Set your voice free!
Being able to set your voice free is something I get asked about a lot. It is possible to find your free voice, and desirable, however, it doesn’t come too easy for many of us.
So in this article, I will help you unveil the mystery of why it is so hard to set your voice free and how you can get started in the right direction.
Table of Contents
Set your voice free: are we wired to sing?
Many people think that singing is natural. And it is. Or it should be. After all, singing happens in all cultures! And it is present in many rites and traditions around the world.
The problem with this preconception is that if we are unable to sing beautifully naturally, then something must be wrong with us. That’s one of the reasons why many people still think that you must be born for singing or otherwise you will never be able to learn. People still think this even though today we have vocal science that says otherwise.
Where does natural singing come from?
This of course is not to say that there are not people with natural talent. Undeniably, some people seem to be born with a magic capacity to learn singing. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t train for it! There are different reasons why a person might have more ability to sing than other people. Some of them are:
- They grew up in a family in which there were musicians, or their parents exposed them to a lot of different music from early on (your sense of rhythm and pitch develops when you are quite young).
- They were sent to piano lessons or other music lessons since they were very young
- They were lucky to grow up in an environment in which emotional expression and creativity were encouraged.
Not all of us grew up in a context that was ideal for natural music development. This context plays a huge role in your singing. To that, we have to add that some of us have experienced trauma throughout our life. If you have been abused in any form, especially at a young age, your voice is likely going to be blocked. And that is not your fault and it doesn’t mean that you are just not talented enough, or that there is anything wrong with you. On the contrary, it means that your brain and body are functional enough to protect you.
What does trauma have to do with singing?
What do I mean by this? Well, to understand how trauma of any kind is related to singing, we must observe the function of our vocal anatomy.
The larynx area has various functions in your body. The most important is, of course, the survival functions: it allows you to breathe and it closes to prevent food and other particles from entering your respiratory system. The larynx area is also where the voice is produced, but as you can imagine, it is not a survival function as we can live without singing or speaking.
Coming back to the main functions of the larynx: in order to prevent food from entering your respiratory system, the larynx has a lid called the epiglottis, that closes when you swallow. Remember that this is a protection mechanism, your body and brain want to keep you alive. It is “safer” for you to protect your lungs. So many times when you consciously or unconsciously perceive danger, your throat is going to close. This system gets triggered by your alarm system.
I am sure that you are familiar with the feeling of having a knot in your throat. Now you know where it comes from! Your brain doesn’t only perceive real danger, but it also perceives danger in everyday situations that we can’t avoid. For example, we are wired to be scared of rejection. In the (very) old days, being rejected from your tribe was truly life-threatening. Today, many years later, our brains still react to rejection in a similar way even if rejection means that the person you fancy doesn’t like you back! And, of course, if the reaction of your singing audience is not the one you wished for.
Freeing your voice!
Do you see my point? Keeping your throat close means that your brain is protecting you. And quite a bit of our singing training has to do with training the brain to not react that way to different life situations.
And we have many tools for this. But the most important point is that you understand that finding it hard to sing is not something that happens to us because we are unlucky. We can, however, train ourselves to modify our vocal system, for it to be more functional for our own goals.
An exercise to free up your voice
Training your voice up to a point in which you truly feel free takes time, but we can start today and hopefully start feeling a difference soon.
This exercise aims to get you in contact with the sensations in your throat. This is not an area that one can feel easy, but perhaps if I give you some intense examples you will feel what I mean:
- Breathe in normally and hold your breath strongly, really holding your abs. How does your throat feel when you do this? You can try gently placing your hand on your adam’s apple. Do you feel it moving up when you hold your abs tightly?
- Breathe in normally while standing against a wall. While holding your breath, push against the wall with all your body as if you wanted to push the wall away from you. Observe how your throat area feels when you perform this exercise.
- Breathe in slowly while at the same time bringing your arms up to the sides – make sure your shoulders are down! Hold your breath gently when your arms reach your sides. How does your throat feel now? Do you feel the same amount of tension when you hold your breath in this position?
- Breathe in slowly and silently, bringing the air to your belly, for about three seconds. Breathe out immediately for three seconds without holding your breath in between. If you are effectively not holding your breath in between, you might feel that the throat remains more relaxed than in some of the previous exercises.
- Repeat the above exercise, but this time exhale with a hissing sound. We are still not holding our breath in between. After you practiced this a couple of times, change the hissing sound for an “oo” sound. Notice if the sensation in the throat is a little more relaxed than in some of the earlier exercises.
If you spend some time practicing the above exercises, you will likely experience that your voice frees up a bit. And this comes from setting up your vocal instrument in a more functional way for singing. You are achieving this from the way you set up your posture and your breathing to communicate to your brain that it is safe to sing!
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I help people to develop their voice and singing from a holistic approach. I teach vocal lessons in person in Auckland, NZ, and online. Also stay tuned for my new online singing programs!❤️
My greatest passion has always been the voice, music and energy arts.
My personal and artistic journey has led me to understand that the voice and the body are fully connected, and that includes not only the physical body but also the mental, emotional and spiritual body.
Through holistic vocal training you not only learn to become a great singer while taking care of your voice, but you also improve your mental and physical wellbeing❤️
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