I never thought about my voice. I never really realized it being there, apart from as an instrument for singing. Resonance gave me an opportunity to engage with that wonderful Sound Being. I realised how I had always suffocated it, and it made me sad to realise how I have always neglected it.
I don’t quite know how to translate the image into words, but when I danced with my Voice in my arms, an image of a little fearful being came up. Trembling in the dark, scared to come out and being beaten into silent submission again. It had a haunted look on its face, and was wary, cautious, mistrustful, abused. I discovered my Voice living inside me, but ouch… what have I done to you?
My Voice now speaks:
“This voice feels tight in the throat it lives in. It wants to soar free in the air, like a bird, singing in the blue skies, but it’s so dark in here. Dark and tight. This voice has been locked up long ago, when Eline was very little, not believed when Voice and Eline spoke Truth. This voice asks to be freed from this prison of oppression and tightness. This voice demands the right of full freedom of expression. WHOA! This voice wants to be acknowledged and play a recognized and integrated role in the body system that is Eline.”
Missing the tune when invited to sing the first line of “Thuma mina” solo, threw me on a Journey with Making Mistakes. Is there a link between my tightness around making mistakes and this tightness in my voice? Why do I feel I have to get everything right in the first go? Why am I judging and criticising myself if that isn’t the case?
Why
am I
so tight
sometimes?
It’s not even that I’m scared of making mistakes (I think), they just don’t seem to ‘happen’ a lot. How awful and arrogant, but most of what I undertake usually naturally succeeds. Beating myself: “Not having done it right, fucking up, failure! You screwed up a wonderful moment!” What a chance! Being in the safe space at Resonance, hearing the words “As you are, we welcome you,” to be seen and loved through making mistakes. They do not matter. Welcome! Flabbergasting… What a shift.
When singing my own song on Saturday night, at first my voice quavered and stumbled over that ‘suffocating’ word, but later found its warm timbre, rising up from the heart, and coming out through an open throat, with mellow cords, and wide mouth (frog).
EGGS in my hand-bag
suf-fo-ca-ting tight
Zacht. Lief.
Dark choc-late mel-ting down my throat to deep red heart
And after Singing the Silence
On Month On…
Singing was wonderful always, Speaking has become so liberating now. The workshop very much helped me relax tight parts of myself. My Voice can be smooth or soothing, it can be clear and direct, it can be loud and singing or whispering softly… all of those qualities and many more. Growing intimate connection, great potential for partnership, strong bond, tango-trust.
Listening to my voice on recent interview tapes, the sound is less broken, rounder, smoother, deeper. And when I had spasms of pain all through my body last week, the sounds I made came out not through a strangled throat, but in relaxed singing breath which so helped alleviate the pain.
This Voice… likes bread and honey and sweet caress.