Vulnerable Voicing

(waves crashing) It's time to go deep. Here we go. You ready? Well, I don't know. I don't know what we're going.

I literally do not know what we're going to do. I was kind of awake last night. Like, I hope I can show up for this. I hope I do a good job. And that's where the mind starts to get involved.

Oh, totally. I know because right when you say that, I start thinking what's it gonna be like. Maybe I'm gonna mess up and then no one's gonna want to watch it and everyone will say cut and (mumbles) will have to bring in a voice double for me. They'll have to put Mary J. Blige's voice over my voice when I'm singing. I'll just go.

That'd be pretty fun. We should do that right now. Just leave the space for them to do that later. There you go. (laughs) But you know, and the mind is like, you're not good enough, you're not good enough. And this is just something that I refuse any longer to participate in past having the thoughts.

Then I'm gonna sit in Steve. Sit Steve. Sit in Steve. Steve don't care. Exactly, Steve's happy to witness any thought, feeling, sensation, or emotion, right?

So from that place, from that middle center of the brain we can have anything go on. We can have all of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions telling us we can and can't, should and shouldn't, and we can still do whatever it is that we really want to do anyway, which we've done today. So what we're really gonna do now, and I said that on purpose because I want to get you all up in arms, and I want to challenge you forward. See what survival brain kicks in so that you can have that and not be that. Good, thank you so much. You're welcome.

You're welcome, you'll thank me later. We're going to continue on with this whole body instrument that you are, with this voice that you are. No one else is your voice. What are we gonna do with the sounds? We're really gonna build on the whole body instrument that we created earlier.

What do we got? We have have this foundation. We have this engine. This expansive and contractive and powerful engine. And then we have the gift of this chest, this heart, and this voice that effortlessly is powered when we're up to and engaged in the foundation and the engine.

Well, there's a missing piece and it's atop your shoulders. It's what do we do with this sound? What do we do with the sound that's actually created? When we are in our foundation engine, we breathe in and we just allow it to happen. Ah.

Great, that's a beautiful step. What else can we do? How do we shape this into a beautiful sound? How do we sculpt something with that sound? Do you know what I mean?

Like on a pottery wheel. Like real time. Where do we place the sound in order to create a beautiful expression? This is really placement. If you ever sat with a singing teacher, they start to use fancy words.

Well, I like to keep it experiential and kindergarten and human, which is really what do we do with the sound that's been created? OK, where do we put it? Well, wherever there is space, wherever there is bone is an opportunity to resonate. When we send a sound to a place of resonance, it enrichens, it enlivens, and it is a dynamic character of the voice that you are. This is not just melodic.

This is when it's non-melodic. So what do I mean by that. This is not just about singing. This is about speaking. Everything that I am doing right now is an improvisation, dynamic, in the moment, real time communication with you.

I'm using all of who I am. I'm using all of my body. I am with you real time to communicate what it feels like to be alive or what it feels like to communicate this to you. I'm using my full body to do so, and I'm exploring the possibility of communicating with you. The same thing is gonna happen when we sing and create melody.

The exact same thing is going to happen. So this work is very much about singing, but it's just as much about talking, presenting, and being with others in the world. Sharing what it is for you to express yourself. So let's do some of this stuff together. Notice how I'm being all quite now.

I'm like-- You ready? You're like, I'll sit this one out. Oh, lovely. So foundation. Again, with our awareness, I want you to become aware of the feet that you have, the ground that you're sitting on.

With your peripheral awareness I want you to just become aware of what it feels like and what a gift it is to have this lower body, this ground, this stance, this stand, this chalice. And on top of that foundation, I want you to just become aware of this beautiful engine that you have, this active conscious roll of yours to be with your engine, with your belly, 360 degrees around you, expansive and contractive. And this time, not only do I want you to be apart of that expanse and that contraction, I want you to really push into that where it's almost like you are giving yourself your own massage with that air, do you know what I mean? Even with that expanse, I want you to feel that massage of that filling up and the massage of that belly button to spine. That squeezing like a sponge.

And what that feels there, what kind of energy that brings in when you participate in that. We always talk about the inhale. We always talk about the filling up. But just as important, if not more important, is the ability to empty. It's the ability to go beyond where you think the exhale can go and continue past that point because really it's where the exhale lives is where that root of expression is gonna live.

Right when I'm really engaged in expressing, that exhale kicks in. You really want to be home in that place. People talk all the time about people not breathing enough. What we're really not doing is exhaling enough. I totally agree with that.

We predominate the exhale in my style of yoga. Fantastic. It's amazing. We don't talk a lot about this either, so this is great translation. And you can bring it right into your yoga practice, too.

So inhaling and exhaling freely. We're just gonna come back to an ah allowing that vibration to happen naturally. Ah. And again. Ah.

Where are you feeling that vibrating? Where are you feeling that note living? Where are you feeling all of that resonance? Kind of like here. OK, so now what I want you to do is I want you to just bring that sound that's been created as a gift and I want you to place it, I want you to send it into the top roof of your mouth.

Ready, inhale. Ah. That's so cool. (laughs) Did it feel different? Yeah, it sounded different.

It completely shifts. And I could do it. That was the weird thing. It just goes up there. Absolutely.

And so we're gonna continue this. What can we do with the sound that's created? That's the question. OK, there's no limit. If you say I'm going to send the sound that's been created for me to the far corner of the room, we can play that game.

I tell you it may not be in that far corner of the room, but it may be. How do you know, you haven't tried it yet. This is really about what have you tried yet. Have you not tried something? Well, try it.

If you can think it, if you can imagine it, be up to it. So every sound is like a different yoga pose because we have our source energy and then we're just moving it in different ways and different shapes. That's exactly the same thing. Dude. It's a different form of expression.

I'm gonna put a camera on this more often. (laughing) I'm getting it, I'm getting it. All right, so let's continue. I'm gonna name places for us to send just vibration to. Sound.

Once that sound is created, where do we place it? Here we go, inhale. I want you to send it to the front lips, but I still want it to be an ah. I want you to feel your lips fully engaged and fully rumble. Here we go, inhale.

Om. And again front lips. Om. To the back of your nasal passages now. Inhale.

Ah. To the tip of your nose. Om. To your eyebrows. Ah.

To your third eye. Om. To your crown of your head. Om. I could really hear that one happen.

I defined it. I'm finding it. That one really I could feel it shift. You could feel it shift in this room. I don't know if the mics captured that, but it's a real subtly once we start to fine tune it.

We're just playing with it. You know, it's no different than playing with a posture. For my moderate experience in yoga, I've mostly done Bikram Yoga mostly because I just love heat. You're from Down Under. I just love heat.

I love the psychological challenge of Bikram. It's really always been fun. And I've had that same experience where I've been in a certain posture and holding on for dear life, you know, just doing my best, and then someone comes and adjusts me and I go, oh, that. Like, oh, I could have done that. And it was two inches away, not even.

It was fractional and it was the awareness and the shift of my gravity into a place, and the opening and the extension of something else. And what was I really doing? I was just up to playing the game of something different. That's it. I was thinking it's a game.

It's like we can just play with it and let it run around and see where the sound can go and find that place. Totally. How cool. And really this is what all of this boils down to. We spend a big chunk of time reminding ourselves that we don't have to listen to the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and alarms that say better not try that.

I can't do that. I've never been good at that. Should and shouldn'ts. Don't have time for that. Excuses of the mind and the brain.

This whole survival brain wants to always lead. The part one is to disengage, to let be, to have a brain, and then to, with our want, get up to playing games like we were six again, like we were five again, like we were seven again because the reality is when we're up to trying things on freely, regardless of the inhibitions, not getting rid of our inhibitions, but having inhibitions and doing anyway, that we find that we become extremely and fully expressed. Not only that, but we find that everyone around us gravitates toward that new expression and that amazing things happen in our lives. That's really what we're doing here. That every moment when you get out of bed you are voicing.

From the moment you have a communication in your world, you are voicing, you are expressing, you are communicating. This will find you and find a new way of being everywhere in your life. And that's precisely what we're doing. This is what we're doing. And I feel like my inhibitions are tapping me on the shoulder, like, hey, you can't do this.

You're not good enough (mumbles). Why are you doing this? But then most of me is just like, not now, I'm singing. You're up to a game. (laughs) That's great.

I'm playing, I'm having fun like a child. A child doesn't sit there and go I don't know if I'm singing that nursery rhyme correctly. I don't know if Jimmy over here thinks I sing well. They never do that. They just joyfully express.

And listening to a child sing is one of the most inspiring things in the world. Absolutely, and even speaking. There's an absolute beauty in, and there's also a reason that kids say the darnedest things and that show ever existed because at a certain age we learn words and learn how to communicate in the world and we say anything we want to say at any point. No one considers it. We just say it and we find that so endearing.

I said to my grandmother at a very early age, I was about two and a half, three years old. I said to her as she was pushing me on the swing. I jumped off the swing and I looked around, and I guess she was in her early 60s at the time. I looked at her in shorts and I went, "Granny." She went, "What?" I went, "What are all the crumbly bits?" It was about her knees. She never wore shorts again.

But it was endearing. I was just being myself. It was not for any reason. It was not from any place of fear, or jealousy, or doubt. It was just me.

But she shut herself down because she wasn't staying in that place of joy, like I like my crumbly bits. I'm gonna rock them all over in these short shorts. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and of course, we're not saying say the strangest stuff that comes to your mind.

I'm actually saying the opposite of that. I'm saying no matter what your mind says, what is it that you want to express? When we really just express what we want to express and what we don't want to express, we're right time, right place, and it's authentic and it's awesome. The same thing applies when we're singing. So even if you've never tried, even if you have never sung before, or even if it's something that you're really still exploring, we can try.

So we're gonna continue. What we're gonna do now is a little bit of a call and response thing. I'm gonna sing something. Whatever I want to sing. I don't know what I'm gonna sing yet, and you're gonna sing it back.

And after a certain amount of time, you're gonna sing whatever you want and I'm gonna sing it back. You sing with us and just say, I'm just saying yes. I'm like, oh, OK. See how that goes. All right, let's see.

You sing with us. How about this? OK. So we're gonna come into our foundation, our whole body instrument, our engine. The gift of the sound that comes and our ability to place it anywhere we want.

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It was hard to follow you. (laughs) Amazing. Come on. I've never heard you sing like that. (laughing) I've never heard me sing like that either.