Vocal Freedom Series - Find Your Voice & Vitality

Reconnect with your body, breath, and voice in this nourishing 45-minute practice for nervous system healing, vitality, and creative expression.

Together we move through a three-part journey of clearing, cultivating, and creating. Using qigong-inspired movement, energizing breathwork, vocal toning, and playful song exploration, you'll release tension, awaken energy, and experience the healing power of your own voice. We move stagnancy with qigong, cultivate strength and vitality with Kapalabhati pranayama (breathwork), and move into toning and two fun song explorations to access healing through song.

This session is designed to help reduce stress, increase vitality, build confidence, and support greater freedom in self-expression and creativity.

If you enjoy this practice, I invite you to join my course on Insight Timer - 'Vocal Freedom.'

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this voice work practice. My name is Nico and I'll be your guide. Today you're going to move through some qigong practice as well as breathwork practice and then finish off with a really lovely fun session of singing. I have two wonderful exercises that you'll be led through that really support and nourish your creativity and your relationship to the voice. Enjoy your practice. We start with a clearing and then we cultivate and then we create. The clearing is a really important part of voice work because it wakes up our body, It wakes up our instrument. So I just invite you to stand and start shaking if you can. And if you're seated or lying down you know you can just start shaking your hands with me if that feels good. And as always these are invitations so if any of these things don't work for your body just be curious. Okay we're we're clearing right now. How could I clear? What's a way that I could clear out energy and shake out energy that I don't want in my body anymore? Warm up the lymph system. How could I do all these things in a way that feels good for me? So just shaking out the feet, The ankles, The knees. Letting out some sighs if that feels good. Getting in touch with your breath body. Yeah feeling that in your body. What does that feel like to actually sigh out your breath as you shake it out? Shaking the arms, Shaking the shoulders. Shaking out the side body. Okay and then from shaking we move into bouncing. So this can be as calm or as vigorous as feels good for you. And what we're doing is we're just bouncing, Bringing the heels up and down, Up and down. And just doing that as slowly as gently as you want. And as I do this I like to imagine that just down into the cellular part of my being everything is getting jiggled up. Saying hello to my bones, To my organs. Such a great way to wake up the body at any time of day. And like I said you can get vigorous. You can really start to shake like that if you want. But for me today just being gentle and doing little bounces feels good. And as you do this starting to notice your belly. What's your belly doing? Not trying to change what it's doing, Just noticing. What about your hips? Does it feel good to have a slight bend in the knee? What about your shoulders? Where are they? Would it be possible to just draw them back a little bit more and feel the weight back into the heels? And your neck and your jaw. Just relaxing it all, Letting it all soften. Letting the tongue soften all the way to the top of the head. Inhaling through the nose, Exhaling out the mouth. We're clearing. And you can do this consciously, Thinking of things you want to clear out or just allowing the body to do what it knows best. Just a couple more moments of this bouncing. And then we're going to do this move where we come right onto the tippy toes and we just really stretch out our fingertips and we look up to the sky, Kind of tensing the body. Inhale and holding the breath. And then exhale, Dropping the heels down and letting go. And doing that two more times. So inhale, Stretching, Tensing the body. And then exhale, Letting it go. One more time. Wonderful. And now we'll do our twists. So just letting the hands start to rotate side to side. We're not going like windmill speed here. We're just light twisting. And if it feels good, You can lift the back heel off the ground and just let the body just relax. And the head all turn at the same time. So you're not wrenching the neck back and looking really far back with the eyes. We're just letting the gaze follow the body. And this way we can ensure we don't get anything like vertigo or dizziness. However, If you do feel that in your body, Then just don't do this. Go back to the bouncing or the shaking, Something else. Some people have very sensitive ears, And I understand that. The twisting really helps to bring us into awareness of our diaphragm, Which is our key mechanism for breathing and singing and using our voices. It's our power center. So it's nice to just get this stretch with the tissues. And your diaphragm is connected to your spine and runs all along your ribs up until the xiphoid process it's called right up here, Right below your chest. And so by doing these twists, We're just really moving all of that area in our body easefully. And then just slowing down, Coming to center and bring your feet just a bit further than hip width distance apart and toes kind of going following the knees. So going a little bit outwards instead of directly forwards. And here we're just going to focus on our posture. So from the roots from our feet, Feeling the stability of the floor, The earth beneath you, And then feeling the strong trunks of your legs, Holding your hips. And just notice if you can have a slight tuck of the pelvis. So if I were to arch, That's what that would look like. And I'm just slightly tucking my pelvis. And what you might find is you see how my body wants to then lean back a little bit more. So you know, If I'm hunched over a bit like that, If I draw my pelvis up and in, So this is an engagement of the low core, Then my upper body also wants to be in this much more confident and strong position where the shoulders are resting on the shoulder blades. We just have this wider chest, A sense of confidence in the body. And then just going with your weight from toe to heel, Back and forth, Finding your place of center. Now that we've positioned the pelvis and the shoulders, And then do the same thing, Micro adjustments with the neck, Just going forward and back with your head. Find where you feel like everything is aligned. And as you do this, Can you continue to breathe? Can you continue to soften the tongue and the jaw? And the eyes, If that feels good. Soft and sturdy. This is the place that we sing from. This is the place where confidence is built in the posture. Just enjoying breathing here for a few moments. And you might waver a bit and that's okay. Just feeling your body in this moment. Just sending a moment, A thought of gratitude into your body, Thanking it for all that it does for you. Building this relationship of gratitude, Thankfulness, Conversation with your body. And then bending the knees slightly, We're going to move into our cultivating, Our collecting. So we're going to draw down the heavens. This is a move from Qigong. This is what it looks like. So we're going to inhale, Palms face down, Arms come up. And then at the shoulders, We face the palms facing up all the way overhead, And then exhale down the body. So just practicing that with me here. And you can bend into the knees like I am if you like. Makes it more of a workout or you can just stay standing, Whatever feels comfortable for you. And you can start to inhale and exhale out of the nose or continue through inhaling the nose and exhaling the mouth. If you feel like you need more clearing, Do the mouth. If you want to really start cultivating energy, Both inhale and exhale out the nose. So that's the movement, That's the breath. The intention with this is that we are drawing energy up from the earth and then in from the sky and then back down through the body. And we're reminding ourselves with this form that we are cultivators of energy, That we are conduits of energy from the earth, From our environment, From the inspiration of the heavens and stars. We are these bodies that receive and then transmit information through our actions, Through our words, Through our voices. This is one of our key tenets of being human is continuing to be in right action and speaking truths and offering our truths to the world. So whether you do this through your voice like me as a singer or a speaker, Or you create art, Visual art, Or you're a dancer, This is how you become fully human. This is how you experience the bliss of being human. This is why one of the main reasons why we're alive, To create and share our truths with the world. Just doing that a few more times, Really feeling how this form reminds you of this truth that you are a conduit of energy. Wonderful. And then just placing both hands over the belly, Hmm, Feeling the vital energy in your body. And we're going to expand on this concept of the conduit today. And so the second movement is similar but more subtle. So it's just with your hands here. And just practicing that with me. Microcosmic orbit. This one was taught to me by my Qigong teacher, Naomi Jason. And so as you do this very subtle hand movement, I'd like you to start to cultivate your imaginal realm, Your imagination. And so just as we were drawing energy up from the earth and in from the sky, Here we are bringing energy up our spine as the hands come up over the head, And then back down the front of the body as the hands come back down. And I'd like you to imagine that this energy has a color, A texture even. And that every time you go around this orbit, The energy is growing, Expanding, Becoming more clear for you. Inhaling up the spine and exhaling coming down the front of the body. And noticing how it feels to visualize this energy, This power within yourself and direct it with your mind's eye and your hands. And this is how I'd like you to start visualizing your voice, That it's a power within you. That you're a team along with your body, Your mind, Your essence, And that all of that together is what makes this energy flow. That it's not just this thing that happens or not, It's something that you are cultivating. Your voice is something you are cultivating, That you are in relationship with. That you can visualize it, That you can grow it. All right, And then just placing the hands back over the belly and circling nine times clockwise and then nine times the opposite direction. And then just brushing off the arms, Brushing off the belly and the back. I like to imagine I'm just letting go, Like I'm doing a light dusting of my body, Getting rid of the rest of the stuff that I no longer want with me for the rest of my voice practice. And then you can come sit down with me if you'd like, Or if you're enjoying standing, You can stay standing. So for the second part, We're going to move into Kapalabhati breath. So if you've never done this before, It's a yogic breath that helps to bring us into deeper relationship with our thoracic diaphragm, With the power center of our core as a support to actually inhale and exhale. A lot of times you can find yourself kind of breathing up here at the chest, If everything's tight. And if you've just gotten into the habit of doing this kind of upper chest shoulder breathing, And it's not that that's wrong, It's just that it's not using all of your power. So this voice work practice is also about cultivating your power, Bringing back more power into your being. So the Kapalabhati breath sounds like this. So it's a quick exhalation, Because we're engaging the core muscles, And then the inhale naturally happens. It's like a pump where we're exhaling, And then the pump just wants to fill back up with air. So try that out with me for a few times. And if you can see my belly, It's going up and in on the exhale. So when we're doing this, We don't want to have any tension in our jaws, We're not holding our jaws tight or anything. We're trying to keep that all soft and loose. So if you tend to do that, Just always coming back to doing like a soft massage like this. And if you're feeling as relaxed as I am, You might even start to notice now that you're having more saliva in your mouth, And that is great. We want saliva to lubricate our instrument here, All lubricating the tissue. So just swallowing that extra saliva if you have it. And we're just going to go for about 30 times today, Just 30 Kapalabhati breaths. And what this does is it strengthens all of your intercostal muscles here, And it's a bit of an ab workout. So this is good for helping you get in touch with your breathing mechanism. Here we go. Exhaling completely and then inhaling. So welcoming you to do that, You know, Throughout your days, If you can remember to do it. It's helpful to just strengthen it over time so you don't feel all this soreness, Because definitely those muscles can can get sore when you're working them out more than you're used to. And it's been super helpful for me and my voice work to cultivate strength in that area. Now that we've done all that, I'd like to move into a vocal warm up. So we're going to focus on toning today. And with this focus in toning, We're going to, We're going to tone and then we're going to add in this awareness of mouth position. So lips, How open or closed our mouth is, And also molar position, How open and closed our molars are. So if you have TMJ or jaw pain, Doing what feels good for you, Not pushing, You don't want to experience pain here. But it is also good to kind of test trying these toning exercises out because sometimes it can help to relax everything. And so again, If you're feeling like it's so painful, Then while we're doing this, Just giving yourself jaw massage. So I'm just taking my finger and just gently doing gentle circles down the jaw. And then I also like to just take my hands and hold them to the side of my face like that and just kind of pull down. So those are two things you can do to to play with your jaw. And when we're singing, So I'll just do a little explanation for us before we get into it. When we're singing, We have some options. We can keep our mouth very closed. Or we can open our mouth very large. And then that goes with the molars too. We can have the molars really closed. Or we can have them really open. And in different singing traditions, There are different ways of thinking about this. And so it's not that one is right and one is wrong. For example, In Bulgarian folk music, It's a very open molar shape and a very open mouth. Because what this does is it allows for a lot of circulation, Spiraling of the breath in our mouth. It creates this cathedral of sound. And it makes for like piercing and super clear sounds. But then you have pop music where a perfect example is Billie Eilish. She's just like barely moving her mouth. She looks like a ventriloquist when she's singing. There's nothing happening here. But yet the sound is beautiful and soft. And so I'm just inviting you to stay curious with what's actually happening for you when you sing and what sounds you like. And I will say that it's easier to sing. It's easier on the body to sing in an open position. So with everything, This opening as wide as you can make it. It's much easier for me then. So if you experience tension on here, It might be a really nice gift for you to open up more. So that's what we're going to explore today in our tonings. What we're going to do is we're going to start with the sound completely in our mouth. So we're going to be humming. No open mouth. Jaw like molars in. And you might even begin to, If you close your molars, Feel your teeth vibrating together. That's how much power you have in your voice. I think that's so cool. So what we're going to do is we're going to do and then just start to open the molars at the back, Keeping that hum. So lips stay closed. How does that feel? Thinking about it, Feeling into it. What does each position do for you? How does it affect how your throat feels? How does it affect how much breath is coming out? Keep in mind that it's subtle work that we're doing. And if you haven't focused on this before, It might be like, I don't feel anything different. And that's okay, Too. Just keep exploring, Keep trying. And as we develop this interoception, It's called awareness of what's going on inside the body. And this is an awareness that can be developed. And trust me, It's great to have. You can feel stuff in your body. Is it possible that the sound when your molars are open feels wider, Feels more resonant inside your body? Is it possible that your soft palate is raising at the back of your mouth and you feel that shift and it kind of starts to vibrate more up in here when your molars are open versus closed? All right, And now let's move to our lips, Our mouth position up here. So we're going to start with a hum and then open up to a ma, So using the M-A sound. So really getting your mouth wide there and then closing it back down, Just like we did with the molars and exploring how that feels for you. Using your hands to really open your jaw down and just let it soften out. So there's like, There's no holding up here. We're just releasing down. Keep going, Trying that a few more times. And now just kind of letting go of the thinking about it and then just tone like you would if you were just going to enjoy some toning and just see what wants to happen. So this is a more creative part where you're just enjoying the flow of your body now. Something you may notice as you do this is that when your mouth is open, You can more easily hear the harmonics in your voice. So even though we're toning on one note, There's many, Many notes within that note. And as we become more subtly aware, We can start to hear all of those notes at the same time. They're usually higher frequencies. So if I was singing a ma, There might also be a ma, Ma, Ma, Some of those higher notes. Wonderful. Okay, Just closing off that part of the practice and giving yourself a bit of a head rub if that feels good. I like to also take my fingers on the back of my neck and just massage up and down. And what this is doing is it's helping move some of the lymph that gets stuck and moved in this process. Because as we're singing, We're actually moving the lymph in our faces. And we're just clearing out debris and stuff that isn't so great for our skin and helping it move down into the detox pathways. Also just helping to soften these muscles. Something that's nice about voice work is it's also body work. And so we get to nourish our bodies while we do our creative pursuits, Which I just love so much about singing. Okay, So for the second part of our practice today, We move into more of the creative realm. So today, We're going to work on some songwriting, Sound therapy work. And, And so if you've never done any songwriting, Or you don't have any interest in it, That's okay. Please continue to stay because it's not just about songwriting and singing songs that you wrote. It's actually a way to move through emotions and have an another way to process through difficult things or even happy and joyful things as well. So we're going to go through two explorations. And, And this is really an invitation for you to sing through some of the emotions that you are feeling right now, And perceive them in a different way. Sometimes, You know, When we're in an emotion, Or if we feel, You know, Like some frustration about something, And we're really feeling in our bodies, And we're thinking about how we're frustrated. It's just this like, Never ending loop, And it gets worse and worse and worse until we're just like so frustrated, Our nervous system is overwhelmed. And so what singing does and sounding and writing things down music or poems is that it invites you to become the observer of that experience. And that's what when we listen to songs that we love that are healing for us, That's what we're doing. We're becoming the observer of our own experience, The observer of someone else's experience that helps us relate. And it's just a wonderful practice to get into. So exploration one is to write down a line about your current experience, It can be poetic or direct. And you're going to use this I am plus emotion state structure. So for example, I wrote I am free. And that's the very direct way of saying it. And then I got a little playful, A little creative and wrote a more poetic way of saying I am free. And I said, I am a petal floating on the wind. So if you have a pen and paper, You can grab that or you can just think about something in your mind of how you're feeling right now might be, Like I said, I am frustrated or I am free, I am happy, I am calm. I like to use emotions because it evokes more imagery. And then if you want to, You can explore how that might be more poetic, How you might bring some imagery into that. I am frustrated could be I'm a bull in the in the cathedral awaiting my next match. I am a tree tussling in the hurricane, Something like that, You know, Just be playful and fun. There's no pressure either way. And then we're going to drop into that state with our voices and just listening to the music in our ears. It's just a drone. So it doesn't have any, You know, Emotional weight to it, Really, It's just pretty, Pretty simple. And then start to say those words out loud. So we'll just use mine as an example for now. I am free. I am. I am free. And bringing that feeling of freedom into this, Into the words, Into the singing of it. So we're kind of creating a melody here. I am free. And so just playing with whatever it is that you've found for yourself and starting to sing it. Starting to observe it as the body observing the singer singing, Just like you were listening to a song on the radio. You are both the creator and the creation. And I'll let you play with that for a few minutes. And I'll just be humming here and you can join me back in the toning whenever it feels good for you. So we're going to move into our second exploration now. For our second exploration, We're going to sing into a manifestation. So we just sang, You know, What is true for us right now, What we are experiencing. And now we're going, We can also sing, Can sing for whatever we want, Of course. And so now we're going to move into what we would like to have in our lives, What we want to make real. And what's really cool about this is it's a form of manifesting that really affirms with, Again, When we're the listener, Listening to ourselves, Listening to what we want to be real as if it were real. So I am plus the desired future experience. And I invite you as you do this to get into the sensation of what this being real is like for you. If you have found your purpose, Where are you? What room are you in? What is the light like there? What is the smell? What are you wearing? How are you feeling in your body? What's going on in your chest? Maybe you feel something in your belly. Really get into it. Are you smiling? If you are safe and loved, Are you cuddling with your animal friend or your partner or your family members? I have one more I'll add. I'm in love with my life. This is one of my favorites. And what's cool about this is when we sing, Our minds remember songs a lot better than when we just say things. I'm in love with my life. And so I'm in love with my life. I'm in love with my life. What this became for me as an example is I'm in love with my life. And now when I'm really in that state of loving my life, You know, Maybe I'm on a forest walk or had a wonderful talk with a friend. I just sing that it just comes out. You know, Maybe you do this when you're in the shower doing dishes, You'll just have a song come to you one of your favorite songs. And so you can start to be your favorite song and your brain will come forward with these things, These songs, These little snippets, Let's call them because they're not quite songs. They're just little catchphrases that we've coined, Little phrases, Little verses of songs. And so drop in here now into the thing that you desire the most in this moment. And in that place, Say to yourself or write down somewhere what it is. I am plus that desired future state, That place you'd like to be in. I am in love with my life. Now start to make this into a phrase, Into a song phrase with the music and just start with a hum. Start finding a tone that feels good. And I'll be here just humming. So when you're ready, You can come back and join me in the humming. That truth living inside of you now, Always available. And staying curious, Who knows when it might pop up into your mind again, And you can be singing it loud and proud and free. Okay, My friends, So we've come to the end of our practice. Congratulations for being here and putting that work in to tend to your voice and your body.