Some years ago over in Perth I attended a four day voice workshop where we
explored many of the possibilities of voice: we sang in groups, in duos, alone,
in large enclosed and open spaces, stainless steel cupboards, narrow hallways, against wooden fences
and brick walls, all the while experimenting with depth, pitch, resonance, and
tone. It changed my life. It also brought a consciousness that I don’t think I
had previously regarding the relationship between health and voice. Since then I listen more to the quality
of a person’s voice, including my own. I notice, for instance, that when I am
being insincere, my voice pitch is higher and more hollow sounding. When I am
concerned, my voice drops sometimes to a barely audible whisper, and down a
couple of tones. There is nothing unique about this observation except that
most of the time this kind of awareness is mostly unconscious. What I’m
noticing more and more is that I’m noticing it more and more. I am interested
in it and am starting to make a study of it, in order to enhance my counselling
practice and possibly contribute further to the literature.
I remember a fellow attendee at the workshop whose voice was distinctly flat and one-dimensional. It sounded as though she was deaf, in a
way. She wasn’t actually physiologically
deaf, as she told us, but, effectively functionally deaf. She was clinically depressed. Her
whole demeanour was heavy, insular, passive, and lacking in reciprocity. In
essence we didn’t get a sense of give and take with her, nor she with us.
She and I partnered a few times, and it seemed she couldn’t hear me
sing, nor could she tune her voice to my voice. What was more strange, she
couldn’t, somehow, hear herself. The quality of her voice was flat and colourless, and lacked
resonance. It was like a dead thing; a clunk, not a ring.
Over the course of the four days, it was apparent that her ears were
opening. She was starting to sing in tune and as this was happening, her whole
posture changed as well as a liveliness coming to her step. Her face started
lightening and becoming mobile. It
seemed also that her skin was clearing. Before she had a sort of bluish-grey
dull complexion; but now, breath and blood was clearing it away.
There was a profound change in the way she sang with us. Her voice
increasingly became responsive to us, and stronger. From being flat as well as
lifeless, her voice was entraining itself to be in tune with us. The transformation was extraordinary
and a revelation to me.
This woman became a model for me of the possibilities of voice training,
or just regular singing for the fun of it, as a therapeutic tool. In my counselling practice, I’ll
sometimes recommend particular clients join a choir, have singing lessons, or
just make a regular practice of singing around the home, or even on the way to
work to music on the radio. Those that have are becoming less distant from
their engagement with other people and themselves; a revelation that they
notice very quickly.
In singing, it is as though
our ears are opened up and a
playfulness of encounter begins to happen. Importantly also, with the
reciprocity of encounter comes a fearlessness and assertiveness and an ability
to choose which behaviours of others should be agreed to, and which rejected.
To use the voice consciously is the beginning, as Alfred Tomatis (1920-2001), an ear,
nose and throat physician, psychologist and educator has said, of hearing oneself, and thus, hearing others. It is the beginning of actively being in
the world as a participator, and not just an observer.
