Have you ever been in a situation where you were singing, and even though you had practiced a million times at home, when you got up in front of someone else, your voice started to shake uncontrollably and left you feeling cheated?
I’d like to share an important tool that really works when it comes to singing with confidence.
What many people don't realize, is that having gratitude can actually help you sing better! When I discovered this truth about ten years ago, my ability to feel confident while singing in any situation improved dramatically. This is because when I thought about what I was grateful for, my nervousness turned into excitement and my voice became more open and free. Suddenly, since I was focused on what I had, I realized I actually had something to share, and that took the pressure off.
When we stand on a stage to sing, we are suggesting, "I am worthy of your listening time." The problem arises for most people because they don't feel worthy. They feel like they are being judged and are in a place of lack. However, when we stand in place of gratitude, we are acknowledging what we have graciously received, which puts us in a place of worthiness, and yes, it will give you confidence! Even if you just think about one thing you are grateful for before you sing. You are taking charge of what your mind thinks, and re-patterning your nervous system to do create a safe space from within, to sing from.
Like everything I teach, the Breath of Gratitude is integrative, so the more you do it, the more you’ll be able to access the power of it when you really need it.
Watch this video above and try this before you sing and it will help you any time you need that extra boost of confidence. By acknowledging what you have in difficult situations, it takes your mind off of what is making your nervous – which is usually your fixation on the idea of a worst case scenario that hasn’t even happened yet. Doing this exercise simply helps you do the opposite. You’re thinking of something that lights up your soul! Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
Want to learn how to get your nervous system to stay present and calm when you sing? Get CORE Breathing Exercises, the perfect meditation guide for singers.
Here is one of my biggest vocal training secrets for singing success that I have been using to keep my singers in shape for over three years! It’s the hula hoop, and recently 64 year old Grace Jones displayed exactly what I’m talking about live in concert.
Using the hula hoop, you can burn up to 100 calories in only 8 minutes, and on top of that, you’re gaining other very important benefits as a singer. In 2008, after using this on myself to heal an 8″ scar along my CORE and re-build my diaphragmatic muscles, I realized this valuable tool that costs as little as $7.00 could help singers tremendously – not just physically, but in two more very important levels.
1. THE MIND
The hula hoop teaches you how to get out of your head and stop trying to micro-manage yourself. It helps you trust your body and let your muscle memory kick in. This is important as a singer because you don’t want to be concentrating on what note to hit, but instead, to align with your Musical Intelligence. Using the hula hoop gets you more focused and present, a key quality that pro's need to deliver their peak performance.
2. THE SOUL
Doing the hula hoop gets you to connect to where you sing from. It’s the Solar Plexus area, or what I call CORE. As you feel the hula hoop stimulate this area and the 2nd Chakra, you literally put attention into your creative center and your power center, or the place that holds your self esteem. These areas are important to have in check as a singer, and the good news is, learning to hula hoop can actually help you feel better about yourself and awaken creativity.
The hula hoop teaches you how to treat yourself as a singer. You are developing the same “soul muscles” you use for singing when you use the hula hoop. For example, if you get upset for dropping it, you know you’re being too hard on yourself. Similarly, if you hit the wrong note, you stay in the game and Honor the Process. You learn how to get out of your own way and surrender to the flow of the song and “align” with the rhythm, melody and flow of the song. At times, this can take practice, patience and persistence. These three soul qualities are developed while hula hooping. Lastly, it is said that hula hooping can lift the spirit.
3. THE BODY
– gets you in your body, and out of your head. (More present=stage presence.)
– tones the body
– builds coordination
– builds stamina
– improved joint health
– burns calories
– improves flexibility of your spine
– builds aerobic ability
I’ve had singers who were too “in their head” when they sing, felt uncomfortable in their body, or just want to get in better shape or prep for a concert do the hula hoop, and they've had amazing results. Right away, it brings up their issues, if they have any. If they take themselves too seriously, they’ll find out pretty fast, and have an opportunity to work through it. Before you know it, they’re smiling, laughing and enjoying their instrument while they hula hoop! All of a sudden, singing gets a whole lot easier. I have different tricks I do with the hoop to work out the voice as well, but that’s something you need to come into the studio for and discover yourself! In the meantime, get a hula hoop and just have fun!
VOCAL TIPS:
Do vocal exercises and sing your song and hula hoop at the same time. Then sing your song without the hula hoop and watch how much more natural you feel as a singer.
Smaller, lightweight hoops are best to use for aerobic exercise, since they require more energy to keep the hoop rotating.
• your voice isn’t strong enough, • you don’t have enough breath support • your voice sounds too thin • you wish your voice was more magnetizing • you simply want to get to know your voice better and find the sweet spot… …then RESONATING, (the “R” in my winning C.O.R.E. formula) is a key component to add to your practice regimen that most singers overlook. After six years of training in higher education, I still hadn’t learned how to resonate and really get to the most powerful places in my voice. It wasn’t until I came out of the hospital and had to heal an 8 inch scar along my CORE, that I learned this technique, which expedited my healing and built my voice to what it is today. I now teach this powerful tool to my students. Below are the basics. Once you learn how to do this exercise with sustained tone and focus, you can expand into toning, which means to sustain a note that doesn’t have lyrics or melody. Of course the position of your lips, tongue and cheeks, as well as your placement can affect the kind of tone you make. However, this video is all about connecting to your unique tone and enjoying it. After breathing, this is the first and most essential element to help you mentally and emotionally connect to your voice and song.
Singers need to remember, it’s not just about what you do, but how you do it. In other words – you might practice your vocal exercises and do well– even sing a song and hit all of the right notes, but find your vocal performance didn’t move anybody – including you!
BUILDING VOCAL POWER THROUGH TONING
As you get deeper into toning, you will learn how to sing through the chakras (vowels that activate points along the spine), which can rejuvenate your body, expedite healing and build a more powerful, resonant voice. Today, we will be doing the basics.
Note: If you pay attention to your thoughts and feelings behind your vocal expression, you can be an empowered singer.
Follow these steps as you watch the video
1. Do Dot’s CORE Breathing by taking in a silent, loving breath.
2. Say “mmm” with lips that barely touch and notice how it feels along the spine
3. Notice what thoughts and feelings came up while you were singing the “mmm” sound.
4. Were you enjoying the feeling of the vibration, or judging it? Practice enjoying your supported vibration
5. Do the exercise with me, noticing different parts of your body as you hum.
Be sure to resonate every day as part of your practice before you sing your song.
Resonating Benefits:
voice becomes more balanced in tone
allows you to release any stuck energy or nervous energy before you sing
voice becomes more powerful and connected to body
voice becomes more connected to your soul
vocal range may expand
vocal flexibility and freedom
resonating may result in physical relief of headaches and more energy
promotes healing
lowers blood pressure (5 minutes of humming can reduce your blood pressure between 10-20 mmHg)
shifts and clears pathways and blockages, improving sinusitis
actives the parasympathetic nervous systems, therefore calms nervous system
If you missed the previous articles check out Part 1 and Part 2
THE TOP 3 REASONS SINGERS MISS THE NOTE…
Now that we have talked about the Physical and Emotional reasons people sing off pitch, I’m going to get to the most common reasons – the MENTAL ones.
I mentioned in Part 1 that if you think it’s simply the fact that you’re not supporting your airflow correctly, or your ear is “bad”, you may only be partially correct, and that physical issues are the least common reason for being “pitchy.”
I also mentioned in Part 2 that your relationship to your voice has a direct impact on how you perform. For example, if you do not trust your voice, and you are afraid to hit a bad note, there is a pretty good chance you will. This is hard for some people to understand, but if you are one of these people and you continue to miss the note and feel like once you hit it, then it will be easier to trust it, consider the fact that if you trust it first and stay aligned, it will be easier for you to hit it. Let go of being right and tap into that part of you that knows.
I hope it’s obvious by now that I’ve gone backwards in explaining why people have pitch issues for a very important reason. If I started with the MIND issues [which are the most common and least understood] I likely would have lost a lot of people.
However, the physical reasons I listed are usually only true by themselves, if a person already has good mental and emotional alignment, and they simply have this one little physical issue left to fix.
Let’s take a look at the top THREE Reasons why people sing off key.
Reason #3 - Trying to control your voice, thus taking you out of the present moment.
People contact me often and tell me they want to have more control over their voice. I talk more about why this is a dangerous notion in my book, “Finding Your CORE Voice,” but for now, we’ll just say that idea is not going to help you sing better in the long run. It might help you feel like you’re running the shots at first, but eventually, you will feel overwhelmed, like you have to do too much, leading you on the path to becoming a mechanical singer – and yes, sadly, most mechanical singers lack emotion and have the most pitch issues. So, you might be wondering, “Then…how do I control my pitch issues?”
The answer is really quite simple. You don’t. That’s a trap – and it’s WAAAAAY to much work! Trying to “control” your voice is like trying to blink a certain number of times in a minute. It will drive you crazy if you don’t just get in a space to allow it to happen naturally. Instead, how about putting your Musical Intelligence in charge, and gaining a natural COMMAND over your voice? Again, this has to do with what your attitude is while you practice. Many call doing it successfully, being in “the zone.” Being in “the zone” is about being present. If you are trying to control, you are never present. You are usually worried about what is about to happen, or what just happened. Not only will your pitch be affected, but rhythm issues and shakiness amongst many other issues can also result. It’s an illusion to control, but the beauty of it is, when you trust yourself enough to let go and allow yourself to get in that zone, your CORE Voice will naturally emerge. From there, it’s so much easier to mold it and shape it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to allowed to be what it is.
Reason #2 - Not knowing the song as well as you thought.
This reason for being off pitch is more common than most people would imagine. I’m not just advising you to learn the notes of the song, I’m saying you need to KNOW it. That means you need to memorize it so well, you’d be able to sing it in your sleep! It means you could listen back to the instrumental track and know exactly where you are in the song at any given moment. When you sing something over and over again, you get the muscle memory of that song imprinted not only in your voice, but in your MIND!
Oftentimes, singers think they know a song because they listened to the singer sing it over and over again. This alone doesn’t work for most people if they want solid memorization. Listening to a singer and being able to sing it without their voice underneath yours is a whole different story. You not only need to memorize the words and melody, but you need to be able to recall every note in the song perfectly, as it was written.
10 Steps for learning and knowing a song:
Print the lyrics
Listen to it entirely several times and sing it along with the artist while looking at the lyrics
Listen to the first verse and sing along with it while looking at the lyrics over and over until it is perfected.
Sing the verse to an instrumental track without looking at the lyrics and record it on a device such as your phone
Listen back on your phone to ensure it is correct
Repeat several times any specific problem areas you are singing wrong. If it is one line, repeat this over and over until it is perfected. First use the lyrics, then do it without so your brain can have a mental image of the lyrics
Repeat step 3-6 for rest of each song section [chorus, bridge, etc]
Once you have memorized each section, start singing verse one and add verse two… and so on, until the whole song is memorized.
Sing the entire song with an instrumental track and record.
Listen to the recording and make necessary changes.
As you learn more songs, the process gets easier to memorize them because you build new neural pathways in your brain to support memorization. [At least, that’s my oversimplified way of explaining it.] You may need to literally sing a song 100 times or more to get it into your muscle memory at first.
Professionals are required to learn songs very quickly – sometimes in less than 24 hours depending on the job, so your ability to repeat and let your Musical Intelligence do it’s thing, is very important. That is why Part 1 and 2 of this article are so important, because they explain the “how” behind the “what” of singing.
Reason #1 - Listening to Yourself While You Sing
This might come as a surprise to many. Most people think they need to listen to themselves to monitor how they sound. However, nine times out of ten, the reason people sing the wrong note isn’t because they can’t hear themselves, it’s because they are listening to themselves! Be mindful that there is a huge difference between listening to yourself, and hearing yourself. Of course when you sing, you’re going to hear what you are doing, but a very large percentage of people who make an effort to listen intently to themselves when they sing, will go off pitch. This is for many reasons. The main reason is because they are not letting the voice align naturally to the correct vibration of the sound. Believe it or not, it’s actually harder to sing it wrong than it is to sing it right. Science has proven this–even with tuning forks. When we strike a tuning fork, another tuning fork of the same pitch will begin to vibrate with the first fork. This is because of sympathetic resonance. If a piece of steel naturally follows these universal laws, you had better bet, you are capable of this as well.
If you are trying to listen to yourself while you sing, you’ve got it all wrong. Imagine if while you were talking, you paid attention to the actual pitch [how high or how low] each note was that you spoke and analyzed your voice while you were talking. Do you think it would sound natural? Do you think it would drive you crazy? It sounds absurd when we relate it to speaking, but this is the silly game many people play with themselves for a number of reasons described previously in this article-mainly in Part 2, when they sing. Are you beginning to see how much your mind and soul influence the sound of your voice?
The good news is, if you can get your mind to be clear and present while you sing, you feel enough peace inside to have a free open voice, then with this sort of energy, you will be able to achieve just about anything vocally. Yes you will need to practice, yes, you will need to learn proper technique, etc, but what I’m sharing here is what so many people overlook – it’s the “how” under the “what” of singing. If it’s hard to understand, or you struggle with getting a mind that is clear, you can read my book, Breathe into Your Power, and also do my CORE Breathing Exercises which will give you the clarity and presence you need to stay on pitch!
In summary, hitting the right notes is mostly a MIND issue that can be improved through proper training, but as a singer, your first responsibility is to know yourself, develop a positive relationship with your voice by realizing you are not a victim of what it does, but that your voice is responsive to what you think and feel. Please tell me about your experiences with these suggestions via email or on our Facebook wall. Thank you.
Most people think that singing off key is something that has to do with your ear or being tone deaf or bad breath support. I’m going to preface right now, that this article is not about the people who really struggle to hit notes properly and seem like they’re in their own world, though I will make it known that people who are “tone deaf” are less than 2% of the population. As a matter of a fact a few years back, I taught a deaf man how to sing, and he taught me quite a bit more about pitch – and why hearing people make the mistakes they do. This went FAR beyond the obvious physical “hearing” issues. But this blog isn’t about that journey. It’s referring to those common ones among us, who might be a little flat or a little sharp when they sing. Or perhaps they were doing wonderfully, and suddenly they hit a few really bad notes. If this has ever happened to you or someone you know – listen up. After learning the things I am about to share, you will have new important insights on how to sing on pitch and hopefully you will not make the common mistakes many singers do that lead down the “pitchy” path to singers doom!
Tune up Your Body to Sing
Anyone with a decent ear can identify if you are hitting a note too sharp (slightly above the desired pitch), or too flat (slightly below the desired pitch), but if you haven’t uncovered the root cause of the issue, you will keep making the same mistakes.
There are obvious reasons why you might be hitting the wrong note and I’m going to discuss these first and let you know that the obvious reasons are the least common ones, but they are however, still important to know about. Once you understand that your instrument has three parts (MIND, SOUL & BODY), you will be able to use it in a much more thorough way and avoid having commonly misunderstood vocal issues. We will now address the physical issues, which are the least common reason why people sing off key. Generally, these less common issues apply to people who are already wired to sing and can carry a tune, but simply need a few pointers.
The most commonly identified reasons for hitting “pitchy” notes when you sing, but the least likely reasons are:
Reason #11: Not having warmed up your voice properly before hand
If you do not make sure your entire instrument is warmed up before you sing, including relaxing and stretching your neck, jaw and tongue, you run the risk of pushing your voice and hitting notes with bad technique, which may mean they are too flat, too sharp, or you miss them all together. Be sure to warm up your voice [you can find exercises in my CORE Vocal Power Bundle] by doing simple stretches for the neck, jaw and tongue, Resonating, and at minimum, some lip and/or tongue trills. This will help you balance your vocal chords and find more freedom and flexibility in the voice. When you warm up your voice, you are also allowing yourself to create the right kind of coordination in your vocal chords up and down the scale. Warming up doesn’t mean you push your voice beyond where it can go, it simply means you get it ready to train by doing what is within your range. Through proper vocal warm up, you can also get more familiar with your voice and learn which areas need strengthening.
Reason #10: Having bad posture
When you are not supporting your voice with your breath, from your diaphragm, you can easily tend to sit in the middle of a note, or just below a note. You tone can also lack support and leave you sounding too breathy or not powerful enough. It’s important to have good posture as well, because when you slouch, you are blocking the energy flow along your spine. Be sure to sit up straight or stand with a straight spine when you sing – chin parallel to the ground, knees unlocked, feet shoulder width apart and arms relaxed. Your chest should already be slightly elevated, but should stay that way even when you exhale. This is singing 101. Proper posture is key to the right kind of breath support, but you will see in the later examples, that contrary to popular belief–just because your posture is bad, doesn’t mean you are going to hit notes wrong. However, it will make your performance more promising, if you have amazing posture when you sing.
Reason #9: Not knowing which register to place the note in
Oftentimes, songs are not written in one register. For example, the commonly sung, “Happy Birthday To You” throws off a lot of singers at the very end. If the singer starts this song in the higher registers of their chest voice, it will be likely that when they get to the last time they say the word “birth” on, “Happy birthday dear _______”, that octave jump may mean they need to transition into a higher register, which means less air, more support as something completely different is taking place physiologically in the vocal chords. Some people can muster up the support and simply show up on top of the note, while others miss it by a long shot because they simply don’t want to change registers. (Click here to learn more about how to hit high notes). Trying to push through, they fall flat, or if the overshoot the note, they might go sharp and try to place it in their head voice, instead of the mix. This same principle applies to intervals in songs that may go too low or out of a singer’s range. Of course the simple solution is to make sure the song is in the right key, which goes back to knowing your voice, but singers don’t always have the luxury of choosing a key, so they must learn to get comfortable with all of their registers.
Reason #8: Reaching up for notes
I almost put this one under SOUL/EMOTIONAL, because it really has to do with the way you are connected to your energy, perception, and is more abstract, but I decided to put it in this section because reaching also relates to the physical, and something very bad happens when singers do this. Usually the muscles in their throat tighten and they either pull up their larynx or it gets locked up because of strain. The only reason singers do this is because they don’t know better. They haven’t yet learned how to develop the flexibility and freedom that is available to them through warming up, and equally importantly: understanding how to treat their voice and relate to it in a constructive way. Once you learn how to GROUND and CENTER your energy, you don’t even think about reaching for notes. You know you have access to all of them. One analogy I like to use is patting the notes on the head. As I slide up in pitch, I ground my energy down, and just pat the notes on the head – literally. I visualize them lower than me and within my reach. You would be surprised at how easy hitting any high note becomes. It’s all about perception. Learn your relationship to the notes and you will be able to access them. This must be done with Practice, Patience and Persistence.
Notice I didn’t say anything about not being able to hear the notes? Does that surprise you? Later, you will find out why. Just know at this point, that if you are thinking that you or your friend sings “off key” because they can’t hear the notes, you are only partially correct.
Now that we have reviewed the most common physical reasons for not hitting notes correctly, I’m going to let you digest this information for a while and make sure you get this down. There are seven much more common reasons why people sing out of tune, so be sure to make sure you have these ones under your belt before you move on.
Now could not be a more important time to tune in to ourselves and what we want to create, and recognize our unique gift in doing this. Your voice is like no other. It deserves to be heard, felt and experienced.
I want to share with you another step in how to build an empowered voice, which is most powerful when it rests on a solid foundation. This foundation is in a clear mind and peaceful soul. We all know when we hold on to anxiety, fear, doubt, and worry, our voice becomes shaky, and can also result in “pitchiness” and sounding unconfident. The good news is, there is a way to release all of that before you sing, so that you can have a more consistently powerful performance.
HOW DOES OUR VOICE GENERATE HEALING?
We release our emotions through vocal sound, sending a ripple of vibration through the physical body and energy surrounding it. The vibration of the tone ripples through the body and subtle energy system, drawing upon the body’s natural inbuilt systems of self-healing to strengthen and balance the electromagnetic field. Our thoughts and feelings are carried in the tone of our voice. Through vocal toning we restore health by stimulating the circulation and releasing held emotions and impacted memory. One of my favorite sounds to sustain is the vowel, “AH”. It is the heart chakra and also the widest of all the vowels, [mouth is open with a relaxed tongue touching bottom of teeth] making it the most vulnerable vowel to sing on a physical level. Also, “Ah” is known as the sacred sound of God. In most languages, words that mean deity or reverence for deity have “ah” in them. Examples spelled phonetically: “Jes-Ahs”, “Jehov-Ah”, “Ahmen”, “Y-AH-weh”, “Halelu-Yah”, “All-Ah”, “Budd-AH” and the list goes on. In the last article and video, I had you silently inhale, while hearing yourself say “ah” in your mind. This unlocks a sacred door within you that is connected to your heart, and allows you to expand from within, and yes, activates your diaphragm. I go into more detail on how to center this chakra in my other books and materials, but it’s best to start with just the idea of inhaling a silent “ah”, and toning [exhaling] on “Ah” can help you balance and release any energy that is stuck.
ACTIVATE YOUR VOICE, ACTIVATE YOUR LIFE!
With dedicated practice and integration of the exercises, you can watch the quality of your entire life improve, and in turn, so will the quality of your vocal expression. Remember: the way we do anything is the way we do everything. When you are able to slow down and become more consciously aware and present in life, you will have this ease and presence on the stage. Doing your C.O.R.E. work can literally transform your whole being into a lighter, more powerful, freer you. This includes: connecting to your silent loving, “ah” breath, taking more conscious breaths throughout the day with more love in them than fear, humming more often to stimulate your entire body, and toning, which can literally shift your vibration and lead to healing. The exercises I have shared can help anyone start to reprogram their nervous system in a positive way, creating the best kind of conditions for a confident, powerful voice to emerge.
Please tell me how you enjoyed this exercise via email or on our Facebook walland share with friends who might benefit. Thank you.
Using the power of Breath and Intention, to Empower Your Voice
Though I have always been a musically expressive person, when I first heard about the chakras, I actually did not believe they were real. The idea of having seven major points that governed certain organs in my body, radiating different colors and notes, and spinning clockwise when in balance seemed strange to me. It was not taught to me in school (as it is to children in India) and seemed irrelevant. It wasn’t until I was faced with healing an 8 inch scar along my core, that I was motivated to explore the idea that maybe if I could put this knowledge to good use, I would heal faster.
This need emerged when doctors nicked my bowel by accident while performing a laparoscopy. The worst place for a singer to have a wound – outside of the throat, is the abdomen. In addition, due to an allergic reaction I had to the Morphine the hospital had been pumping into my veins as a pain killer, my body had purged itself of every toxin imaginable. I was so thin and so weak, I could barely lift my arms. I had to build my lung capacity by blowing into a tube to make the little balls rise above the line. I left the hospital weighing a mere 98 pounds at 5 ft 9. Doctors told me it would likely take six to eight months to heal. I knew I had to heal way faster than that if I wanted to survive financially!
The connection that I was able to make with my body, my energy and my breath taught me that I am much more powerful than I thought, and that my breath, energy and intention can literally shift my vibration and generate healing in my body. Every day, as I developed a practice regiment, more light and knowledge poured into my mind and within two weeks, I was riding my bike with my little dog. I wasn’t fully healed, but well on my way, and over time, I was able to take the amazing things I learned and provide a structure for singers and speakers to not only gain physiological advantages in their voice, but also mental and emotional advantages which open and heal the soul. By tuning in to your spirit in a way that goes beyond diaphragmatic breathing, you can learn how to improve your speaking and singing voice, as well as your communication, energy, presence and confidence.
BREATH PRECEDES THE TONE
The Arabic origin of the word breath stems from the word “spirit”. Breath creates the underlying quality of everything we do. The way we breathe can literally determine how we think, feel and the quality of our lives.
In order to relieve stress, most people say, “Take a deep breath”, but they are ignoring the fact that your thoughts and feelings while taking in the breath also play a huge role in how well you can shift from stress into empowerment. For example, if you breathe in a chesty, voiced breath while thinking a stressful thought about the future such as, “Oh no! I hope I don’t mess this up again!” you are breathing in fearful thoughts about the future. This tells your brain to send nerve signals down your spinal chord to your adrenaline glands, which release adrenaline, causing an increase of blood sugar, heart rate and blood pressure. At the same time, your brain’s hypothalamus signals your pituitary gland to release factors that tell your adrenal cortex to produce the stress hormone, cortisol, which will keep you in that “fight or flight” state. While you are in this highly charged mental state, your body is far from being involved with healing, peace, or empowerment. It’s simply trying to survive. Sadly, this is where many people live, and it’s amazing to consider how many more of us fall into this state before we have to use our voice for something important.
I’d like to share with you how just a little bit of awareness and a few tools can make a huge difference in your overall well being, which is directly related to the power of your voice. As you commit to doing this exercise with me above in the video and others found in Breathe into Your Power , you may notice your nerves start to disappear in important situations, and your voice becoming more smooth, more rich, and more powerful. The first step is understanding that when you inhale, you are literally taking in the world as you experience it, and you get to choose what you are inviting into your consciousness as you do this. Most of us do it subconsciously [about 21,600 time per day], but either way, the amount of love or fear you breathe in at any given time will have a direct effect on your mental, emotional and physical health – and in turn, your voice. Before I learned to heal myself, I didn’t realize how this concept alone had a profound effect on the confidence and power of my voice. For example, if you are thinking right before you sing, as you breathe in, “Oh no, what if they hate my voice?” there is a good chance your breath will be shallow and cause anxiety, which will them tell the body to create tension in the chest area and neck. Then your throat gets tight and an airy weak sound emerges. You might blame your voice for this, but really, it was only responding to how you were thinking and feeling when you took in a breath.
The simple, yet powerful integrative breathing exercises I discovered and developed over the past 8 years after my accident, help people to naturally tap into their CORE connection, and from here, they are able to speak and sing from what I call their “CORE Voice.” Your CORE Voice is your free, authentic, voice that doesn’t have any vocal blocks [stress in body, tension, fear, etc]. When you are using your CORE Voice, your chakras are aligned and you are able to speak and sing freely, without being nervous or micromanaging your voice. In any situation you speak and sing from the truest part of who you are.
Below, I will explain the most important fundamental key to creating the ease within that is required if you want to have a more balanced energy and confident voice. It has to do with how we take in the world.
Build PRESENCE with the Breath of Ah-wareness (BOA)
Exercise Instructions:
1. Standing or sitting with your chest risen, feet shoulder width apart and a straight spine, while you think the sound “ah”, inhale silently and lovingly through a relaxed, but open mouth.
What did you experience? If you allowed yourself to hear yourself say, “ah” in your mind as you inhaled, you may have noticed this breath fills you immediately and you may feel an inner calmness and natural expansion, but don’t try to create this–allow it. Keep in mind, you don’t need to take in a lot of air.
2. Take a moment to feel how open and expanded you are.
3. On the exhale, you can either use a gentle unvoiced “hhhhhhhh” sound, or voice the sound “ah” as a sigh of relief, but keep your chest elevated as you do this.
The key to doing this exercise is in the silent, loving inhale. Subvocalizing the sound “ah” on the inhale allows you to naturally open your heart and create an expansion of the diaphragm without even trying. The result should be that you are completely present. If you are not used to this, it may bring up a sense of impatience or even tears. Accept whatever shows up for you and continue to work in harmony with yourself through this as it may take time.
4. You can inhale through your nose as well, but for most people at first, nose breathing feels more connected to the head. I want you to connect as close to the base of your spine as you can when you inhale. Once you become good at inhaling through the mouth, switch to the nose. When you do this, be sure to imagine the sound “ah” at the back of a relaxed throat.
5. When you become advanced in the BOA exercise, on the inhale, hold and exhale, you may affirm this phrase in your mind: “I am here now and I am okay!” or any other affirmation to help you manifest what you’d like to create, instead of what you don’t want to create like the example I gave earlier. I call this, “intentional breathing,” which means that now, instead of taking 21,600 unconscious breaths a day, you can actually put meaning into how you want to think and feel and spend part of your day breathing consciously. This is an important pre-curser for vocal expression. If you want your voice to show up the way you need it to, you must prepare it mentally and emotionally.
This simple but powerful breathing exercise has given my students instant access to expanding their diaphragm without spending several months on diaphragmatic breathing. It has given them the clarity and peace needed to create the favorable conditions for their CORE Voice to emerge.
Want to learn more about how to breathe from your CORE and build an empowered voice? Click here.
