Lektion 1
You Are What You Sing - Using The Breath & Voice To Change Your Neurochemistry
During this session, we will explore the latest research to support the therapeutic benefits of singing and how our voices can help boost our immune system. We will use techniques to help reduce adrenaline and cortisol and boost the release of Immunoglobulin A - a natural antibody that helps fight disease. We also will experience a polyvagal breathing exercise which helps switch off the fight or flight response and explore vocal warm-up exercises before using some vowel sounds to help us relax.
Lektion 2
Happiness, Abundance & The Immune System Response
During this session, we will think about adding a few happy songs to our playlist and explore the 'sonic vitamins' (healing properties) within music that makes certain songs so good at boosting our mood. When we are happy, we are much more able to ward off illness as well as feel more in control of our lives. The vocal warm-up exercises will deepen and we will feel the buzz as we try some 'sonic caffeine' together.
The session ends with a mantra for increasing happiness and abundance - the perfect end to todays' mood-boosting session!
Lektion 3
Time Travel, Open-mindedness & Resilience
Today, we will look at the power of nostalgic reverie (when we get lost in feelings and emotions from the past) and how mental time travel can improve our health and wellbeing. We will discover that stretching our musical repertoire enables us to become more cognitively flexible and open to change in our lives and that music is more widely distributed in the brain than anything else.
Embracing change can be scary so at the end of the session, we will work with a mantra for removing obstacles to change in our life.
Lektion 4
Singing For Survival - Early Hominids, Bonding & The Power Of The Group
In this session, we will explore the evolution of language and how, over millions of years, neural pathways have developed that enable sound and music to heal and affect us profoundly. We will learn that language not only enabled us to climb the social ladder but literally became a matter of life and death. We will also learn that 1.8 million years ago, our early ancestors sang together for many of the same reasons as 21st-century singers today and that singing in groups nurtures and enhances our spiritual health.
At the end of the session, there is a lovely monochord drone track that you can use to improvise and tone along to.
Lektion 5
Transcending Barriers - Language, Tone Poems, Space & Time
Today, we are going to take the evolution of the voice a step further and move from basic vocalization to complex language. We will discover how our language evolved from simple sounds used to describe space, size, time and emotions to the complex language we have today.
We will review the vowel sounds and vocal warm-up exercises we have used so far and will journey into the realm of the Tone Poem - songs that transcend barriers that language, race and culture can create.