Jordi Lawless - Musical Theater and Mental Health

I'm FINALLY getting around to posting this episode, but better late than never! Check out the new intro/outro music! In this episode, I sit down with one of my former voice teachers, Jordi Lawless, and we talk about musical theater, opera, and mental health. We talk about some other things, too, which you WON'T want to miss! If you're interested in taking voice lessons from her, go to flawlessvoicestudio.com . You won't regret it!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Song of My Heart Space podcast. I am your host, Wendy. I'm combining three of my passions: yoga, mental health, and musical theater. Together we will see the connections between them and how we can apply those connections in our daily lives.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Hi everyone, welcome to the Song of My Heart Space podcast. Today we are chatting with Jordi Lawless. She is one of my former voice teachers, and she is amazing. I just love her so much. Um, how are you doing today, Geordie?

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Well, thanks for that introduction. I really appreciated having you as a student as well. It was a lot of fun time. And I am doing great. Thanks for asking. So, Jordi, how long have you been teaching voice for? I've been teaching voice for um 13 years now.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, it's been a while.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

That just flew by. Have you always had a love for musical theater and opera, or like did that kind of just come later in your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

That's a good question. Um no, actually, uh, I didn't okay, let me rephrase that. I did always like music theater. In fact, if you can call 90s Disney movies musical theater, that was probably where my love of music started. And I um modeled a lot of my singing after Disney princesses from my my childhood, which were the 90s. Um, but uh also my siblings tended to listen to a lot of uh musical theater, and we watched a lot of golden age musical theater when I was growing up as a child, like Sundays. That was when after we'd come home from church, and then we would have lunch, and then we would all sit down and we would watch one of the golden age musicals together, like The Sound of Music or Um Oklahoma or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or My Fair Lady or something. And so I grew up watching those musicals, listening to Lay Miz on CD, the the like 25th anniversary, you know, star-studded edition, which was amazing. And um, but I never grew up listening to opera. My family are not opera listeners or watchers, and um it wasn't until my uh my sophomore year of my undergraduate at BYU Idaho that my teacher said, Have you thought about opera? Because I had been taking voice lessons since I was in ninth grade, and and I had I had done well uh in in learning classical voice, and I said, No, opera, that's uh that's for people who have studied voice since they were five years old and are prodigies and want to do that for the rest of their life, and and uh um opera's boring, and no, I hate that idea, but um, but then I had the opportunity my junior year of my undergraduate degree um to play Hansel and Hansel and Gretel the opera by Engelbert and Waldink. Yeah, it was it was very fun, um, and uh that then just kind of uh you know hurtled me towards the world of opera and thinking, you know what, I actually I really like this and I want to do this. So long answer to your question, but no, I did not always like opera, and it wasn't even until college until I decided actually I do like this.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

That's awesome. Um so has musical theater and opera have they helped you mentally, like helped your mental health in any way, or was it kind of like the opposite?

SPEAKER_00 4:04

That's a great question, too. Um music has always been a big part of my life, and singing has always helped me to feel more like myself. Um, and especially the ability to share my voice with other people because it people have told me that you know, something I sang for them, usually in you know, a church setting is where I would sing more often publicly, or if I was in a play at school or something that I would sing and it would heal their soul somehow. And hearing that reaction from other people healed my soul as well. And um, I loved that thought. Um, there was a time in my life as well when it was personally healing for me. Um I uh we lost our fourth child um during the middle of my pregnancy. We were we were about 17 weeks along, and uh our baby in utero died. And uh that was really, really hard for me. And during that time, a song just kept coming, c kept coming back to me, which was um actually you've mentioned it before in your and and you've sung it before um to your friends here on your show or on or on Facebook, and it's the some things are meant to be. Yes, yeah, from from Little Women, that musical, and that took on a different meaning to me, of where it's talking about some things are just meant to be. And it made me think of all the you know, all the things that I wish I could have done with that child, as it goes through kind of like that in the song of all the things that we do in life and the fun that we can have in life. And so it gave me this thought of like this is this is what I could have done with this child. And then at the end, you know, it says um that, you know, we had a good run, but let me go now, you know, and that yeah, that was it. I sang that song a lot as I was trying to heal from that experience, and it was comforting to me to to um feel the the essence of that song while I was going through that pain.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

I love that. That that is an amazing song, it's one of my favorites, and that was the first song you taught me um when I was taking voice lessons from you. So that song is very special to me um as well, and reminds me of the time that you and I had together. Um let me just look at my questions here. Um, is there um is there a specific musical theater song that you can think of that I know we have you know more than one musical that kind of relates to mental health, but it doesn't even have to be either of those musicals. But can you think of a specific musical theater song that can relate to mental health that you can kind of see it from a different perspective in that way?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Well, other than the one we just shared, which was some things are meant to be that song and how that kind of helped me through that trial and and the the um the struggle mentally and emotionally that I had to go through during that time. Um, I've thought of another one that uh really helps me to oh, there's a few. I know that for me, I feel a lot of connection with mental and emotional struggle and health um when I listen to or sing the song All That Matters from uh Finding Neverland.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And I don't know if you've heard that one, but it's I haven't. It's a great one. It's the the character Sylvia, um, she's the mother of the of the four little boys. Um, and this is a story about um JM Barry who wrote Peter Pan.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And um how and and so it's this her explaining her experience of spending time with JM Berry. Yeah, you know, he's a married man, and yet she's this widowed woman with these four young boys, and really they shouldn't be spending time together, you know, in society, you know, but at the same time, her her thought is it's a struggle for me to even wake up and breathe some days, you know, and to and I I have to tell my body to to breathe in and to breathe out and to just and to take a step and to put food to my mouth, you know, like it's a struggle. So don't tell me that society has expectations for me because I'm just I'm just surviving some days. Yeah. And um, and then she goes through how just having this man in her life to bring some light back to her and to her children, how much that matters to her.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

So that one's a that one's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

I'll have to check that one out. That sounds like an amazing song. I've heard of the musical Finding Neverland, but I need to familiarize myself with uh the music in that one more. Um, what do you um still talking about mental health? What do you do to make sure that your mental health is in good working order? Like what do you do to keep your mental health afloat? Well, I I try.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

You know, every day is a different day. Yes. But um I try to make sure that I get good sleep. I've learned things about myself. I've learned that I am a person who has to get a certain amount of sleep in order to feel like this day's gonna be a good day, an okay day. Yeah. I am a person who has to uh I have to go to bed by the very latest, I have to be in bed by 10:30. Like I just have learned that about myself. If I go to bed after 1030, I am a monster the next day. I'm I'm either a monster, like I'm a creepy monster, or I'm a basket case monster, where I'm just like just sad and crying all day. And so, and I've learned like I've I've experimented on myself and I'm like, okay, so that happens to me when I did not go to bed uh before 1030. And so, um, and so that's what I've learned about myself is sleep. Um, and then uh I've also learned that moving my body, um, getting my body to uh do some, especially allowing myself to go through movements that are hard. Not um, so go like going on walks, those are easy movements, and that's actually really good too. I love to go for a walk outside, getting outside is very good for me, and sometimes I have to re-remind myself because I'm a homebody and I like to stay home and inside and warm and cozy. But um, but reminding myself that actually making my body do some things that are hard for it to do actually gives me a sense of accomplishment when I've done that thing, and it helps me to um, I don't know, just kind of like get some extra things out that I couldn't if I was just doing things that were easy for me all the time. So on that line, like doing exercise that is a little bit challenging. Um, and I do uh I I like to uh break up my my weekly routine, uh, you know, and I I do I try to do just like 30 minutes a day. And it's um, you know, I'll I'll do weightlifting uh one day, I will do cardio another day, I will do um yoga or Pilates another day, and I'll go back to weightlifting. And so I just kind of vary through it and I make sure that at the end of the week I also give my body a rest day to make sure that I can heal as much as possible. And so those things I have I feel have helped me to uh sleep and exercise that's that can be challenging, have helped me to um find some good balance in my um mind and heart space.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Oh, that's good. That's great. Yeah, that is definitely, those are definitely things that I'm trying to um work on myself. Um the sleep, the sleep one's kind of hard for me because I'm a night owl. I get that. So it kind of is a little trickier for me, but I'm trying to work on it. Um so you're in your master's program right now, right? Yeah. How uh so how is that going?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

It's good. So I'm in the master's program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and uh it's a program that actually I've dreamed of being a part of for the last decade. Um, I just it was for for reasons of having a few more kids and stuff and not being the right time in my life. Um, I wasn't able to go through with the program 10 years ago, but now my kids are all in school, and so I'm able to now focus on being able to do that program. And I absolutely love it. I love the connections I've been able to make. I love what I'm learning from my professors and um just new things and new ways and new understandings of how to use my voice and um and to perform better as a performer that I I have never learned before. And um to put all that into practice has just been really rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

That's awesome. That's so good. I'm really excited for you that you're able to do this master's program and to learn so much and everything. Um is there any advice you'd like to give to my listeners that may be going through a tough time right now, whether it's related to performing or related to mental health? Like what advice um would you give to them?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

I would say keep going. It's life is hard. It really is. And some days, like I was just talking about with the song All That Matters from Finding Neverland, some days just taking your blanket off of you to get out of bed, just making your chest go in and out to breathe is uh feels impossible. But um, but if you can find a few things that will help and and take note of those things, if they help to make sure that you like I like I did, where I I noted that when I don't get enough sleep, I am this way. Note those things because if you find patterns, you can find some solutions, and that's not to solve everything, you know. Um if if medication is there to help to get through things, take the medication. If if diet and exercise are there to um help through things as well, try to try to incorporate diet and exercise into your life as well, um in tandem with medication as well. And um, if therapy is there to help, go to therapy, you know, those those things I've I've uh had the opportunity to uh to be able to have a number of those things in my life, and every time they have helped me to get past those really, really hard um pits in my life, as they felt like pits that I couldn't get out of. But with the help of those things over time, it wasn't like a magic feather or something, but I was able to find my way out, and and having a good community helps as well, which I think you're doing too, Lindy. You're you're doing a good job of finding a community to to you know grab onto and hopefully they can all um be able to support you, can all support each other in this in this often very hard life to live. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Well, that's great. Thank you for thank you for sharing that. Um so one question that I ask all of my guests, um, what is the song of your heart space? It doesn't have to be a song, it could be just something that brings you joy, just something that makes your heart happy.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

The song of my heart space. There are so many songs out there. It it often depends on depends on the day and the mood. Um so I guess we'll go with what today and what today's mood is. My song for my heart space today is uh a Christian hymn, which is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Oh, I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, and that fills my soul today as I think of the words of that song and kind of sing it in my heart, and um just thinking of my relationship with um God as I see it.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

And yeah, yeah. No, I love that one. That's a great one. Um well, thank you so much, Jordy, for chatting with me. And um, it's been it's been a great conversation. Um how can my listeners connect with you if they want to keep up with your adventures or if they want to take voice lessons from you if you're still taking students at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Uh yeah, I'm sometimes taking students. It's a um I take a lot of students online right now um because that works a little bit better with my schedule. And so um I appreciate the opportunity. My uh connecting with me is so my studio is called Flawless Voice Studio. My last name's Lawless. And so it's a little play on my last name. So to and to in the hopes to help my students find a flawless voice, find their voice. But flawlessvoice at gmail.com is where you can email me, and then also um you can find me on Facebook. Um I think Flawless Voice Studio on Facebook and and Geordie Lawless on Facebook. But yeah, I would love to hear from anybody and I would love to help anybody find their voice.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yeah, she's an amazing voice teacher. I know firsthand. So definitely take voice lessons from her because she's awesome. Well, thanks again for being on my podcast. You're amazing, and hopefully we'll get to chat again soon. Yeah, I love that. Thanks so much, Lindy. Yeah, you're welcome. Bye, Geordi.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Bye. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Want to connect with me or be a guest on the podcast? DM me on Instagram at song of my heart space.