Awakened Voice

The Awakened Voice

The voice is the gateway to the soul. Our emotional and spiritual sense of identity is deeply connected to the voice, and vice versa.Our lifestyles and the psychological effects of our life experiences (especially repressive, traumatic ones) all affect our voices. Over time, we develop various tensions and wrong breathing patterns, as a result of these experiences and lifestyle choices, and separate the voice from the rest of our bodies, while in reality the true voice is manifested through the whole body, and originates in the same centre of energy and life-force.

In this workshop, you will get an introduction on how to start the voyage towards your true, natural voice.

We will start with gentle but deep breath awareness, focusing on relaxing and opening up the mouth, jaws, and throat, and providing breath support to the voice.

We will then move on to humming, vocalizing sounds, harmony and connecting the body and voice through rhythmic movement and steps. We will use vocal improvisations and aspects of various voicing techniques. Hence we will learn how to awaken the ‘body-voice’, i.e. how to provide more fullness and resonance to the voice with the whole upper body.

In the final phase, we will work with songs, musical sound and text to discover deep connections between voice, body, and imagination. The focus in this segment will be on how to give greater precision and intention to our voice, and how to infuse layers of emotion and expression, and how to embody the voice and project our whole presence through it.

The session will end with meditation and chanting.

You will gain an understanding of how to relax and open up the physical apparatus of voice production, and to achieve a stronger respiration technique to support the voice.

You will take home a repeatable set of vocal exercises.

You will gain an understanding of the deeper, inner connections between body, voice, and imagination.

You will have an insight on how the voice can become a pathway towards an inner journey and spiritual deepening.

As the session involves physical movement, please come in comfortable, loose-fitting clothes. Do not wear wrist watches, socks or jewelry during the session.

Bring a short text (lines from a favorite poem or a childhood memory) of about seven or eight lines in any language. Also come with a song you know, such as a folk song or a lullaby.