Speaker 1: Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, my loves, and welcome to this episode
Speaker 1: of Holy Human. I cannot believe this is the last
Speaker 1: episode of our second season. It is flown by yet again,
Speaker 1: and I am so grateful for the time we've gotten
Speaker 1: to spin together and all these incredibly expansive conversations we've had.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is really a full circle of so much
Speaker 1: of the ground we've covered because it intersects so many
Speaker 1: of the topics we've been exploring, from acceptance to love, fear, boundaries,
Speaker 1: and ultimately accessing one's true self. The topic we are
Speaker 1: going to be exploring today is very close to my
Speaker 1: heart because we are talking about the voice. I wrote
Speaker 1: a blog recently for my blog, Soul of Everley, and
Speaker 1: if you don't know it, go check it out at
Speaker 1: soul of Everley dot com and sign up for our
Speaker 1: newsletter because that's the best way to stay in touch
Speaker 1: and receive my Leada's musings outside of the podcast. But
Speaker 1: the blog was about an experience that I recently had
Speaker 1: with my voice and with performing, and even though the
Speaker 1: situation was unique to me, so many people wrote in
Speaker 1: saying how much they resonated with what I was sharing,
Speaker 1: so it got me thinking of how I could share
Speaker 1: even more of all the ah ha moments, because there
Speaker 1: have been many that I've been having since working with
Speaker 1: my voice in the capacity in which I am now,
Speaker 1: and to do that, I thought I would bring on
Speaker 1: a very special guest my voice and I call her
Speaker 1: my voice slash life coach because that's basically what she is,
Speaker 1: Tamara Beatie. I first connected with Tamara during my time
Speaker 1: on the Mass Singer. As a vocal coach, Tamara has
Speaker 1: worked to not only heal, but to reveal some of
Speaker 1: the most powerful and beautiful voice as possible. She has
Speaker 1: an extensive resume I could definitely rattle off, but honestly,
Speaker 1: her depth and gifts go far beyond any of her accolades.
Speaker 1: Tamara's coaching style is incredibly unique and flows much deeper
Speaker 1: than the work that we do with my actual vocal courts.
Speaker 1: She is intuitive, she's patient, she's curious, and she is
Speaker 1: a powerful healer. I have never actually worked alongside a
Speaker 1: vocal coach in this way because I honestly haven't trusted
Speaker 1: anyone in the way that I trust her, and I
Speaker 1: think that says a lot about Tamara. What's really been
Speaker 1: incredibly eye opening is how much the work we do
Speaker 1: together has overlapped with all the areas of exploration I've
Speaker 1: been dedicating this podcast too, and I realized that the
Speaker 1: lessons I've learned from her and the progress that I've
Speaker 1: made run deep to the core of finding our individual
Speaker 1: voices and connecting with our true selves. I hope that
Speaker 1: you find healing and liberation and our conversation and begin
Speaker 1: to explore ways in which you can reveal your own
Speaker 1: powerful voice. And with that, I welcome you to this
Speaker 1: episode of Holy Human. Odd YEA yeah, Tamara, thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on Holy Human. This is such an interesting
Speaker 1: thing for me because you and I just saw each
Speaker 1: other yesterday. I feel like I have had conversations on
Speaker 1: this podcast with people that I've had intimate relationships with,
Speaker 1: but I find I am finding that this is probably
Speaker 1: the most intimate relationship that I've had with another that's
Speaker 1: on this podcast. And I never expected anyone to be
Speaker 1: in this position with me, actually to have this kind
Speaker 1: of relationship, and I'm I'm super grateful that you are
Speaker 1: in my life and the work that we do together
Speaker 1: is I don't even know how to describe it. We
Speaker 1: sometimes get to my voice voice. Sometimes we were working
Speaker 1: on my voice a lot at this moment, like just
Speaker 1: building stamina because I have been going, you know, have
Speaker 1: gone back out on the road, and so I've needed
Speaker 1: that after having a year and a half off. But
Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much work that we do
Speaker 1: before the voice and just to give people kind of
Speaker 1: a bit of a background. Like you and I met
Speaker 1: on the Mass Singer and I actually ended up with
Speaker 1: you because I had lost my voice during filming and
Speaker 1: I was on steroids and I everybody kept telling me,
Speaker 1: there's this wonderful woman and she has all these tricks,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, sure she does. I've been around long
Speaker 1: enough to feel like I know every trick in the book,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, my intuition just guided me to go
Speaker 1: see you. And I'm glad that I had lost my
Speaker 1: voice at that moment, because I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have walked into your room and your space and unless
Speaker 1: I had. So with all that said, I would love
Speaker 1: to hear first off, what you experienced of me when
Speaker 1: when we first met, because I know for myself, I
Speaker 1: was very hard headed. I didn't want to think about
Speaker 1: singing it was like the last thing I felt like
Speaker 1: if I thought about it, then it would I would
Speaker 1: lose what I innately had, And so I'm just wondering
Speaker 1: what your experience and all of that. One. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, my goodness, thank you so much. What an
Speaker 1: amazing um compliments. I really appreciate that. For me, when
Speaker 1: I work with somebody, I just feel so privileged that
Speaker 1: they're trusting me, because, like you say, the voices really
Speaker 1: a lot more than just this physical instrument that we're
Speaker 1: working with. It's all the stuff behind it, everything that
Speaker 1: we've been through, and it's a little bit like we
Speaker 1: want to keep that space safe. So I'm always really
Speaker 1: appreciative when somebody takes a leap and says, okay, let's
Speaker 1: try this, because it's not just their livelihood, it's also
Speaker 1: everything that makes them them. So thank you. Firstly, thanks
Speaker 1: so much. Of course, Well, when we first met, all
Speaker 1: I knew was that you were just looking to get
Speaker 1: your voice feeling a little bit better for a performance.
Speaker 1: That's all I knew, you know, That's all I thought
Speaker 1: it was too. I was like, she can help me maybe,
Speaker 1: but yeah, and then when we connected. You know, it's
Speaker 1: really common for people even to have had experiences where
Speaker 1: they've seen somebody, or they just have this idea that
Speaker 1: what they're doing is being changed, or they have to
Speaker 1: insert a whole bunch of extra effort and that takes
Speaker 1: them out of the performance. And I understand that that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. But essentially when we connected, I mean,
Speaker 1: the very first thing I noticed was just in your
Speaker 1: voice in general, I just felt like you were even
Speaker 1: though you might have felt guarded in one way, you
Speaker 1: were very vulnerable. That's interesting you were. You did allow
Speaker 1: me space too, to kind of come in and ask questions,
Speaker 1: and I was aware that there was a spot that
Speaker 1: we could go to, but I just was like, that's
Speaker 1: where we'll go to, and we'll just kind of keep
Speaker 1: going there, keep listening. The voice is more powerful than
Speaker 1: anything we're thinking. So it's sharing a lot of the
Speaker 1: way we're living, a lot of the way that we're
Speaker 1: doing our life, the blocks we hold, how we thrive.
Speaker 1: So basically my job is just to listen to the
Speaker 1: voice and then try and and bring it back to
Speaker 1: you in a way where you feel like it feels
Speaker 1: more like you. One of the most interesting pieces for
Speaker 1: me was how you went and through my body first,
Speaker 1: like it was really important. I could tell my musculature,
Speaker 1: like everything felt really tight. I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: dental surgeries over the past, you know, eight years, and
Speaker 1: I feel like my jaw was had constant tension. The
Speaker 1: muscles in my neck were constantly tight. And instead of
Speaker 1: going toward my voice first, you started it on the body,
Speaker 1: and I was just wondering how the body informs our voice. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this body is absolutely incredible. It is our voice,
Speaker 1: our voices, our body. It's a mechanism of our body.
Speaker 1: We sometimes forget that because we're using it to express,
Speaker 1: but it's actually a mechanism inside the body. And if
Speaker 1: we are experiencing tension of any sort, that kind of
Speaker 1: signals to the brain. You know, there's tension through the
Speaker 1: nervous system, it signals it to the brain and then
Speaker 1: the brain kind of comes back out and you know,
Speaker 1: it might send some hormones, it might send some adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and might send things like that. But essentially this tension
Speaker 1: has to be kept somewhere. So where does this tension go. Well,
Speaker 1: sometimes for singers, it it goes into the areas that
Speaker 1: affect our voice. And so when we've got these extra
Speaker 1: muscles that have been recruited to help us sing or speak.
Speaker 1: It could be for a speaker. We essentially can start
Speaker 1: building a habit that creates a habit way of speaking
Speaker 1: or singing or phone maating that is physiological. It's it's
Speaker 1: in the body. And even though you know, the signals
Speaker 1: go back to our brain and the brain says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm tight. Oh no, something's bad, it's happening. I have
Speaker 1: to worry. I don't want this to happen. Essentially, it
Speaker 1: comes back down to the body that this worry is
Speaker 1: expressed or mirrored intension, and this tension has to lie somewhere.
Speaker 1: So being able to have your body loose, you know,
Speaker 1: your diaphragm not tensed, kind of not in a state
Speaker 1: of sympathetic reaction whereas fight flight or freeze, to try
Speaker 1: and get it out of that into that parasympathetic mode,
Speaker 1: it really really really helps the voice to sort of
Speaker 1: begin to mirror those qualities of relaxation and calm and ease.
Speaker 1: M I get so many things I can say about this. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: getting into my body first and relaxing some of those
Speaker 1: muscles gave me a It made things start to feel
Speaker 1: a bit easier. I know that there's been so many
Speaker 1: things that have opened up for me around this work
Speaker 1: with you, and one of the biggest pieces there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's been different misconceptions, things that have been told to
Speaker 1: me about the voice in the past that you've totally
Speaker 1: like blown open for me. But one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things of pieces of awareness for me has been how
Speaker 1: hard I try at so many things. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people can relate to this, you know.
Speaker 1: I In fact, I just heard one of my um
Speaker 1: one of my therapists I have many, one of them,
Speaker 1: one of them today was saying how much drama we
Speaker 1: cause in our adult lives in order to feel like
Speaker 1: we're living a life worth living or doing something. You know,
Speaker 1: we're causing the drama in order to feel like we're
Speaker 1: doing enough. And that totally made sense to me because
Speaker 1: we've been talking about this of how I, with my voice,
Speaker 1: especially make it harder than it is in order to
Speaker 1: feel like I'm doing something more than I need to
Speaker 1: do in order to be who I think I have
Speaker 1: to be. And I know that plays over into so
Speaker 1: many different parts of my life of how we're making
Speaker 1: things more complicated than they have to be and that's
Speaker 1: been a major lesson, one of the big aha moments.
Speaker 1: And I feel like for me, my voice is such
Speaker 1: a huge catalyst for change because what I'm learning is
Speaker 1: if I can see and experience the lesson within my voice,
Speaker 1: not just see it, but actually like feel it and
Speaker 1: experience it, it trickles out into all the other areas
Speaker 1: of my life. So that's been one of the big
Speaker 1: factors for me, is bringing ease into the body and
Speaker 1: the voice. And it's still it's a layering piece for
Speaker 1: me because I'm noticing there. I can feel so at ease,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden have triggers on stage
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden make my muscles tense up.
Speaker 1: I know, yesterday I was performing and I text you
Speaker 1: after and I was like, I had this voice in
Speaker 1: my head that was like, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this. My muscle started tensing up.
Speaker 1: And Daryl, my sweet friend Daryl, and I were just
Speaker 1: talking about this. I actually something I didn't tell you.
Speaker 1: I went out into the hall, I said I need
Speaker 1: a break, and I went and screamed I know, which you,
Speaker 1: which was one of the things that has been told
Speaker 1: my whole life to me. I was actually taken to
Speaker 1: the doctor because I wanted to be a cheerleader and
Speaker 1: I was told, like, you can't scream because you will
Speaker 1: ruin your voice as a singer. And so yesterday was
Speaker 1: such a breakthrough for me, and I was like, there's
Speaker 1: this child inside of me right now that does not
Speaker 1: want to do this, and I need to go let
Speaker 1: it have its moment. I need to let myself have
Speaker 1: my moment. So I screamed, and I went right back
Speaker 1: and sang breakthrough. Yea, yea. But I I just wonder
Speaker 1: you say that you can you can tell all of
Speaker 1: these things about someone through their voice. I would love
Speaker 1: to you to expand upon that a bit. And we've
Speaker 1: talked about how the body plays a role in our physiology,
Speaker 1: but like, what else can you tell about someone through
Speaker 1: their voice? Like does trauma? Obviously trauma shows up through
Speaker 1: the voice. I'll let you kind of go there. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you brought up so many amazing things. I'll just touch
Speaker 1: a tiny bit on them, like we absolutely kind of
Speaker 1: exert a lot more effort in many things in life,
Speaker 1: Like maybe I'm even brushing my teeth and I'm brushing
Speaker 1: them like fervently and I can just like brush them.
Speaker 1: I don't have to kind of really go crazy at it.
Speaker 1: But it's the same thing we you know, at the
Speaker 1: same playing piano or something, I might exert more effort
Speaker 1: um in parts of my body that I don't need.
Speaker 1: And it's the same with singing. It is true in
Speaker 1: singing that we do need as the voice, you know,
Speaker 1: a sense and pitch to recruit different muscles. And the
Speaker 1: ones we want to recruit are the ones that allow
Speaker 1: that voice to basically think of it as a rubber
Speaker 1: band like lengthen and not length. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: not exactly like that, but the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: we have to have that um mass, stretch or be
Speaker 1: in a position where if I was to like pluck
Speaker 1: it like a string, it would be higher because it's
Speaker 1: more taught, right, and so our voice. We want to
Speaker 1: recruit those muscles. But the muscles we don't want to
Speaker 1: recruit are the ones that are used for you know, swallowing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not accurate, but the idea of hilaris we don't
Speaker 1: want to recruit that too much. We don't want to
Speaker 1: recruit the ventricular fold too much. We don't want to
Speaker 1: recruit lots of other neck muscles and things like that.
Speaker 1: So we tend to recruit those things because it's easier
Speaker 1: to go the way of I'm not gonna worry about
Speaker 1: my airflow. I'm going to use my muscle tension, my
Speaker 1: ability to close my vocal cords or use my muscle
Speaker 1: in order to make sound, because it's more efficient in
Speaker 1: the way that it's easier. But the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to sing is actually to synchronize that airflow as well
Speaker 1: as the approximation or the adduction or they're bringing together
Speaker 1: of your vocal courts. So it's like a dance. You're
Speaker 1: trying to navigate this dance. And when we have a
Speaker 1: dance to navigate that's not all our own doing, we
Speaker 1: tend to want to be like, nope, I'll do it,
Speaker 1: you know, and and sort of take over as opposed
Speaker 1: to like there's a force in its own self to
Speaker 1: be able to propel, almost like a gravitational pull of
Speaker 1: the voice. And if you can learn to go with
Speaker 1: that gravitational pull, you don't have to use as much effort.
Speaker 1: But of course, if we're very competitive, if we have
Speaker 1: kind of perfectionistic tendencies, things like this all of these
Speaker 1: things kind of serve our identity in that way to
Speaker 1: be able to do something and see the outcome of
Speaker 1: it and feel the outcome of it. So, coming back
Speaker 1: to your question, how can you tell a bit about
Speaker 1: how someone maybe lives their life through how they're using
Speaker 1: their voice? One of those things is that like how
Speaker 1: much of the person is trying to present themselves versus
Speaker 1: allow themselves. So you can hear when I'm presenting something,
Speaker 1: you can hear that I'm carefully presenting it for you
Speaker 1: instead of just sort of letting it come out. So
Speaker 1: that presenting would show me that that's an area you
Speaker 1: don't you don't want to lose control of that. You
Speaker 1: want to make sure that there's certain things. Or perhaps
Speaker 1: if somebody has had um some trauma for example, um,
Speaker 1: let's say some sort of a sexual violation, it could
Speaker 1: be it could be you know, somebody has witnessed a crime.
Speaker 1: Even you know, there's this sense of like when you
Speaker 1: have that trauma, what happens in the body, Well, you're breathing,
Speaker 1: shallows and it almost stops. Your body goes into that
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system and it goes into fight or flight.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes this is the freeze mode. And you can hear
Speaker 1: that freeze mode before somebody begins to seeing or speak.
Speaker 1: So when somebody comes in, they don't really know that
Speaker 1: they're really showing you so much about their life, what
Speaker 1: they think is important to block, how important their voice is,
Speaker 1: their identity that's tied in with their voice, and we
Speaker 1: create all these projections on our voice. So it's so
Speaker 1: much more when we have a voice problem than up
Speaker 1: my voice is hurt. It's like, oh no, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose my my ability to share and receive love. I'm
Speaker 1: going to lose my livelihood. I'm going to lose That's
Speaker 1: what we're sad and worried about. And that worry creates
Speaker 1: a state in the body, and that state must be
Speaker 1: experienced and expressed in some way. And I think that
Speaker 1: the thing that you said that was really interesting when
Speaker 1: you went out in the hall and you screen and
Speaker 1: you're like a you know, when you think of that,
Speaker 1: that's really a catharsis. That's a st ang emotional feeling
Speaker 1: that wants to come out. It's like if you want
Speaker 1: to cry but you hold it in, and you really
Speaker 1: really want to cry, but you just you hold it in.
Speaker 1: Where do you experience that feeling? I mean in my throat, right,
Speaker 1: It's not in your tear dect, it's not in your eyeballs, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's in our throat. And that's because that holding
Speaker 1: back of a catharsis or a natural reaction to something
Speaker 1: which you know, if you think about how we lived
Speaker 1: as children. Sometimes we've been in environments or you know,
Speaker 1: the industry itself, of the music industry kind of does
Speaker 1: not allow us to just always express ourselves in that way.
Speaker 1: So that energy has to go somewhere, and it almost
Speaker 1: always goes into our body. It goes into our body
Speaker 1: into muscular tension, and over a period of years, that
Speaker 1: muscular tension starts to come out in many different forms.
Speaker 1: One of the forms can be of So that's why
Speaker 1: it's so powerful. And on that powerful note, we are
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, my loves. We are talking with a wonderful
Speaker 1: Tamarra Beaute about the energy and power behind connecting with
Speaker 1: our true voice. It's such a powerful form of transformation,
Speaker 1: like catalyst for it. Absolutely, it's so interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I've been praised for the control of my voice.
Speaker 1: It's like musicians and some singers are praised for the
Speaker 1: control of their voice. And it's such a mind fuck
Speaker 1: because it's like, yes, and well, first off, do you
Speaker 1: even want that much control of your voice? What am
Speaker 1: I missing if I'm always controlling it? That's what I'm
Speaker 1: That's what I find myself asking. It's so we live
Speaker 1: in this world of duality. I'm I want to go
Speaker 1: here because I you sent me, Well, we had a
Speaker 1: conversation and you ended up finding this book that was
Speaker 1: with you where you were, and you opened it to
Speaker 1: a page that had a ticket that was stuck in
Speaker 1: the book. And the book is called Effortless Mastery, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to read what the top of the page
Speaker 1: said because it's stuck with me. Um, As you improvised
Speaker 1: from an expanded consciousness, you discover that, in fact, there
Speaker 1: are no wrong notes. Appropriateness and correctness are products of
Speaker 1: the mind trying to live within those imaginary guidelines in
Speaker 1: him its flow. And so for me, like there are
Speaker 1: right and wrong notes, like that's what I've been told.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are quote unquote right and wrong ways
Speaker 1: to do things. I guess within the linear world that
Speaker 1: we live in, if I'm going to sing a certain song,
Speaker 1: there are notes to hit to create that song. But
Speaker 1: what I start starting to ask myself within this duality
Speaker 1: of like good and bad and right or wrong? Like
Speaker 1: what is in between? What am I missing by only
Speaker 1: hitting those notes? Like what am I missing that I
Speaker 1: could be creating or drawing from that? Those dualistic ways
Speaker 1: of thinking are what's it keeping me from? Absolutely You're
Speaker 1: bringing up so many amazing, you know, ways of thinking,
Speaker 1: because the question is is what is control? What's what's control?
Speaker 1: Is control being able to you know, guide something into
Speaker 1: a specific set of parameters that you have created. Like
Speaker 1: when you say it's the right note of the wrong
Speaker 1: note for the song, I mean you could say, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you kind of want to go off a little bit,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, that's it with that harmonization of
Speaker 1: that chord. But if you harmonize it differently, put different
Speaker 1: notes you know in your base or you kind of
Speaker 1: you have a different sense of tonality than is it
Speaker 1: is it a wrong note? So it's like when we're
Speaker 1: creating songs for the radio, we've got more formulas, and
Speaker 1: that formula there's a little bit more like this is
Speaker 1: right and wrong because this is what we're conditioned to.
Speaker 1: But if you really look at the expansiveness of music
Speaker 1: and sound, you know, sound is you're never singing one note.
Speaker 1: That note you're singing has harmonics, there's always these other
Speaker 1: notes on it, So you're never just hitting a C
Speaker 1: or just a B or a B flat. You're hitting
Speaker 1: you know, a series of other notes if you've got
Speaker 1: great resonance. So in one way, if you think of music,
Speaker 1: not in the industry's point of view, and you think
Speaker 1: of it as sound and communication, you know, really, is
Speaker 1: it really a wrong note? Not not necessarily so that
Speaker 1: if you kind of blow it up like that, then
Speaker 1: you can sort of think that way and and right
Speaker 1: or wrong? Whose constraints are using when we're using those
Speaker 1: confines and things. So you know, again, if we're singing
Speaker 1: for industry stuff, we do have to play by certain
Speaker 1: rules and we've got certain confines that we're we're going in.
Speaker 1: But for me, the question is, is somebody who here,
Speaker 1: I'll say it like this. The other day, somebody said
Speaker 1: that they were kayaking, and then somebody was really good
Speaker 1: at kayaking said kayaking is a downhill sport. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like you're going down, it's just down the river.
Speaker 1: And immediately I thought singing is a downhill sport. It's
Speaker 1: working with gravity, it's never going back. If it's going back,
Speaker 1: we're holding some tension. Right. So the question is does
Speaker 1: a downhill skier who has to go down this hill
Speaker 1: and navigate moguls? What's their control? What are they controlling them?
Speaker 1: Not falling on their face? Right? But but they're not,
Speaker 1: like they can't exert the effort of guarding, stopping hesitation,
Speaker 1: they will not be able to master that run. In
Speaker 1: their control is an element of allowing. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think our idea of control goes on its head
Speaker 1: because element of control that always holds and guides and
Speaker 1: controls everything in that way is not nearly as powerful
Speaker 1: as the element that also brings in the idea of allowing,
Speaker 1: letting go, surrendering. So if you've got that element alongside,
Speaker 1: you know whatever else you're doing, that to me is
Speaker 1: true control. Because your voice has its own momentum that
Speaker 1: you can harness. Your your vocal cords coming together has
Speaker 1: its own momentum. We can stop it, just like we
Speaker 1: can put a paddle in a river and stop the
Speaker 1: flow of our boat or we can go with the flow.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, I say, what we're missing out
Speaker 1: on is really a catharsis what is that expression of
Speaker 1: ourselves that we're stopping by trying to control it in
Speaker 1: the traditional sense of the word. It's a real sense
Speaker 1: of release, It's a sense of ease under a lot
Speaker 1: of demands. There's so many things I feel like we
Speaker 1: are missing out on so much by controlling in the
Speaker 1: traditional way, which is really more of a sympathetic approach.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have a parasympathetic feel at all, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: I completely understand that. I mean, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: interesting with my voice because I've felt like in the
Speaker 1: past until probably the last year and a half, when
Speaker 1: I think being off the road gave me a moment
Speaker 1: for things that didn't used to seep into my voice,
Speaker 1: or I wasn't aware of them seeping into my voice.
Speaker 1: It became a place for them to seep into. Also
Speaker 1: because my mind started creating stories around feelings that I
Speaker 1: was having in my body because I wasn't in quote
Speaker 1: unquote practice all the time like I had been in
Speaker 1: the past, and with any kind of trauma that lived
Speaker 1: in the body. Even with the tight muscles and everything
Speaker 1: like I was somehow still able and I still can.
Speaker 1: Like Darren, I were talking about someone vials and watching
Speaker 1: her do these like incredible things where I was reading
Speaker 1: an article on her in the New Yorker and I was,
Speaker 1: I think it's the New Yorker, and uh. She was
Speaker 1: talking about how she could just like quiet her mind
Speaker 1: to this still place to do anything when it came
Speaker 1: to gymnastics, and then obviously when she got the twisties
Speaker 1: and the whole thing happened, she couldn't. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's kind of where I was and have been
Speaker 1: all my life, Like when it came to my voice,
Speaker 1: like I could overcome. You could cut all my limbs
Speaker 1: off and I could be bleeding out and I'd still
Speaker 1: be able to sing again. It would just happened like
Speaker 1: and so it was almost like it was the one
Speaker 1: place I wouldn't allow the trauma to infiltrate in a way.
Speaker 1: Our psyche obviously has a way of of getting our
Speaker 1: attention through the thing that is the most important to us.
Speaker 1: And I think this downtime gave allowed my voice to
Speaker 1: become a space where that could creep in and which
Speaker 1: has been such a gift because I'm noticing the quickest
Speaker 1: direct line to my healing at the same time because
Speaker 1: because of how important it is to me, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things that has really broken down
Speaker 1: for me. Well, several bits. One you mentioned earlier, this
Speaker 1: perfectionism and this idea of good and bad, And I
Speaker 1: wonder because you you were a professional skier before you
Speaker 1: were a coach. I wrisen a skier, but I was
Speaker 1: a competitive athlete and sorry, what did you do? That's okay? No,
Speaker 1: I was a runner, kind of a jumper, track and field.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I had skiing my mom. Maybe
Speaker 1: because the downhill thing you were talking about. I'm like you,
Speaker 1: I don't think I couldn't do that very well, that's funny.
Speaker 1: In my mind, you were totally scared. That's very cool.
Speaker 1: But as a competitive athlete, like, I wonder how you
Speaker 1: experienced I wonder how you experienced the perfectionistic tendencies and
Speaker 1: the this kind of being the best, like how that
Speaker 1: affected you? And then once you started to coach people,
Speaker 1: how your own experience with that informed how you coach people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really do feel like my experience as an athletes
Speaker 1: informed the way that I worked with people. Because it's
Speaker 1: an arena of pressure and demands. It's a physiological like
Speaker 1: experience to build muscle and to build stamina and to
Speaker 1: build strength and and those types of things, and in
Speaker 1: singing it really is as well. So I do wish
Speaker 1: I could redo my athletic career with the knowledge I
Speaker 1: have now, because I think I would have been able to,
Speaker 1: you know, improve so many areas by not just going
Speaker 1: in and muscling everything. Um. I my father was actually
Speaker 1: my coach. He was a really good coach. He used
Speaker 1: a lot of like Russian techniques, so we were like
Speaker 1: it was pretty hardcore, like I would have a tired
Speaker 1: chain to me and I would be running at the
Speaker 1: hill and things like that. So in that sense it
Speaker 1: was a little over overdone, over pushed and things like that.
Speaker 1: But but at the heart of it, the idea of
Speaker 1: I have a lot of pressure, I've got to deliver
Speaker 1: in that moment. You know, I read you did learn
Speaker 1: that art of I guess it's partial visualization, but it's
Speaker 1: also just kind of what you were saying, where you
Speaker 1: just you zone in and then everything just clears away
Speaker 1: and you learn to straight ahead focus and that's that's
Speaker 1: what you're focusing in on. You just use that and
Speaker 1: it's a kind of a combination of masculine and feminine.
Speaker 1: I'd say it's like it's strong, but it's also very
Speaker 1: like I've got this. It's not terribly like this. It
Speaker 1: has this energy and flow to it. And that's really
Speaker 1: the only way that I could withstand a lot of
Speaker 1: the demands that happened. And so when I started working
Speaker 1: with people like helping them with television performances or helping
Speaker 1: them on tour and things like that where the adrenaline
Speaker 1: is really really high, I definitely feel like it played
Speaker 1: an important role. But I really do wish I could
Speaker 1: do it again with what I know now, because I
Speaker 1: think you can be much gentler and exert a lot
Speaker 1: less effort and get a lot more out of it,
Speaker 1: even just by visualization and and connecting with um that
Speaker 1: feeling of knowingness inside of you and and replaying that.
Speaker 1: That would be what I would love to go back
Speaker 1: and do. Yeah. Absolutely, I've been playing around with that myself,
Speaker 1: with the visualization pieces. Yeah, it's been great. It's actually
Speaker 1: I can tell when I I'll do several days of
Speaker 1: it and then I'll stop for a few days, and
Speaker 1: I like my life changes it like all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Especially one of the biggest pieces right now for me
Speaker 1: is this kind of soft power that we talk about.
Speaker 1: It's not the brushing your teeth to the hardest to
Speaker 1: make sure they're the cleanest. It's not like it's not
Speaker 1: muscling through everything. Um And one of you know, one
Speaker 1: of my visualizations and things that I do for myself
Speaker 1: is that I visualized my my day and going through
Speaker 1: my day facing challenges, being in a state of gentleness
Speaker 1: with those challenges or softness where I would be really activated,
Speaker 1: just lessening the activation a bit. And days when I
Speaker 1: do the visualizations, it's like, oh, that really works, and
Speaker 1: then I'll forget it for a couple of days and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I'm super activate again. Like it's definitely
Speaker 1: not in my nervous system yet. So yeah, I completely
Speaker 1: agree with you. And even singing something. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things you tell me is like visualize the note,
Speaker 1: which I think I think I've done that naturally anyway,
Speaker 1: like I hear it and I know where it is,
Speaker 1: but it's never it's been more like auditory for me
Speaker 1: than it has been visually. And so now combining sometimes
Speaker 1: for super high notes like combining visualization. I already hear it,
Speaker 1: so to combine it visually takes it to a whole
Speaker 1: another ease that I'm go that that really works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or even just you know, the feeling of follow through
Speaker 1: or hearing it and then feeling you know, quote unquote
Speaker 1: visualizing the feeling of it being easy is is super powerful.
Speaker 1: In fact, if someone's lost their voice, that's one thing
Speaker 1: I would say is, try not to replay the feeling
Speaker 1: of whatever it is, that sensation you might have in
Speaker 1: your body. Try not to replay that over and over.
Speaker 1: Try not to replay the idea of you always talking
Speaker 1: it sounded like this, you know, really don't listen to
Speaker 1: your old voice in terms of what it was before
Speaker 1: it felt like that, because that's just going to make you,
Speaker 1: you know, sad or something like that. But if you
Speaker 1: just think, no, my voice is right there. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest misconceptions of the voice
Speaker 1: is that it's fragile. Yeah, I wondered what some of
Speaker 1: the biggest misconceptions. I think that definitely speaks to, you know,
Speaker 1: someone telling me like, don't scream, You're gonna ruin your voice.
Speaker 1: Don't don't whisper, Like, we we work a lot with
Speaker 1: air in the voice, and maybe that is a different
Speaker 1: thing than whispering, but I remember that was one of
Speaker 1: the first things. You're working with so much air on
Speaker 1: the voice, and I'm like, well, I was told never
Speaker 1: to whisper because that would be, like off, the worst
Speaker 1: thing I could do. So I think in both respects,
Speaker 1: there is such a misconception that the vocal cords or
Speaker 1: the voice itself is really um tender and delicate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely well. And the airflow air flow is kind of
Speaker 1: having people have this idea of like breathy is bad.
Speaker 1: But you know, if I'm speaking like this, I've got
Speaker 1: my high larynx as well. So now I'm recruiting another
Speaker 1: muscle to help me. And it's that muscle that's the issue.
Speaker 1: It's not the airflow. The airflow is what we need.
Speaker 1: We can't make sound without air flow. You know. The
Speaker 1: way for anybody to know that the voice is not
Speaker 1: fragile is that the function of the voice is not
Speaker 1: to speak or sing. The whole function of the voice
Speaker 1: is to protect our airways. It's function is to have
Speaker 1: open vocal courts that we can breathe. And then they
Speaker 1: close so that food doesn't go down the wrong way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a protection mechanism. It wasn't meant to
Speaker 1: help us phonate essentially, and so therefore that very reason
Speaker 1: of our life depends on these this you know, muscle,
Speaker 1: this ability to open and clothes. How fragile could it
Speaker 1: be if our life depends on it? Right? You know
Speaker 1: it is true that you know, you can have a
Speaker 1: sneeze and like you can hemorrhage your voice, like if
Speaker 1: someone is vulnerable to it, that you can have that.
Speaker 1: But if your body is able to heal, well, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's going to heal quickly. It's it's our reaction. Two,
Speaker 1: the situation I've lost my voice, Um oh no, somebody
Speaker 1: said I shouldn't scream. I can't do this. All that is,
Speaker 1: all of that is reinforcing, the holding back, the guarding,
Speaker 1: the cautiousness. And we know that the cautiousness has to
Speaker 1: go somewhere in their muscles. And now that's what causes
Speaker 1: us to have trouble with our expression. It's it's not
Speaker 1: that we have a real problem with a mechanism, it's
Speaker 1: that our reaction is a panic. That panic is causing
Speaker 1: a body state. So it's that's the that's the association
Speaker 1: between psyche and soma. I have a thought, now my
Speaker 1: body starts to react to that. My breathing gets shallow.
Speaker 1: I start to go into that sympathetic approach. The nervous
Speaker 1: system all it does is it's translating what the body is.
Speaker 1: So I know we talk a lot about like it's
Speaker 1: in the nervous system, but essentially it's in the body,
Speaker 1: and the nervous system relays that information up to the
Speaker 1: brain and then the brain just acts accordingly, and of
Speaker 1: course it wants to take the path at least resistance.
Speaker 1: So if we just keep thinking and thinking and thinking,
Speaker 1: and it just feeds into the cycle of holding. So
Speaker 1: what we're all we're trying to do is get back
Speaker 1: to the natural function of the voice, which is why
Speaker 1: it's so freeing, because the function of the voice is
Speaker 1: to protect. And that's why when you say, oh, it goes,
Speaker 1: I know how to protect and it starts to squeeze.
Speaker 1: It knows how to protect. So it starts to protect
Speaker 1: as its own way of helping you accomplish your task
Speaker 1: of like, oh, they're not do that, So it's helping
Speaker 1: you do what you're we're asking it to do. What
Speaker 1: we want to do is get out of that. And
Speaker 1: oh wait a second. The mechanism of my voice, if
Speaker 1: I take away communication, it's just a mechanism that I
Speaker 1: can synchronize with the right amount of airflow and and
Speaker 1: muscle use. That's it. I love that you you talk
Speaker 1: about the voice as the like the truest voice in us,
Speaker 1: as the big V voice. I would love to know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have touched upon it, but I would
Speaker 1: love to really get clear on what you mean by
Speaker 1: the big V voice, because do we touch it? Do
Speaker 1: we know what? How do we know when we touch it?
Speaker 1: All right, we are going to take a quick breath,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with Tamara's super insightful answer
Speaker 1: right after this, and we are back, my friends. We
Speaker 1: were just talking about how and when we know we've
Speaker 1: accessed our true voice. Well we know, we know because
Speaker 1: it's the goose bump. It's it incites a reaction and emotion.
Speaker 1: That's what we feel moved when we've experienced that voice.
Speaker 1: And we know that voice doesn't have sound. Because I've
Speaker 1: said this before, if you see a silent protest people
Speaker 1: marching for a human right. You know, if you see
Speaker 1: thousands of people marching, that's a collective voice that is
Speaker 1: very powerful, and you could be moved to tears by
Speaker 1: watching it, seeing this collective voice in action. You know,
Speaker 1: that voice didn't have a physical vehicle, Like I work
Speaker 1: with voices all the time, and I do not believe
Speaker 1: that our voices are physical. That's that's the vehicle of expression.
Speaker 1: It's the physical representation of our big voice. So yeah,
Speaker 1: our big voices to me are kind of synonymous with
Speaker 1: our power, our fingerprint or a thumb print on life,
Speaker 1: Like what we bring to the world that nobody else
Speaker 1: really brings. It's all we've got to offer in our
Speaker 1: own unique way. Really untouched by I think are traumas
Speaker 1: and things that informs it it, but it only informs
Speaker 1: it to grow. I think we have this idea that
Speaker 1: this is what I was, and I had this feeling
Speaker 1: of power and this and that, and then all these
Speaker 1: experiences happened to me and it shrunk. Well, that's not
Speaker 1: your voice drinking. In my opinion, it's always there full well.
Speaker 1: It's like a water well that never never, never, never
Speaker 1: runs dry. It's always there. It's just we move farther
Speaker 1: and farther away from the water, but the water is
Speaker 1: always there. So all we want to do is just
Speaker 1: stand by the waters try and access this this voice.
Speaker 1: And this voice really to me, doesn't have words, doesn't
Speaker 1: have thoughts. It's so powerful it sits behind and that
Speaker 1: when you ask me that question of how can you
Speaker 1: tell what somebody's how they're living their life by their voice,
Speaker 1: it's because this bigger voice speaks to us too. It
Speaker 1: shows us what we want, what lights us up, what
Speaker 1: inspires us, what moves us. And that's what you bring
Speaker 1: to people is your vulnerability, which I really admire. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm anywhere near as vulner ball I've I've
Speaker 1: often remarked that, wow, I'm not just on stage but
Speaker 1: just as a person. When you're recounting, you know, your life,
Speaker 1: you're really willing to put it out and say this
Speaker 1: is how I feel, and you know it's not great,
Speaker 1: and this is how I feel and this is what
Speaker 1: I went through. And that is a hard place I
Speaker 1: think to get to myself. But that vulnerability, um is
Speaker 1: expressing this part of you, and you have this ability
Speaker 1: to bridge the gap between a capital V and your
Speaker 1: So this capital V, I'm saying it's bigger than a
Speaker 1: regular little voice. It's got a capital V on its consciousness. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean you could you could call it all sorts
Speaker 1: of things. I think soul like whatever, yeah, whatever exists,
Speaker 1: whatever the eye is that exists past the mask. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: And to me I would call a knowing nous. It's
Speaker 1: like just something that you know is your Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a fingerprint of you know, a conscious fingerprints like
Speaker 1: there you go, that that person. You know. It feels
Speaker 1: like that's kind of me in the loosest sense because
Speaker 1: it's not an encapsulation, but it just has this let's
Speaker 1: call it a frequency. It has a frequency with which
Speaker 1: we we are tuned to, and so that frequency wants
Speaker 1: to express itself. And that's what I think the definition
Speaker 1: of an artist is is somebody who has something inside
Speaker 1: that wants to get out. They don't have to paint,
Speaker 1: they don't have to draw, they don't have to dance.
Speaker 1: It's somebody who has something inside and they want to
Speaker 1: get it out. And in order to bridge that gap
Speaker 1: from that capital V what you've got and your voice
Speaker 1: or your movement or whatever it is, what we gotta
Speaker 1: do is get past all the little blocks that we
Speaker 1: put in its place, and it's those blocks that are
Speaker 1: what seems like the shrinking of the well. But it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's not there. It's always fallen, plentiful.
Speaker 1: It's it's just that we maybe don't know how to
Speaker 1: access it or the gate gets closed. So the process
Speaker 1: of of feeling more freedom, because that's all we're trying
Speaker 1: to do, is essentially bridging that without the editing, without
Speaker 1: the worry, without the traditional control, because we can't really
Speaker 1: truthfully get from the big V to the little VA
Speaker 1: if we're controlling it in a traditional way. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The freedom piece that you speak of another thing that's
Speaker 1: really opened up for me. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us are challenged by discipline in our life. A
Speaker 1: lot of us have this idea that discipline is hard,
Speaker 1: it can be challenging to stick with it. There's so
Speaker 1: much shame that comes along when we don't stick with it.
Speaker 1: At least that's been my experience. And my dad was
Speaker 1: also rehearsed with me when I was a child, and
Speaker 1: he was the one, you know, they taught me many
Speaker 1: great things when it came to rehearsing and work ethic,
Speaker 1: but as a child. This all came so naturally to me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why am I working? Why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: Why am I child? You know? And it was like
Speaker 1: the only reason I did was, you know, really in
Speaker 1: my mind was like to learn a new song every
Speaker 1: weekend that I was for the show is singing at
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of between the two of us,
Speaker 1: a lot of arguing like around why I was you know,
Speaker 1: why am I rehearsing so much? And I think because
Speaker 1: of all of that, the last place I wanted to
Speaker 1: go and work was my voice. I had this kind
Speaker 1: of and I also had this belief like if you
Speaker 1: have to work at it and means I'm less than
Speaker 1: I've lost something like all these things. But what's been
Speaker 1: so beautiful about this exploration for me over the past
Speaker 1: few months is that I have learned that discipline and
Speaker 1: freedom for me at least go hand in hand. They're synonymous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are synonymous. And it's a big eye opener for
Speaker 1: me and I. Actually, before we started working together, you know,
Speaker 1: several times a week, I had started a practice of
Speaker 1: doing some lymphatic work on myself every morning, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't working out to look good. It wasn't any of
Speaker 1: those things. It was because I wanted to feel better,
Speaker 1: and it became something that was sole for me. It
Speaker 1: was like there was nothing physical to anyone could see
Speaker 1: that made a difference. So it was a real dedication thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a real dedication to myself. And then I
Speaker 1: think that led me to be able to open up
Speaker 1: to this idea of Okay, I can dedicate, and you
Speaker 1: were so wonderful with working with me, You're like even
Speaker 1: five minutes, like five minutes. But it became once I
Speaker 1: started to see that this discipline was starting to build
Speaker 1: stamina within my voice and I was starting to play
Speaker 1: more with um and yeah, and it expressed myself in
Speaker 1: new ways. It became this direct line to a freer
Speaker 1: place in me, a place with much more ease, and
Speaker 1: that has spilled over into all the other aspects of
Speaker 1: my life when it comes to discipline, which has been
Speaker 1: so that's a huge, huge piece And for me also
Speaker 1: it's like what's driving the discipline. I always used working
Speaker 1: out as a as an example because I've been on
Speaker 1: both sides of it where the fear of not looking
Speaker 1: a certain way has driven the discipline. And then also
Speaker 1: there's now like I like to move my body, I
Speaker 1: like to jump rope, I like to get on my trampoline.
Speaker 1: There's freedom in that, and there's also freedom and knowing
Speaker 1: like I'm healthy, I'm taking care of my body, and
Speaker 1: as I age, I'm gonna have freedom in that because
Speaker 1: I'm now putting in the work. And so for me,
Speaker 1: work in the past has been exhausting also because I've
Speaker 1: done it my whole life. Everything has been like work, work, work, work, work.
Speaker 1: But there's a new kind of work that's coming into
Speaker 1: play for me that is really leading to freedom and
Speaker 1: it it is being driven by the why, like what
Speaker 1: is behind it? And I said to you the other day,
Speaker 1: I could quit tomorrow and I'd still do the work
Speaker 1: that we're doing together because I'm learning about myself and
Speaker 1: I'm expanding and there is a sense of of freedom
Speaker 1: and ease that is coming with with this discipline, and
Speaker 1: it's for me. The discipline has turned into really kind
Speaker 1: of this devotion to myself, my health, body, my mind,
Speaker 1: my connection to source, connection to the thing that does
Speaker 1: sing me. And it is also really turned into like
Speaker 1: what if, what if discipline was the highest form of
Speaker 1: self love from that place, not from fear, and then
Speaker 1: also it can discipline can then go into you can
Speaker 1: have to be careful, doesn't turn into trying to control
Speaker 1: because that I was just gonna say, a discipline and
Speaker 1: control imagine, like the discipline from that place you're talking about,
Speaker 1: the control that goes with it is kind of that
Speaker 1: one we were talking about where there's this art of
Speaker 1: allowing at the same time. But if it's the other,
Speaker 1: if it's disciplined, like you know, very hard and stern
Speaker 1: and it's militant, and yeah, you've got these very strong
Speaker 1: ideas of right and wrong associated with it, where you
Speaker 1: have to kind of edit and measure things by, then
Speaker 1: of course the control is going to lead in that
Speaker 1: direction of Okay, these are the parameters with which I'm
Speaker 1: trying to gauge my performance by or gauge what I'm
Speaker 1: doing by. And it's really not that fun. It's it's
Speaker 1: really kind of that's the soul sucking. I really do wish,
Speaker 1: I really wish that you didn't have that experience, and
Speaker 1: we can't take away our experiences, but where you can
Speaker 1: kind of keep that playfulness and curiosity and I didn't
Speaker 1: have to learn the idea of like even though it's easy,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make it hard. And now that it's hard,
Speaker 1: that's where my word is. I'm just gonna I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna drive at home, and I'm just gonna keep doing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So so this this is
Speaker 1: great because now you can kind of you know, we
Speaker 1: can't change what's happened. What what what we can do is
Speaker 1: just move forward in a way that feels better and
Speaker 1: curiosity play joy. I mean that feeling of expressing, like
Speaker 1: the definition of the word catharsis in Greek is really
Speaker 1: cleansing or purification, and I like that. It's like if
Speaker 1: I release what I'm feeling, whether it is sadness or
Speaker 1: whatever it's it's a feeling of purification. I'm I'm transforming
Speaker 1: this energy and I'm letting it out. And if we've
Speaker 1: had experience where like industry Box, you know, had to
Speaker 1: keep performing all the time, Box or whatever our boxes are,
Speaker 1: you know, we we start to hold that energy against
Speaker 1: ourselves and we're the only ones who who reap those consequences.
Speaker 1: And and so yeah, the discipline to me, in my mind,
Speaker 1: is the art of trusting yourself. So as you do something,
Speaker 1: you're basically building trust with yourself and in that trust
Speaker 1: your loosening, and in that loosening you're getting freedom. That's
Speaker 1: what I think discipline is well, yeah, in in this form,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a huge reframe for so many
Speaker 1: people because you know, discipline has been driven home in
Speaker 1: one way. You know, we've had to work everything has
Speaker 1: to be worked hard for. And I'm still too, I'm
Speaker 1: still figuring out like can it be easy? Guilt and
Speaker 1: shame almost of it being easy, right, like you were
Speaker 1: mentioning before, And I definitely have not masked her that
Speaker 1: um from my own self because you know, when you're competitive,
Speaker 1: it's you can if you kind of keep going and
Speaker 1: you're like, I gotta work towards all that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff and not allow not have that also the experience
Speaker 1: of like joy and allowing and leisure and things like that.
Speaker 1: Then it's it's very easy to burn out. And that burnout,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to then isolate. And the isolation
Speaker 1: causes you know, if we were talking from a point
Speaker 1: of view of a voice, it causes like a shrinking
Speaker 1: of your diaphragm, like physiologically will as you get older,
Speaker 1: it starts to get a bit more rigid, and things
Speaker 1: but then you know, the elasticity starts to kind of
Speaker 1: get lost, and and then we kind of start to
Speaker 1: really breach more shallowly just because we're breathing more shallowly,
Speaker 1: you know, and we have to like work it out.
Speaker 1: And so it's like our body gets the side effects
Speaker 1: of this desire to constantly exert effort in order to
Speaker 1: have an outcome, in order to uphold an identity or
Speaker 1: to feel and receive love and things like that. So
Speaker 1: it's a big price to pay. Alright, loves, We're gonna
Speaker 1: take one final break, but we'll be read back. Hello again,
Speaker 1: my friends. We were discussing the manifestation of stress on
Speaker 1: our ability to express ourselves and our voice. I find
Speaker 1: it interesting you were talking about isolation and how what
Speaker 1: it does to our body, and it's like, look at
Speaker 1: what we've gone through and the like year and a
Speaker 1: half and all this has been isolated. You wonder, like
Speaker 1: how many how our voices have shifted? Oh big time,
Speaker 1: what we are holding it? I mean, obviously I that
Speaker 1: was like the first place it went for me to
Speaker 1: experience it. For people who aren't singers, we're living in
Speaker 1: a time right now where I think each and every
Speaker 1: one of our unique voices. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: a singer. We we need your voice like we need
Speaker 1: your fullest expression the Big V. Sure, we need your
Speaker 1: fullest expression. And I wonder people here listening to us
Speaker 1: and thinking like I'm not a singer. I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about many things that do apply to people that
Speaker 1: aren't aren't singers. But one of my favorite things that
Speaker 1: you say is like to find this big V voice
Speaker 1: is to basically stop talking, which is beautiful. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? Exactly? Are you saying like go meditate?
Speaker 1: Are you saying stop talking? And observed? Like where do
Speaker 1: people go when they stop talking? That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how I learned this, and it is
Speaker 1: because I had laryngitis actually, and I I lost my
Speaker 1: voice and I couldn't speak for quite some time. Or
Speaker 1: and maybe I was a little too cautious probably, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know this is what I do. I just
Speaker 1: was like, I'm just I don't have to speak, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna wait. And that whole time period I realized that,
Speaker 1: you know, someone might ask me a question. I might
Speaker 1: have like twenty words. I want to explain things, say
Speaker 1: this association this story blah blah blah, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I realized that did I really want to
Speaker 1: say that? Maybe I didn't want to say that. What
Speaker 1: was I actually thinking? Like, I just realized how automatic
Speaker 1: our speeches and it really wasn't connected to what I
Speaker 1: was feeling. So I feel like, if you just stop talking,
Speaker 1: one of the things you might hear is your inner voice,
Speaker 1: which isn't always kind know that inner voice. It's not
Speaker 1: usually like, Wow, you're amazing, I think you're fantastic. You
Speaker 1: just keep doing what you're doing. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: usually saying that, So that's not what I mean. But
Speaker 1: I mean if you stop and you quiet down, and
Speaker 1: you allow your own voice to spring up, your own
Speaker 1: words to spring up in your ear without them coming
Speaker 1: out your mouth, you go wow. And to me, that's intuition.
Speaker 1: That little intuition or instinct maybe is a better report
Speaker 1: that instinct on what's important to you, what you actually
Speaker 1: want to speak about, what you actually want to talk about.
Speaker 1: That's a good way to do it. Like you can
Speaker 1: even take a day where you go, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to speak, I'm just gonna like listen and see what
Speaker 1: I really want to say that I didn't say, and
Speaker 1: also realized did I need to say? I didn't really
Speaker 1: need to say that. It really wasn't that important to me.
Speaker 1: I just did it because I could open my mouth
Speaker 1: and do it. You start to start to pick and
Speaker 1: become like that's important to me, and then you go, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't hear that was important to me because I
Speaker 1: was just so used to just boom boom boom, just
Speaker 1: talk talk talk talk, you know. So that's why the
Speaker 1: kind of mean. I love that. Thank you for clarifying that.
Speaker 1: One of my thoughts is like, do words dilute? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do think so, yeah, I mean, And then how
Speaker 1: can we utilize those words as a power source like
Speaker 1: you're saying, instead of it just being this deluded thing
Speaker 1: that we vomit out all the time, right, I think
Speaker 1: being in tact and in touch with the space before
Speaker 1: your words and even better the space before your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That is a very to me. I can
Speaker 1: just feel like, to me, that's the spot and the location,
Speaker 1: if there is such a location of this big V voice,
Speaker 1: that's where it lives. You know. In Buddhism they have
Speaker 1: the word prosna, which is translated into wisdom. But it
Speaker 1: means the spot before your thoughts and your words, and
Speaker 1: that spot, to me is a sacred spot with which
Speaker 1: if we spent a little bit of time there. It's
Speaker 1: also the spot where I feel like, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're watching something and you feel inspired, it's that part
Speaker 1: that's ignited. It's not like my words instantly come out.
Speaker 1: I instantly feel like. That's that moment of what are
Speaker 1: you transmitting? When you're kind of connected, when the big
Speaker 1: V is connected with that small V or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: your big voice is connecting with you, whether it's dance,
Speaker 1: or it's business, or it's like loving family or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're doing, that that voice is, that's
Speaker 1: where it lives. So if we can kind of get
Speaker 1: into that spot a little more, just languish that time
Speaker 1: when you feel a little bit of inspiration, Just stay
Speaker 1: there for a moment and you're like, and try not
Speaker 1: to put into words so fast, Just try and stay
Speaker 1: there and let it be this ealing that doesn't even
Speaker 1: have an associated word to it. We don't really spend
Speaker 1: much time there, and I feel like that's really powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is powerful, and it's interesting. The space beyond words
Speaker 1: one of our sessions. I said to you, I feel
Speaker 1: like words get in the way with music, Like I
Speaker 1: want to sing without words, and I do it at
Speaker 1: home and it actually I have such resistance to it
Speaker 1: because there's all the things around it, like what am
Speaker 1: I doing? Like that I will never be able to
Speaker 1: use this, like this does nothing for whatever it may be. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I can't make money off of not singing with words,
Speaker 1: So why am I doing? Like all the things, all
Speaker 1: the things that come before or that put up resistance
Speaker 1: to me exploring this piece of myself. There's also call
Speaker 1: that the inner voice that's absolutely yes, absolutely well inner voice,
Speaker 1: and the yes and and not even mine, and an
Speaker 1: accumulation of of whatever industry parents things that have come
Speaker 1: at me. And and also there's this fear around like
Speaker 1: there's no it's you know, improvis improvisation. There's no structure
Speaker 1: to it in any way, and so I'm there are
Speaker 1: less rules, there's no good and bad, there's like so
Speaker 1: I know, and it does it freaks you out, and
Speaker 1: it has freaked me out, And you asked me to
Speaker 1: share it with you, and I was like I can't
Speaker 1: actually started crying because I it's feels so sacred to me,
Speaker 1: I really haven't shared much with anyone. We kind of
Speaker 1: started to touch on it the other day, which was
Speaker 1: so beautiful because it's such a fascinating experience for me
Speaker 1: as a singer who I'm really breaking down these mental
Speaker 1: constructs every time I spend two minutes doing it. It
Speaker 1: allows this like new sense of freedom and expression. And
Speaker 1: I'm finding that I'm I'm getting excited about wanting to
Speaker 1: share that eventually I can feel like coming. But it's joyful.
Speaker 1: It is joyful. Yeah, it's joyful, it's playful and it
Speaker 1: but it what happens is I actually sit and listen
Speaker 1: to what wants to be sung, and so I'll hear
Speaker 1: different vowel sounds, different consonants, different like all these different sounds.
Speaker 1: I'll hear notes in my head and I'll actually listen
Speaker 1: before I express, and I'll try to match like what
Speaker 1: is in my head. And so that's I think what
Speaker 1: for me that has been my way so far um
Speaker 1: with my voice, of getting in touch with that which
Speaker 1: is before fought it all of a sudden comes into
Speaker 1: my thoughts out of the space and then gets expressed,
Speaker 1: and I think that we can play that over into
Speaker 1: every aspect of our life, Like you're saying, like, what
Speaker 1: am I hearing before I before I allow the sound out,
Speaker 1: before I allow this thing that I'm going to say
Speaker 1: to come out of me. I have yet to utilize
Speaker 1: it in that way, and I'm really gonna I make
Speaker 1: I had to play around with that, not just allow
Speaker 1: like I said, like we're talking about for things to
Speaker 1: just be blurted out, but to really tune into what's
Speaker 1: really wanting to be expressed. Is there a song in there?
Speaker 1: You know that? Is there a song that you've got
Speaker 1: in there? Like? How can you express it and get
Speaker 1: it out? It's it's cool. It's not for the purpose
Speaker 1: of making money. It's not for the purpose of of
Speaker 1: connecting others or making others feel something or feeling something
Speaker 1: when you're in the presence of others. It's it's solely
Speaker 1: there because we want. It's inside and we wanted to
Speaker 1: come out, and we're enjoying as it comes out, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is what I can do. It's
Speaker 1: like an expression of the body, like you say you're
Speaker 1: working out because you enjoy moving your body. We have
Speaker 1: to have some element, no matter how much it is
Speaker 1: a part of our industry, whatever it is we love
Speaker 1: to do, whatever it is that we do. If if
Speaker 1: we skip the step of having that play, the enjoyment
Speaker 1: of it just being without having a specific purpose that
Speaker 1: will come back to a gain in some type, we
Speaker 1: really miss out. I think on what we have inside
Speaker 1: that can come out for no other reason than the
Speaker 1: joy of getting something in and out and and seeing
Speaker 1: it's like those you know, the mandalas and you know
Speaker 1: the sand castles that are just these temporary, beautiful structures
Speaker 1: and they get washed away, and was it worth putting
Speaker 1: all that effort to build that castle? Well maybe some
Speaker 1: people would think not, but you know, it's good to
Speaker 1: not have everything means something, because if it is like that,
Speaker 1: then we are discipline. Our idea of discipline becomes very
Speaker 1: set and structured and rigid, and that all that does
Speaker 1: is it comes back into ourselves and makes it harder
Speaker 1: for us to be and feel free. Hmm. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: I mean, such a conversation. I could go on and
Speaker 1: on about this because it is so fascinating. Is I'm
Speaker 1: just really grateful that you came on here to share this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, because I feel like we'll do this again.
Speaker 1: I feel like we'll have like Lean's life lessons through
Speaker 1: the voice. It is I learned every day, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I'm sure. And this has opened up a
Speaker 1: whole new level of play and and excitement. And Daryl
Speaker 1: said to me earlier, I'm excited for I get taken
Speaker 1: on this adventure with your voice now, like I'm excited
Speaker 1: for the adventure of your voice. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. It does feel a bit like an
Speaker 1: adventure and this moment. So I've lived one adventure, and
Speaker 1: I think a lifetime of one adventure, and I feel
Speaker 1: like this is a new adventure that's opening up and
Speaker 1: I have no idea where it's going to lead, but
Speaker 1: it's really cool. I love it absolutely. I am so
Speaker 1: honored to be doing that with you. And I always
Speaker 1: like to say, like, allow your voice to reveal itself
Speaker 1: to you. You know, you don't have to tell your
Speaker 1: voice what it has to be. It it's our you
Speaker 1: trying to tell you. So if you listen and let
Speaker 1: it be, it's may not be what you expect, or
Speaker 1: it may be something more than you expect. Either way,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful thing. So um, again, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. And so I always appreciate the
Speaker 1: talk and all I learned from this experience as well.
Speaker 1: So I always ask my guest on the podcast, of course,
Speaker 1: because I have to turn everything back around to music.
Speaker 1: I just find that the songs that people choose reveal
Speaker 1: something about them, and so I always ask what what
Speaker 1: your holy five are? Which are like they could be
Speaker 1: your five favorite songs of life, they could be your
Speaker 1: five favorite songs of today, just anything that moves you,
Speaker 1: anything you're connected to. So I'd love to hear what
Speaker 1: your five are. Well. I love Kimbra's the build up.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't. I don't know that. Do you know that?
Speaker 1: Interesting Kimbra? Yeah, it's gorgeous. I want to love has
Speaker 1: so much. You know, there's two versions of it, one
Speaker 1: which doesn't have this beautiful offshoot of all the orchestral
Speaker 1: kind of arrangement, and one that does. It's the one
Speaker 1: that does I just absolutely adore. So that's one, okay.
Speaker 1: My second one is an oldie like it's Elton John
Speaker 1: sixty years on. I have no idea why, because those
Speaker 1: lyrics should not relate to me, but I think it's
Speaker 1: just these all the cellos and the symphonic kind of
Speaker 1: orchestration of it. I just I love no it's too
Speaker 1: beautiving sixty. I always just feel really moved when I
Speaker 1: sing along to it. I love that song nice. I
Speaker 1: actually found myself listening a lot to Hunter Hayes is
Speaker 1: Dear God. I don't know why. It's just the most
Speaker 1: beautiful like harmonies at the very beginning, and he must
Speaker 1: have been in a state where he was like really
Speaker 1: sharing his heart on that one and to so much
Speaker 1: why I can't find any pizza to feel like you?
Speaker 1: Are you sure that you don't? I love that song.
Speaker 1: I love you turning me on to stuff. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not a song, but I've always loved It's definitely overplayed.
Speaker 1: Now is a Daddio for Strings by Samuel Barber. I've
Speaker 1: always loved. I think I just love like symphonic orchestration
Speaker 1: kind of things. I think it's so gorgeous. That seems
Speaker 1: to be a through line. Yeah, um, Leonard Cohen, Mary Ann.
Speaker 1: It's a very very very loved song for me. When
Speaker 1: I was little used to listen to that Good Time
Speaker 1: to Love, And my favorite song recently is actually when
Speaker 1: You Sang and it is borrowed. I adore those lyrics,
Speaker 1: the sentiments, vulnerability, and that you're the best, never give
Speaker 1: you plan like you too. So yeah, that's definitely on
Speaker 1: my list. Thank you. That was definitely a one of
Speaker 1: those spaces before the words that was just like pure
Speaker 1: feeling of I always find that so interesting as a
Speaker 1: songwriter because a lot of the time I don't know
Speaker 1: how I'm feeling about something until I actually write it
Speaker 1: out right and then you're like, oh, I guess that's
Speaker 1: how I was feeling about that totally, And I mean
Speaker 1: that is ultimately when we create. I mean I think
Speaker 1: that even more so than singing. Although singing, yes, I
Speaker 1: definitely tapp into the space before everything, but with writing,
Speaker 1: like things will just start to drop in, you know.
Speaker 1: That is that space before the thoughts. Once you get
Speaker 1: in touch with that, sometimes I almost fell blank and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like things will start like flooding
Speaker 1: in and it's like, well, I can't fast enough. But
Speaker 1: that's definitely one of those songs that was like super vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I feel that it just feels like it's just opened
Speaker 1: up and out it came a lot of tears, A
Speaker 1: lot of tears came out. Six hour. Absolutely love that
Speaker 1: and I guess it's more than five. But I image
Speaker 1: and heat. I forgot about this one. I love her song,
Speaker 1: um hide and Seek. Oh yeah, see she cashed me
Speaker 1: around and it's just with the fol coder And apparently
Speaker 1: she sat down and did that song in a hole
Speaker 1: in one hour. The story I heard just this, you know,
Speaker 1: spouting out of beauty. Talk about someone who's really unique.
Speaker 1: I love her voice. I think she's totally in in too,
Speaker 1: and in touch with this big V that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: She's so creative, she's constantly creating. Yeah, she's she's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing. I learned that you love orchestral things.
Speaker 1: I love that, I guess I do. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much again. Thank you for spending this time with me.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and that My loves brings us to the
Speaker 1: end of this season of Holy Human. Um. It is
Speaker 1: such an honor making the show for you, and I
Speaker 1: would really love to know your thoughts about the episodes
Speaker 1: and topics, So please leave your comments wherever you're listening
Speaker 1: and let me know what you'd like to hear more of.
Speaker 1: Going forward and until our next season of Holy Human,
Speaker 1: I'll be updating this feed with some answers. To the
Speaker 1: questions you've sent over email and social media, as well
Speaker 1: as diving a bit deeper into my own personal Holy
Speaker 1: Five playlist. So in the meantime, I wish you help,
Speaker 1: I wish you love, and I wish your peace on
Speaker 1: your path to becoming Holy Human. Holy Human with Me
Speaker 1: Leanne Rhymes is a production of I Heart Radio