What makes a “Singer”? The Ari-epiglottic Sphincter!

Posted on 15 May 2012 by Maggy

After I had been teaching for a few years I became curious about what makes someone a “singer” – after all it is a very widespread human activity, we don’t define ourselves as whistlers or hummers in quite the same way.  There are many interesting angles to take when defining “singerness” (and I will try and make that the only made-up word in this blog post).  Does a singer’s nature actually have anything at all to do with a person’s approach to performing?

I can remember developing the confidence to tell strangers I was a singer. In Eighties Britain that would often be treated as a boast rather than a statement of fact, and might easily be met with an aggressive or sarcastic request to “sing something, then”.  It was only after a couple of years of performing professionally that I was prepared to risk this response in public, and by then I did feel able to respond by instantly bursting into song, without any sense of awkwardness.  That was the point at which I started to feel like a real singer, rather than an imposter.  However, I think you can be a singer without being a performer, natural or otherwise, so could it be more about how we set about developing our skills from the first?

In my experience natural singers enjoy practising and don’t need too much nagging to get on with the work it takes to become good at the job – indeed they are usually more aware than most that it is not simply about having a “gift” and that practice is vitally important.  Many also enjoy taking a systematic approach to a song, examining the words closely and picking apart the various meanings – another element of the singer’s skill set.  This is not true of all singers however, and my feeling is that some singers are musicians who “play” the voice, but are not too concerned about the meaning of the words they are singing, whereas others are strongly focussed on the words, locating the power of the song in the story it tells, or the atmosphere and emotions that it evokes.  My observations suggest that you often find the former type drawn to R’n'B and soul performance; employing the richness and intensity of the vocal quality itself to convey powerful feeling – just a fine saxophone player does – without any sense of frustration with the conceptual limitations of standard pop lyrics. Whereas singers who are more focussed on lyrical complexity and sophistication are often more drawn to cabaret, country and western, and working as singer-songwriters.  Jazz singers come in both flavours; one of my all time favourite comments, which I will have to paraphrase as I don’t have the actual quote to hand, is that when Ella Fitzgerald sings that her “man done gone”, it sounds as if he has just nipped out for a packet of cigarettes, but when Billie Holiday sings the same thing it is clear that he is never coming back.  They are both musicianly singers, but Billie doesn’t breath in the middle of words!

Vocal Stamina and Flexibility –  Sunday May 20th

1.30 – 5.30                 £40.00 / £35.00 concs.         126B Drakefell Road, SE14

There is one very reliable test for performing experience and that is the presence of an intense “ringing” vocal quality that projects a voice outwards towards its audience. In this Sunday’s class we will be discovering just how easy it is to produce this ringing vocal quality, and how flexible and adjustable the physical mechanisms are that switch on our inbuilt volume control mechanism.  This quality, known as “twang”, “projection”, or “squillo”, is easy to learn, but it does take time and practise to master its power and potential for beauty.  It also comes with a difficulty to be overcome, as it tends to trigger the protective mechanisms that tighten the throat in order to prevent you from choking.  We will therefore begin the day with exercises designed to counteract this constricting action, and once this is mastered it will open the door to much greater vocal possibilities:

Prepare the larynx to produce the loudest and most powerful vocal qualities, Classical and Belting

Enable easier access to our highest notes.

Enable us to both protect the voice from injury, and heal it if it does become injured.

In short, this day incorporates some of the most useful exercises a singer can have at her or his fingertips.  Please call me if there is any aspect of the course you would like to discuss.

 

Sterno-cleido mastoids in action!

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Walking 1 – Daily Awareness

Posted on 10 May 2012 by Maggy

For the toddler, standing and walking are exciting natural landmarks on the path to adulthood. However, once uprightness and mobility have been achieved, most of us make do with the barest minimum of attention to how we organise ourselves to move from A to B.  Walking can be a joyful expression of human movement at its most sophisticated – fluid, elegant, outwardly expressing our inner vitality, and so distinctive our friends can recognise us from a distance – but many of us galumph along, jarring our spines, draining our energy and prematurely wearing out our joints.  For women there is the added hurdle of the absurd popularity of extremely high heels, throwing the curves of our spine out of balance, encouraging locked knees in standing, and requiring us to perfect walking on our tippy toes like little girls pretending to be grown up. And let us not discount the unhealthy amount of lying it encourages; “no, no, these are really comfortable”…

© Darren Zlatareff 2009 Used by permission of the Feldenkrais Guild UK.

Ridiculous shoes come in many forms and can be surprisingly popular; heaven knows what the long-term effects of adding a rocker to a shoe will have on our joints, but adverts for untested (in the long-term) innovations like this promise unrealistic improvements to leg muscles without effort and thus MBTs were briefly very popular indeed. It is only recently that anyone has attempted to mass-produce shoes that are actually shaped like feet – in fact you can now buy shoes that have separate toes and these are already becoming very popular with runners as many find they experience less injuries running in “barefoot” shoes. For a great article on this subject from New York Magazine click here.

Feldenkrais teachers rely on walking as an invaluable teaching tool. The very useful thing about walking is that most of us do it several times a day, even if we never leave the house, and thus finding time to try out new possibilities is pretty easy …and do not underestimate the therapeutic value of well-organised walking.  Many of us have chronic tensions in our ankles, knees, pelvis, spine, neck or shoulders, all of which can benefit from the mobilising effect of a fluid, loose-limbed stride.  Walking is such a good indicator of how we are functioning that we always do it at the end of a Feldenkrais lesson, whether in a class or one-to-one, as it enables us to observe how the changes that occurred during the lesson are reflected in the way we move now that we are back on our own two feet again, and to begin to instil the idea of using walking as a tool for daily practise, experimentation and discovery. Taking time to walk for a while after a Feldenkrais lesson will extend the benefits of it, giving you more time to incorporate any changes you may have achieved during the lesson itself and, as your self-awareness grows, the pattern of your own gait and the walking styles of other people around you will become truly fascinating.  It is such a rich topic that it is best served in what I hope are two digestible portions.

Action: Next time you are able to walk with your arms free, experiment with some of these self-observations – you may prefer to try these moves indoors first so that you do not feel self-conscious, particularly when trying out the pelvic rotations coming in part two!

Choose a space large enough to allow you to walk at a natural pace – outside is great as long as you are able to safely focus your attention on your internal sensations – and ask yourself the following questions.  Do not rush through them, allow yourself to sense as much as you can before moving to the next observation. Once the ideas are clear you are free to explore them any time you wish.

1.            What is happening in your knees as you walk?  Are they free to bend?   Do they bend equally?

Stand, and feel the difference between free and locked knees; discover the range of movement from locked to too-bent-to-stand-with-ease – it is small shift in position but it makes a big difference to your posture.  Sense what is happening in your lumbar spine, and observe how your pelvis is moving as you lock and unlock your knees.

Return to walking, and observe any changes.

2.            Which parts of the soles of your feet contact the floor as your walk? Which part touches first? Lifts last? Is there more pressure on the inside or the outside of your feet, and is it the same for both feet?

Experiment with intentionally increasing the pressure on different parts of your feet – heels, ball, outer edge, inner edge – and going back to your normal walk in between.

3.            Compare walking backwards with walking forwards – what is similar? What is different?

4.            How much sound do your feet make as they hit the ground?  Can you walk in a way that feels natural and that you can maintain while at the same time lessening impact of each step. Notice the way the intention to be softer diminishes the tension in your joints.

Part two will follow soon, and focus on the therapeutic benefits of getting your pelvis moving.

 

Feet – © Jonathan Thrift

 


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Felden-What?

Posted on 2 May 2012 by Maggy

One of the reasons that we need an Awareness Week to spread the word about Feldenkrais is that English is somewhat lacking when it comes to discussing ideas and processes that operate outside the Cartesian separation of mind and body. One of Moshe’s most famous quotes is that his method enables the student to make “the impossible possible, the difficult easy, and the easy elegant” and it is one of my favourites, not least because it does not automatically separate mental and physical behaviour into two modes of being – when we describe an action as elegant it suggests a kind of mindfulness-in-movement, but we can easily translate it into the non-physical; compliments, ideas and equations can also be elegant.

Awareness Through Movement at the Yoga Show 2010

So when we try to encapsulate the complexity of Feldenkrais we come bang up against this verbal separation of body and mind, and the unclear thinking this encourages.  Indeed, this deficiency has long frustrated those of us who engage in activities usually lumped together under the “alternative health” or “new age” banners, but no “elegant” solution has been found to date.  The composite word bodymind is clumsy and only in use at all, I suspect, because of the paucity of alternatives.

We do have a word that means mind-body, the word “psychosomatic”.  Unfortunately this is generally translated in the public consciousness as “all in the mind”.  Many people think that to have a psychosomatic illness is to be “not really ill”, to only think that you are ill.  A more useful interpretation would recognise, as much of modern allopathic medicine is beginning to, that any illness we experience always manifests physically, mentally and spiritually.  Many left-brain-focussed people have trouble with this concept.  I was delighted by the experiment suggested by Fredric Lehrman, in his book on prosperity consciousness.  He challenged anyone doubting the power of the mind to influence the body to sit down somewhere comfortable for five minutes a day, relax, close their eyes, and imagine themselves developing a really serious illness.  I share his confidence that no one would be reckless enough to try this out – with the possible exception of Richard Dawkins.

For many Feldenkrais practitioners it is during our training that we experience the effects of releasing chronic tension in areas like the jaw, eyes, throat, knees, shoulders, and lower abdomen.  Long suppressed emotions resurface, and childhood memories reappear, both pleasant and unpleasant. The emotional armour that we all develop as we grow in order to cope with the difficulties and frustrations of life is essentially a muscular bracing process and as we regain our youthful elasticity it disappears, leaving us more responsive, more spontaneous and also more vulnerable to our emotions.  The way the method is taught is intended to allow this process of opening up to occur naturally at its own pace, however in the stimulating environment of a Feldenkrais training it is easy to get carried away and push ourselves too far too soon, and, as a result emotions often run high.  It is important that we go through this ourselves so that we can recognise and support the same opening up process in our own clients.  For me this loosening of muscular armour means that I now weep just as easily with joy – I used to cry only with sadness.  For performers this emotional self-awareness helps to enhance our stage presence, but for the healthy adult true maturity reveals itself not in suppressing emotion but by integrating it in a way that means that we can act with awareness rather than compulsion – thus we are fully aware of our anger (for example) but can choose when and how we express it.

Moshe designed his method to help us recognise and reactivate the ongoing learning process that came naturally to us all as babies and toddlers. Old-fashioned ideas about our brain’s deteriorating capacity for new learning are now being overturned on a regular basis thanks to the vast strides being made in the field of neuroscience and the essential plasticity of the brain is much better understood than when Feldenkrais wrote his early books on the exciting possibilities of learning how to learn.

Hence our classes, which are not about learning movements, but learning how to generate new possibilities and to find creative solutions to the problems we encounter in tackling the unfamiliar. Of course some people come simply because they want to move with greater ease – they simply want to feel better in their body – but there are lots of ways to improve your flexibility, and the most popular tend to be easy to describe (and thus easy to sell). There are also plenty of places to go and satisfy the mind’s yearning to learn, to absorb information and to generate new ideas.  We are unusual because in our classes you can do both – and just as soon as we figure out how to say that in one snappy little phrase then people might stop saying “Felden-what?” when I tell them what I do!

 

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