s to embrace the fact that our consciousness is rising and falling all the time. It is not possible to be 100% awake all the time - we’d die! We must adjust to the new paradigm that mastery means following the awareness - being present in it while it’s there, and noticing when it’s not so we can then bring it to the surface again. It’s a cycle - we are never finished - but we can achieve more and more with each cycle of completion. So you are never starting from the very beginning again - you may be out of shape, out of practice, or out of “awareness” but you will never return to ground zero. Such is being human, right?
A few takeaways:
Establishing or changing habits is not about shaming ourselves.
You cannot change things that you are unconscious about.
We never “arrive” at “perfect” execution. We are always striving to maintain balance.
It is very hard for a singer to observe these things in their own bodies [there is a lot going on while you’re singing, after all!], which is why all singers [even me!] need an external set of eyes and ears to help guide you down the path.
I hope this has helped to explain the process a bit - and why it’s so important to have someone who can help you walk this path, reflecting back to you both the progress you’ve made, and the steps that need to be taken next! And you are doing GREAT!
Remember, I See You, I Hear You, I Know You, I Get You is all part of how I help you discover YOUR unique voice!
It’s my promise to you.
Have you got a question? Hit me up via the button below and lets talk about it! Until next time…
