The Climb

Over the years one of my biggest influences on the singing voice has been a teacher called Valborg Werbeck-Swardstrom.

About 20 years ago I picked up her nondescript, plain book with a purple cover, 'Uncovering The Voice' and discovered that how she wrote about the beauty and wonder of the voice was exactly how I felt and experienced the voice.

In 1926 Valborg met the philosopher Rudolph Steiner and the two had a meeting of the souls whereby she told him about her troubles with her voice. He shared his philosophies on the voice and asked if he might be able to help her recover.

Then they both set to work to create a set of voice lessons as well as a school called, 'Uncovering The Voice School of Singing'.

I will quote her book throughout this post.

“When the teacher and artist has turned towards research as the direction of the inner and spiritual, he enters on a path of slow and laborious wandering.  He is approaching experiences that will shake him, bring him pain, doubt, happiness – in short, everything that stirs a person most deeply in his soul.  In truth, he will not come easily to what must be called the research-results of his particular work.”

The process of singing and uncovering the voice leads us to discover beyond words who we truly are. This process of being stirred deeply in the soul that Valborg speaks of wakes up inside of us what needs to be disturbed and brought into consciousness for it allow the voice to flow through the body.

Singing and activating subtle, inner landscapes like the tongue, palates, jaw, mouth, head and eyes we wake up unconscious, sleepy parts to be able to see with fresh eyes the world of magic within everything.

“In the face of that which wills to manifest itself…”

This invitation and at the same time, demand, to step aside and allow the spiritual being of the voice to manifest itself within like a gentle wind blows away unnecessary gross material thoughts and structures.

This demand to sing and allow the spiritual being of the voice to manifest itself within does nothing short of blowing away unnecessary thoughts and structures within the singer.

As much as the work is the connecting to the body, at the same time there is a letting go of each part that is woken up and turned over to the silvery light of the voice. This wind then blows through the body without the body hindering the flowing power in any way.

“For truly whoever will climb up to that higher reality must step through a narrow portal, the portal of a new kind of sensibility.”

Access to this higher reality and this narrow portal that awaits the climber can be thought of as the upper realms that are located in the sixth and seventh chakras. 

To uncover and discover the wonders of the silvery voice this is where the real work takes us into the bat cave of our upper realms; the hard and soft palates, head space and beyond. 

The voice seems to float and sit up inside of this cave without any effort whatsoever and, as contrast would have it, this upper realm illuminates our lower realms from which we are trapped inside of through beliefs and contracted, compressed pain and trauma.

“The conditions for finding the real and the true is: to wait in humility and unshakable perseverance for those hours in which the deeper mysteries of the soul desire to reveal themselves.”

One of the goals is to develop a contrast between the belief that we are not beautiful and the experience of our beauty, directly. To uncover and work through the levels that lie in the way of this beauty is the work of the authentic singer. 

It is not for the faint of heart because of the earth shattering discovery and discoveries that beauty brings to our earthliness reveals nothing other than our divine essence. 

And this is what we are covering over, hence the work of the voice, to uncover the truth of who we are.

This uncomfortable and difficult journey of burning through these covers is slow and laborious if we are to be very honest, and we do need to be honest.

The work of uncovering is at first to attach to and connect to this landscape of our earthly bones and body before we are allowed even a smidgen of truth to shine through our bones and light up our minds with recognition of our magnificence.  

This work of connection and then letting go repeats and repeats as we climb upwards dropping layers of control and attachment as we go.

We all stop the search or re-search for beauty and truth and stand still for a while looking up at the journey yet to come.   

With the right guide a singer is offered opportunities for expansion and beauty that is unlike any other profession, given that the instrument is the body itself.  

Without a guide to keep us moving forward and upward towards the beauty which awaits us most will never know this beauty is possible. The right guide is a few steps ahead throwing down a rope to pull you up.  

Only a very few will reach these heights and like climbing Mount Everest, it seems you lose a great deal of souls along the way.