Just sing, dear

So it’s Day Seven of the blogathon and for the first time I feel like I’m not going to get a post in, I can’t put two sentences together, I can’t think straight. 

This would be a perfect frame of mind to practice singing in, except that I have to get this post done. 

I mean to say that good singing and thinking really don’t go together. Someone (? needs attribution!) has done functional MRIs or scans or something of people while they’re singing and has discovered that the cognitive area of the brain is, for the most part, not engaged. 

But even without that non-attributed, perhaps completely made up, “scientific fact,” I can tell you from experience that I think a lot when I talk, and I sing well when I don't. 

I’ve come to feel that singing is much more like weight-lifting than it is reciting a poem with notes. Songs turn out better when I stay in my body, when I notice how the song physically feels as it’s happening. Turning on the thinking brain seems to turn off the instrument. 

Put another way, the audience doesn't need my Deep Thinking, they need me to give them something to listen to. They need me to breathe in, deep and low, and then make an efficient, beautiful tone. Breath in, tone out, stay out of the way. As attached as I am to my thoughts and reflections, at the moment of singing, they're the last thing that's needed. 

It has taken me years to learn this. 

Embracing the Weird, Part 2

Lie on the floor with a book on your belly. 

Many remarkable things happen to us between the time we’re born and the time we get to kindergarten, but the one that blows my mind is how we un-learn how to breathe. 

If you have the joyous opportunity to watch an infant breathe, you’ll notice that the chest moves freely, the shoulders are relaxed, the belly expands and then softens, expands and softens. Calmly. Simply. Beautifully.

If you ask a kindergartner to take a deep breath, though, they do exactly the opposite: they suck in their belly, raise their shoulders, arch their back, lift their chest, and look like they’re going to explode as they hold their Deep Breath for you. This Deep Breath in reality is about as shallow as they come. Sucking in the belly, arching the back, raising the shoulders, all of this decreases the amount of available space in the lungs for air. We feel like we’re accomplishing Something Important, but in reality, we’ve just made doing anything with that breath countless times harder. 

This can be a hard pattern to unlearn. For one thing, our culture highly values the puffed-out chest and the tiny waist – what I call the Superhero Stance – which is basically useless for singing. Many of us have held our bellies in for so long that it’s actually effort to release them. This is when it can be useful to lie on the floor with a book on your belly. 

Lie on the floor with a book on your belly – a good book, hardback, kind of heavy. I like Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. It’s a good read, too. 

But I get ahead of myself. 

Lie on the floor with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. Let your arms rest at your sides, or gently outstretched, comfortably. 

Lie there for a moment and notice that the earth is holding you up. For at least the next moment or two, there is no where to go, nothing to do except breathe, and notice that the earth is holding you up. Let your shoulders rest on the floor. Let your back rest on the floor. Notice your head, your neck, your chest. Let them all sense their relationship to the floor, to the earth. Let the earth hold you up. 

Now, place the book on your belly. 
Breathe in, let the book go up.
Breathe out, let the book come down. 

Notice whether your chest rises first. Try to let the belly rise first. It might feel like pushing the book up with your abs. Breathe in, book up. Breathe out, book down. 

Notice whether your shoulders are trying to help (they can’t actually). 
Notice whether you’re arching your back (no need for that, really). 

If you feel like you’ve got the hang of breathe in, book up; breathe out, book down, try it without the book. 

Breathe in, belly up. Breathe out, belly down.

Do this for as long as you like. Notice what you notice. 

Work toward a silent breath in, an easy breath out, and maximum ease everywhere else. If it's easier with the book, use the book.

Let this kind of breathing become second nature to you. It will take practice, but five minutes at a time, once or twice a week will teach the body quickly. Then, you can try it standing up. 

Quick recap: Lie on the floor with a book on your belly. Breathe in, the book goes up. Breathe out, the book goes down. Let the earth hold you up. There’s nowhere to be but here. 

I throw things at my students.

Well, we throw things back and forth

One of the things humans worry about is Getting it Right – singing the right notes, being Perfect. An unintended consequence of worrying about whether we’re Getting it Right is that we sometimes try to sing without actually letting any sound come out of our bodies. We sing to a point that’s only just beyond our nose so that we can judge whether or not the sound is any good before someone else hears it.

But it’s too late for that. The sound’s already been made. We have to give up on the idea that we can make a sound and then decide whether to share it. We have to let the sound sail out of our bodies, and land where it will. Lucky for us, no one will get hurt. A great image – and activity – for this is in throwing a light, easy ball, or a small stuffed animal as you vocalize. Whoop! Whee! AHHH! 

Often in private lessons, a student and I will spend some time tossing soft things back and forth: pillows that look like soccer balls, a stuffed bear, bunny, or a duck. Whoop! Whoa! Whaa? We make some bad throws, some bad catches. No one gets hurt. Our voices loosen up, and we learn how to let the sound move away from us and into the room. 

This is part of what I mean when I say, if it’s not play, it’s not working. 
Play ball.

Sing Alleluia, Alleluia!

Most Sundays at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, I lead the Singing Praise. The congregation is standing, having just joined in the Call to Worship, and a member comes forward to light the chalice. At that moment, I sing something, and the congregation sings it back. There’s nothing to read or hold on to, but if you’re looking up, and your ears are open, success is pretty much guaranteed.  Why would that be a good thing? Because not everyone in the congregation can read. Because folks come to church seeking connection, and standing together, singing together, being awake and responding together connects us to one another faster than anything else I know. Kids can do it, grownups can do it, and over the last eight or nine years of all of us doing it, I’ve noticed that we all sing more confidently.

If you’re in the bay area, come by and sing it sometime. Summer worship starts at 10 a.m.

And if you’re wondering what Unitarian Universalist means, check this out.