How Singing and Poetry are Helping me to Unleash My Voice

The voice… what a powerful instrument we’ve been gifted with. We can deliver messages and communicate feelings. Like a piano, we can tune into notes and frequencies that can be sang and help us to connect with others on a deeper level. We can heal with our voices, ourselves and others.

Through singing, I discovered a way of loving myself.

I discovered that I didn’t like my own voice and I needed to change that. The less I liked my voice, the more difficult it was for me to sing. I’m still in the process of improving this, but since I discovered my real problem wasn’t on the lack of technique, but on actually liking the sound of my voice, I started to improve my singing.

Singing is so connected to the root of our anxieties and fears of being heard, that not any other form of self-expression can be as scary; at least for me. The voice clearly shows when we’re tired, when we’re nervous, when we’re anxious… and singing seems to amplify those feelings.

We become an open book and our voice is the pen that writes the blank pages of our existence.

One of the main difficulties I face when singing is the constriction of the larynx’s muscles. Every time I’m struggling to hit a note, especially the lower notes, the muscles of my tongue retract and ‘contract the space around the larynx, making free vibration impossible’ (https://www.voicescienceworks.org/vocal-tract.html).

Knowing how my vocal track works really helps me to understand how and when my voice breaks or constricts. This is very noticeable for others and I realised I feel exposed when this happens, which then creates a loop of insecurities that dig the fear of being heard deeper onto my subconscious.

Acknowledging this difficulty was the main breakthrough moment I had when exploring my singing voice, as it’s eased off the psychological pressure I was putting myself under for not reaching certain notes, or the comfortless feeling of people noticing that my voice breaks when I’m nervous or anxious.

Singing has taught me a lot about acceptance.

• Acceptance that any creative process has its own timings.

When I embark a new project, “I want it all and I want it now”, like Freddy used to sing. I tend to pressure myself to do all the things at once and of course, all of them need to be perfect. This doesn’t work with singing. To develop a singing voice where I could feel comfortable and unashamed for not hitting certain notes, I needed to be patient and accept that this is a process that takes time.

I wasn’t born with a gifted voice that would come out clear and loud the minute I opened my mouth. I needed to train my music ear, explore my vocal instrument in its totality, and I needed to learn how to breathe properly. Only patience and determination could help me on my quest. Learning how to breathe is essential for our voice to expand its maximum sound without hurting ourselves. Breathing also helps to remain calm when talking about difficult things or simply speaking in front of people.

I cannot deny that music is a discipline that requires practice. Like any muscle, to get strong, it needs to be worked out in parts through constant repetition. The voice is an instrument that needs to be tuned like any other instrument and it requires proper rest to prevent being affected from injuries. This helped me to accept that my voice will only be unleashed slowly, with patience and self-nurturing practices, like having enough hours of sleep and enough hydration throughout the day, amongst other things.

• Acceptance that there’s a need for being heard.

We all like to be heard. Not just the physical act of someone listening to what we’re saying but being able to express our needs while being understood by someone is of vital importance.

I’ve always had problems with communication. In my childhood, I learnt that the only way to be heard was screaming. As an adult, I had to confront several conflicts to be able to change that and to learn how to communicate my needs from a place of calmness. This is still a work in progress.

Singing has helped because it showed me how scared I was of being heard in the first place. I was scared to show my voice. I was scared to express my needs. I was scared of disapproval for setting healthy boundaries. I was scared of being judged if I expressed my own opinions. I was scared of expressing discomfort towards abusive behaviours, and the list is long. My work with music exposed these fears through my singing and that’s why I have such strong devotion to it, as I consider it one of the most powerful tools for healing.

Once I accepted that I actually wanted to be heard, I started to build the confidence to express my needs, and my singing voice started to sound less restricted and more harmonious.

• Acceptance of my dreams.

It took me a long time to accept that I want to be a singer and that I want to make a living out of music. Like so many of us, from a very young age I was told that any artistic path wouldn’t put food on the table. This conditioning is so strong that even today, I still struggle to let go of that belief. The key lies in transforming the limiting belief into self-confidence, by trusting that committing to fulfil my dreams is the only thing that will generate the opportunities for them to become an external reality.

Committing to fulfil my dreams is the only thing that will generate the opportunities for them to become an external reality.

Singing is actually the creative practice that gives me the most joy,  which pushes me to keep going forward. Learning how to understand music and to be confident enough to share it with others is a slow process but will always give its fruits at the end of the tunnel. All that is required is to persevere without losing the focus from the goal that set us in motion in the first place.

Poetry and Spoken Word.

Writing is another one of my creative passions. There’s something very magical about words. They can be poisonous, or they can be very healing. It all depends on the tone of voice we use when we express ourselves. It’s taken me years of self-work to improve the way I express, and I’m still trying to improve my communication skills every day.

I grew up in Venezuela. Experiencing violence and sexism is so ingrained in the culture, that it became something normal to use violent ways of communication for most people. Screaming and shouting are common manners. The system is so corrupted that people’s frustrations fleurs up with any disrespectful thing they experience, and I’m not surprised. It has taken me fifteen years living in Europe to disentangle all the pathways that lead me to express that way. Poetry and music came to my salvation.

Poetry has become the means I use to heal my own issues and to raise my political voice. Through writing poems I have released unrecognised traumas, anger, expectations, opinions and of course, beauty. For the beauty to express, the ugly has to come out first.

Poetry is helping me to discover what issues were hidden so deep within my psyche that they were causing me problems with communication.

We cannot repress anger and pain forever. They will always find a way to express and  repressing these emotions can even create health problems in the long run. I’m not saying that poetry is just about expressing anger, pain, or uncomfortable feelings, but it is a tool that can help us to transform those feelings into beauty by voicing them out of our system.

Who didn’t learn at school that poetry is difficult to understand and is boring?

Nothing further from the truth. The way is taught is difficult and boring, but there are many layers to understanding poetry. In fact, modern poetry can be very accessible and written with simple language. Amongst the poets that inspire me, check out Sarah Kay, Olivia Gatwood, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Rupi Kaur, Sandra Cisneros, ChenChen, Kaveh Akbar, Ocean Voung, Sharon Olds, Rebecca Tantony, Elvira Sastre, Pascal Vine, Beth Carveley… All of them use language that is accessible, beautiful and give voice to important issues like feminism, sexism, sexuality, queer movement, drug abuse, sexual abuse, infidelity, dreams, love…

Spoken word poetry seems to be the route I’m heading towards to let my voice being heard. As well as singing, there’s something really scary about reciting a poem to an audience. Reading poems is an act of intimacy, where I’m undressing my soul and sharing very deep and meaningful details about my life. That can be challenging and scary but once it’s done it’s immensely rewarding.

There’s nothing more powerful than building bridges to connect with other human souls through words and sounds.

If you have any inclination to explore poetry or music to unleash your voice, I deeply invite you to do so. It will transform you by enhancing your confidence and developing self-trust. I hope that this article has inspired you to get your hands on the dough, or better said, your words on the paper or your voice into songs. The world needs to hear you!

References:

-          VoiceScienceWorks. 2021. Vocal Tract. [online] Available at: <https://www.voicescienceworks.org/vocal-tract.html> [Accessed 15th February 2021].