It takes time..

I asked her to exhale her voice.

Her attempts at this made it clear to me that this was not possible. Yet.

I say this important piece of information to students in several different ways; inhale and then relax out, or, inhale, rest, inhale, let go.

This takes the time it takes.

This is by far the hardest thing for us all to do as singers or in life. To let go.

I also say, as you exhale your voice out, feel the front surface of your body soften. And this is, well, another big ask.

When you take voice lessons, you learn pretty quickly how much you’re holding on and controlling your energy.

It’s quite humbling being seen in this way by somebody, even if that somebody is being very gentle and kind and quietly repeating the words over and over, inhale, exhale, inhale, relax.

It’s still takes the time it does to trust the exhaling and relaxing of the voice.

It still takes the time it does to undo the grip in the nervous system that says that you must push and work hard.

Everyone that comes into my office is smart and intelligent, and knows how to work hard at their job, and at their life.

So this process of letting go of how to fix and figure out things instead of feeling things out, can be challenging at first.

You see the student that I’m speaking of here has been given an instruction, and now she assumes that she needed to have executed that instruction immediately.

The fact that I am repeating it over and over is driving her crazy, because now she’s feeling that she’s not doing it right.

But sooner than later some mysterious part in her hears the repeated words and she relaxes and has an experience of letting go.

She says, “but I didn’t do anything it just happened, how do I do that again?”

Inhale, exhale, inhale, rest…