Ep. 19: How your mind affects your voice

In this episode I'm talking all about how the mind can shape the way you make sound. From trauma to joy and resilience, your voice is shaped by the state of your whole body. Tune in to learn more. 

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Transcript

0:18

Hello singers. How are you? Welcome back to the Jewish Singer Podcast. Right now we are in a phase of introspection with, the Sefiras haOmer, and it's a time for personal growth and development, and so I've been thinking a lot about. My growth and specifically how my voice has changed over the years as my confidence has shifted. So today I wanna talk about that. I'll share a little bit about my journey with singing, but also what I've seen in my students and even what science is showing us. About the powerful connection between our mindset and our voice, because the voice doesn't just come outta your throat. Like, you know, we're used to hearing it is a full body, full being experience. So when I first started voice training as a sophomore in college. I had sung before that, in musical theater and in choirs, but never formally trained. So I was already a sophomore in college by the time I taken my first voice lesson. And it was a very crazy experience for me. I felt like I had uncovered a part of myself that was hiding away underneath the bed with a blanket over the head. Um, and I suddenly found this new person I was studying classical music. So it meant I had to make really big sounds. I had to, you know, opera is designed to reach the back of a house, the back of a, a hall, a theater without a microphone. So I was being asked to. to sing very big, you know, and I was using vibrato. I was singing super high notes, or at least trying to, and I remember being shocked by how much sound was coming out of me and thinking like, who is this person? Who, who am I? Who is this? And it was, it was exhilarating and also kind of terrifying'cause I had always been a really shy person. Like as a kid, really quiet and afraid to take up space and pri primarily in social settings At home. I was like a little actress, so it was very interesting. I had this like two parts of my, of my, myself, and the part that I showed to most people in social settings and at school was very quiet, very shy, not secure in my. In my voice and I, I just don't just mean mechanically. I mean like just what I had to say and who I was, and suddenly singing gave me this whole new perspective and whole new permission slip to show up in the world in a way that I had never before and that I hadn't allowed myself before. It was like, oh, okay, I, I'm allowed to be loud. I'm allowed to exist. I'm allowed to take up space and be expressive, dramatic, and, and visible, really. So, okay. That was like a really groundbreaking part of my experience, but it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows and magical vocal breakthroughs because I struggled a lot. I, I had a lot of tension, part of which I can attribute to my time as a violinist.'cause I played violin since I was seven. Up until college and through this time still. In fact, when I was in college, I played all throughout college, so I had a lot of, extra muscle tension. Not because violin necessarily requires that, but because I just did, I, I held a lot in my shoulder, in my throat, and that was coming out in my singing, but. But more than that, what I discovered was a big part of that came from what was just happening in my mind. My internal critic that was very loud all the time in my head, whenever I would sing or just exist. But in singing it be, it got really loud and it was like constantly saying to me like, you know, you're not doing it right. Your high notes sound strained. Your teacher is gonna be disappointed in you. You didn't practice enough, whatever it is. And I used to walk into lessons anxious like I had to prove that I practiced enough or that I was worthy of the lesson time, you know? So it wasn't exactly the most, uh, relaxing headspace for, for my voice, for the freedom that I wanted. Right? And honestly, I had chosen a vocal path, classical singing that doesn't exactly encourage vocal individuality or innovation or exploration of different types of sounds. There's nothing wrong with classical singing. I had, I had overall an extremely, um, educational and positive experience, but I found myself trying to fit a mold. Trying to mold myself into an image of the perfect opera singer. You know, really covering the sound, lowering my larynx a lot, trying to sound like someone else. I would always listen to recordings of, of opera singers that I enjoyed and try to emulate, which on the whole is not a bad thing, but. It was just tension upon tension upon tension, and my voice was like, in a way, wearing a costume that it just didn't quite fit. I hadn't quite figured out what was my real voice and that stuck with me. Honestly, I'm still today undoing a lot of those habits and the tension that I had back then, it's gotten so much better because of what I know now and, and the teachers that I've had and so forth since then, but. It wasn't until I left college and had the space and time and breath, literally breath to explore what I wanted to sound like, and I realized how many of my vocal problems weren't really. Weren't really technical problems or weren't only technical problems, they were emotional, psychological, internal. And that realization really changed everything about my singing. So I wanna talk for a second about the science of this. Because it's not just about me and my, post opera singing existential crisis. There's actually a lot of research that shows how deeply the mind affects the voice. So first of all, when you're stressed, your body goes into fight or flight mode. I've seen this countless times in lessons like, and I experienced it for myself, like I just said, that fight or flight mode of there is a danger around, right? Our body is experiencing the sensation that something is wrong purely because we are stressed about some circumstance, and in my case, the circumstance was, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. I'll never make it as a singer. Okay. And a lot, this is, this is true for a lot of us. And so when this happens, it means that your cortisol levels spike, your shoulders start to creep up towards your ears. Oh my gosh, this is happening to me like every minute of the day almost the jaw will clench and the larynx gets all tense. So this is not exactly a recipe for free singing, is it? Here's where it gets even more fascinating. The areas of your brain responsible for processing emotion like the amygdala are directly linked to the motor areas that control your voice. Okay. The areas of your brain, that process emotion, are directly linked to the areas of your body that process your voice. Now, if you think about this, it seems really intuitive, right? You've heard in someone's voice, like when they're about to cry, right? Or when they're a little nervous. We know this. It's something we, we can intuit now, but the science actually backs this up and shows this. The whole thing where someone's voice shakes or it goes flat if you're sad or depressed or just like holding onto a lot of weight, that's not in your head. I mean, it's in your head kind of, but you know what I mean. It's science. This is, this is real stuff and they can prove this now and. It works both ways. So mental states like feeling safe and grounded or joyful can actually improve your vocal tone. So you know the converse the states of feeling nervous, of feeling sad, those can all adversely affect your voice, but if you can get yourself into a state of safety and groundedness, you'll also experience positive effects of that. So studies even show that things like mental imagery, visualization. Intention setting, right? Woowoo stuff can improve pitch accuracy and breath coordination even, and your resonance. It's like crazy if you think about it. You can literally think yourself into better singing. And this is something I find myself digging more and more to as my years go on as a voice teacher. I'm very much trained in technical parts of pedagogy as in, knowing all the vowel shapes and how resonances are affected by vowel sounds and how to get singers to sound a certain way via exercises and stuff. And that is all extremely necessary. Then there's this other sort of prong of. Of voice pedagogy and voice training that is very much to do with who you are as the singer, where your head's at. And, um, I find it fascinating and I love to do this part of the job, um, just as much if not more so than, than the sort of like technical parts that I need to. Hone. So here's a metaphor that I love. The voice is a mirror. Okay? It reflects what's going on inside of you. Sometimes a little too clearly, if I'm being honest. Thank you very much. Like if someone has experienced, uh, trauma or shame, or. Even is just having a bad day, honestly, their voice might feel stuck or tight or like, it's not, or like, it's not even theirs, you know? Like, what is this sound that's trying to come out? You know, even as I'm talking to you now, sometimes I feel like my breath gets a little caught. Like I'm not, I'm not allowing myself to be fully relaxed because it's a little nerve wracking for me to, just talk at you about this, even though I fully believe everything I'm saying, it's just kind of like, okay, are they gonna believe me? Are they gonna trust me? Does this matter even, you know, so I get it. I get it. The voice is very personal. Um, it's not like playing piano, got the piano behind me where you can blame the keys if, if a note goes wrong, you know. Your voice is your body, it's you. So when something feels off vocally, it can feel like you are off. And that's why I had so much, I think, existential drama and crisis when I was in college and having issues with pitch and tension and things like that.'cause it felt like, oh, something's wrong with me. And on some level, I mean it's true. There was something, I'm not gonna say wrong, but there was something that needed healing. It was the biggest gift that I became a singer and it was. Exactly where Hashem wanted me to go so that I could start some of this healing because it might not have happened as organically or beautifully if I had continued on my path as a classical violinist, and just playing along and in the back of the second violins in some orchestra. Being a singer helped me to. Kind of step up and identify like, oh, there's some, there's things I wanna share with the world, within me, with my voice that are not coming out properly yet. They're stuck. How can I, how can I shift this? You know? So the amazing thing is that this mirror that I'm talking about, it works in reverse as well. So when you work on your voice, you also end up working on yourself. It's really cool. That's why voice lessons can be weirdly emotional and I've cried in my fair share of voice lessons. Like I said, uh, it's not just about doing scales and exercises and toning your voice and making it perfect and getting that riff and run. Yes, those things are things to work towards, but it's about self-acceptance and letting go. There are actually entire therapeutic fields like, um, vocal psychotherapy and voice movement therapy, that treat the voice as a tool for healing and honestly, even in traditional voice lessons I've seen. Students cry. They don't even know why. There's just something that sort of resonates in them that unlocks something. It unlocks something in them and it, it releases. There's emotion attached there, and that's why I think that studying the voice is so much more than just, oh, I wanna sing pretty. It's about discovering your true self or unlocking your true self. It's really, really, I think, vital to be honest. So, um, I wanna share a quick story about one of my students, someone that I may have mentioned before on this podcast. And she's just absolutely lovely and she started voice training a little later in life. And she carries a lot of tension in her voice, especially in the lower part and the chest voice and in her speaking voice as well. You can hear it when she talks. And her biggest struggle is this like vocal, what I'll call a vocal grab, you know, where the sound feels heavy and kinda like stuck in the throat and um, maybe sometimes even a little tin-y. And, and then it flips, kind of dramatically into a lighter head voice, which she not so lovingly calls her mini mouse voice. And I love that she calls it that she, she's whatever. She's just the best. Um, so, but here's the thing. So. For her. The tension isn't just like a bad habit, you know, that kind of like sprung along somewhere. It's deeply ingrained. She shared with me that as a kid she often felt unheard. It was very difficult for her to feel heard and validated, and she had to raise her voice a lot just to be acknowledged. And she was trying so hard to be heard in an environment or a world where she, she just felt like nobody was listening, you know? And so her body is obviously going to respond by holding tension, probably constantly, you know, just to feel visible or be visible. And you can imagine how that might land in the body. Right. If you were to, if you were to just like, put yourself in that, in that position, imagine such a thing for a minute. Where do you feel that kind of grief and frustration? For me, I feel it around my larynx, like there's a lump in my throat, like I want to cry, but I can't, or I don't know how, or I don't want to, you know? So if someone spends their entire childhood communicating that way, you know, having to push press, grab strain to get words out or to feel heard, they're likely going to carry those habits. Well into adulthood. And she has, and it's not, it's not even just a vocal pattern for her, it's like a survival pattern. Ugh. And that, that's heavy. Right? That's like, that's a really heavy thing to say. It's a survival skill that she has, or I guess a pattern, I don't know if skill is the right word for it. So you can probably see where I'm going with this, right? Like it's heavy stuff, and this is the part that I think a lot of people miss. This isn't necessarily something a voice teacher alone can fix for you. I, I would love to swoop in and like wave a magical wand and be like, poof, poof, poof. Your voice is now like Tory Kelly. You now sound like Bracha Jaffe and everything is gorgeous. Um, or, you know, insert your favorite singer here. But it's just not how it works, obviously. So, but what I can do, what I, what I strive to do is be a comforting presence and a mirror of sorts. Someone who can say, Hey, I see this thing is going on for you, and I wonder if it's connected to something deeper. Or sometimes the student will just, you know, share with me. That there's something deeper there, and then we can, you know, riff off of that. But ultimately that work is yours to do and it can be a lifelong journey. I think it is a lifelong journey. I'm still, like I said, working through a lot of the tension that I've had that I, like I said, was not only because of violin. The tension was probably there with violin because of my, my desire to control or my, you know, my desire to, wanna be right and correct all the time because that, for me is a survival pattern, which I've, which I've discovered via my own um, therapy. That that comes through in my own because I, I need to be correct. I need to be right. I need to be logical and intelligent because that's how I survived and knew that I was worthy. And so, you know, how do we get out of this type of thing? A theme that comes through my therapy sessions a lot is compassion. So this is something that I really wanna highlight for you, knowing certain things come up for you, you know, you have tension because X, Y, or Z in your life. If your brain goes to, Ugh, I'm such a failure. Ugh, I have this, ugh, I did this. Then that's only going to exacerbate the issue, isn't it? We have to have compassion for ourselves and go like, this is what my therapist always says. Like, like, that's hard. That's hard for you, right? That's hard for you. And I always feel resistant to that. Like, yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, it's hard, whatever. Because there's a part of me that doesn't wanna, doesn't wanna sit there. A part of me that never really was given allowance to acknowledge that. And so therefore I always kind of just went to the, the criticism, went to the intellectual side of things. Okay. Um, getting a little personal, sharing my own, uh, journey here with you, but only because I think it's relevant. I think it's relevant that these certain little things that we might realize about ourselves and breakthroughs that we can have. Acknowledging certain ways that we think can have tremendous effect on the voice, because if I say to myself like, oh, wow, Nechama Leah, it is a little hard for you to sit here and just kind of talk to people who, who you may not know very well or don't know at all, and kind of just trust that you have something valuable to share that's hard for you. Yeah, like my body is relaxing right now. As I'm acknowledging that to myself, it's like, okay, so it feels a little weird. Alright. But I can, but I can just be comforted with that like that. That's okay. All right. So, moving a little further onto what do we do about all this? Well, I guess first, if you are feeling stuck vocally, whether that's like in general or just in the moment. Take a moment to check in with yourself and ask yourself, how am I, how am I feeling in my body right now? What thoughts am I bringing into this practice? Into the lesson, or into just, you know, your vocalizing in your everyday practice? Am I trying to prove something or am I here to explore? So seriously just shifting your mindset from, I need to sing this perfectly, or I need to get this right to, let me just see what happens could change the way that your body responds, and when your body feels safe, your voice can follow. This is something that I've learned from Rabbi Gerzi. He has talked a lot about having trust and faith, however you wanna translate that as feeling safe in your body, feeling safe in your environment. And I thought that that was like kind of crazy, like a revelation for me. I'm like, you know, we think about it as this maybe an intellectual thing of like, I have to believe I have to believe in Hashem, or I have to believe in myself, or I have to believe in X, Y, or Z. And having trust. Trusting that, my voice is going to come out all right, is primarily a sensation in the body rather than an intellectual belief. It can be an intellectual belief, but I guess what this is coming to say is that the, the, the phone goes both ways. So, you know, we can tell ourselves. That. And if we truly believe it, perhaps our body will will be in that state of believing. We'll be in that relaxed, safe, grounded space. And, and or if we can get our body, if we can use tools and tactics to get our body into that feeling safe and grounded space via breath work, yoga, stretching, that sort of thing. I mean, there are lots of tools and techniques out there. Then our brain will follow suit and your voice will follow suit, right? So I guess try this next time you practice. Take a couple of deep breaths before you even open your mouth, take some deep breaths. Put your hand on your heart. Yes, I said, put your hand on your heart and say it's okay if this isn't perfect. I just wanna be present and curious'cause curiosity is where the magic lives. So as we keep counting the omer and checking in with ourselves and our growth, through Judaism and with hashem, let your voice also be a part of that growth process. It's not just a skill that you're refining, but it's a doorway into self-awareness, into healing, into confidence.'cause like I said before, singing is not just about sing sounding good, it's about showing up for yourself fully, fearfully, joyfully. As yourself. And just remember that your voice is not separate from yourself. It is the truest expression of yourself. And so I, bless us all that we can just keep listening inward so that we can keep singing outward in the most free, true, beautiful way. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today Have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for tuning in, and if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your singer friends or take a screenshot of the app that you're listening to and post it on your stories or send it to a singer that you know would enjoy and spread the good love. Alright, see you next time. Happy singing.