Meet Thorald

(waves crashing) Hey and welcome to the chorus Any sessions that I'm so, so excited about. I'm Sadie Nardini and this is Thorald Koren. Hi. He's amazing, you guys. He's my mentor.

He's a rock star, an actual rock star that tours all around making people's lives better through music. You're just an inspiration to me and he has been helping me break through to the place where I'm actually sharing my voice, not another voice, mine, and it's really been a struggle, and a challenge, and a joy, and so, Thorald, what are you here to help us out with? Well first and foremost, for us all to find our voices. They're all like beautiful voices that are undiscovered, and most people don't dare to go much beyond the first layer. So really that's what we've done together.

Yes. And we're gonna get all into that. It's so scary, though. When did we meet? Two years ago?

Two years ago I saw your band, The Kin, that one, I saw your band play I think at the Norwood in New York, so this kind of club thing and they played there, they were the band there, and I was just riveted by you and your brother both have these amazing voices, this amazing chemistry together, and it was just transcendent, and I don't know what possessed me because I've always wanted to sing or just find my voice and express it more fully, but I hadn't really done much of it, so I just approached him and I'm like, "Hey, do you do voice lessons by any chance?" And I'm like, "Shut up, shut up, eat the words, "eat the words," because I, for some reason, sensed that this was gonna lead us on a big rabbit hole down center. This is all your fault basically. It's all my fault, I know, I know. I started in music when I was really, really young and I came across coaching voice as a teenager, and what I really loved about being with people's voices is that it's the most vulnerable thing you can do. I actually found that in all these years, people are maybe really afraid to speak up, but they're really afraid to sing up, and I've never understood how that's the case, but it is, it really is.

It's terrifying, I know. Even just as a yoga teacher, and I hear this from a lot of other teachers too, that we get terrified just to sing and ohm in front of the class, like, "What are they gonna think?" "Is it gonna crack?" "Will it be okay?" Much less public speaking, public singing, finding the truth at all. I mean how many times have I cried in front of you? Quite a few. Lots.

That's not my nature. I'm not a crier, okay? I've cried in front of him so many times because I touch that place that's real. Right. Do people cry a lot when they find that place?

I've seen some tears. It's a beautiful thing. Most people walk around not really in touch, let alone connected, but just really in touch with what it is that's innately them as this voice, and it's something that we were all given. It was created by the intelligence of being alive, this ability to express, the simple nature of being able to voice what it feels like to be alive. And we're all doing it all the time, we don't really notice, and in all these years that I've coached voice, as I went along, I realized that to really be a singer, you have to really be in touch with what it is you want to say.

It's easy to sing notes, and to imitate, and to hear other people sing something and copy it back, but to really sing from you something that you want to sing, and that's what really got me excited, and also, along my way in my early to mid-20s, I went through some really critical obsessive-compulsive disorder and had a pretty big experience with very ill behaviors in my life and I had kind of hit a bottom, and I went to a very intensive program where I spent a lot of time behaviorally shifting, and I noticed after that that the same behavioral shifts that I was making could be applied to my relationship to my own brain when it came to expressing myself, and I started to bring it in with clients, I started to really go there in almost a non-melodic way, and I saw so much success come of it. So what we're going to do together is a handful of different things, and what I'm most passionate about is not only you finding your voice, but having the opportunity to create a new relationship to your voice. And that's really what we're gonna do together. That's huge because so many of us, myself included when I came to you, have a dysfunctional relationship with our truth, with our voice. Either we've been told, "Oh, shut it down," or "You're too much," or "That's not right," or "You're wrong," and I know that I did, so when I came to you and said, "Hey, do you teach voice," and you said yes, I was like, "Oh, dang it." Because he doesn't just teach the voice as you've already probably gathered.

He teaches everything, how to be us, how to get back to you, and all the things that can be dissolved, you know that we just really get in our own way, so whether you're a yoga teacher, or you do yoga, or you want to sing, or you just want to speak more I think from that authenticity in you and just get back to who you really are, this is for you. That's what we're bringing you ultimately because that's what you've brought me. Fantastic. We're gonna have a lot of fun doing it. I find that there's not one person I haven't seen make a really interesting transformation when they come back into their voice.

We are this beautiful whole-body instrument and, for the most part, it's un-utilized. Most people walk around not utilizing it, and it's easy to not ever go there. We teach each other to be a display of a voice, not actual voice, and it's a tremendous revelation when you get to experience it. I just want to remind everyone, this is all experiential. This is all stuff we will do together.

This isn't a concept, this isn't a theory, this is actions, and just almost like a series of postures when it comes to being able to sing, and we're gonna have a lot of fun experiencing it. So, that's it. Yeah, if by fun you mean I'm really nervous right now because I'm gonna do this on camera with you in real time and I don't know what he's got in store for me. I mean I'm right at the crux of finding my voice. It's not like I've found it, everybody, and I'm just like, "Oh, I'm there, "let's just show you what it likes like." We're gonna show you at the moment where I'm just starting to break into that, what that looks and feels like, and I might cry.

You don't know. That would be a good thing. Let's see if we can make her cry. So excited for you to come along with us on this beautiful journey. Let's do it.

Right on.