When I was around eleven years old, I started voice lessons. For any of you non-singers, here’s a quick little lesson: You have three registers to your voice. The lower is your “chest voice,” the voice most of us use for speaking. Then there’s your “middle voice,” the register that is usually the weakest and which is the transitional register, obviously, to your high register or “falsetto.”
I remember being fascinated by these registers and how my voice teacher intended to strengthen them with me. You see, my mom signed me up for lessons because she had already recognized that I had a nice “tone” to my voice and that I could sing fairly high. But it ended up being the breath that needed strengthening in order to get that nice tone and those high notes out of this body through a strong and confident delivery.
I’ll never forget those voice exercises, those runs up and down the scale, which I still practice and teach to this day, that allowed me to cultivate a stronger voice.
“Take a huge belly breath,” she would say as I sang the scales higher and higher, from my chest voice into my middle register. “It sounds so weak though,” I would say.
“It sounds perfect to me. Just remember that feeling – remember how it feels in your chest, in your head, in your belly.” Up and up we would climb, her fingers on the keys and my voice following. “Remember that feeling.”
By the end of the first few lessons I was really frustrated because my internal ears were not hearing any improvement and I could tell that my lower and higher registers were already quite strong. She kept telling me, as my professional teacher who had been doing this for years, that what she heard come out of my mouth was exactly correct and that if I kept practicing what she told me, I would see improvements.
Today, my middle register flawlessly glides into my upper register because I trusted a feeling that I knew in my heart was the right way to go. Let me repeat that. I trusted the feeling that I knew in my heart was the right thing for my body, my journey, my life.
That statement, that lesson, has stuck with me throughout much of my journey on this planet. Around the same time my voice lessons began, I started noticing that I got sick when I ate fried food or fast food. During softball tournaments, when everyone was “congratulated” with delicious cheeseburgers from a fast-food chain after we won (what a gift!) I would have my parents drive to the nearest restaurant where I could find a salad or a whole-wheat sandwich. I had remembered the awful, sick feeling I would get the last time I ate a fried sandwich, and knew I didn’t want to be sick all night.
When I was a little older and would partake in the occasional adult beverage (okay this took me a few additional years to “remember the feeling”…but still…I learned…eventually 😉 ), especially if I had something important to do the next day, the feeling of being hungover or dehydrated or run-down stayed with me and I knew how to be social and have a good time without having an outside force do it for me.
Hopefully this lesson has been helpful to us over the years and continues to be helpful as we live on our own, have families of our own, and for the educators of the world to pass on to others. Remember the feeling of the consequences of not paying your bills. Remember the feeling after you’ve helped that elderly woman or man walk to her or his car from the grocery store. Smoke pot? I know….it feels good and you probably LOVE remembering that feeling. Ever tried meditating to the point where you “freed your mind” and all your worries went away? I challenge you to remember that feeling instead.
But it wasn’t always the physical feelings. I started to develop this intuition when learning from people smarter than me too, in any given field that I wanted to excel in. I began watching and emulating my favorite yoga teachers. I took note when my older peers lost their jobs because these “cushy companies” didn’t feel like taking care of them anymore – so I became an entrepreneur. I started (or maybe continued) listening to my heart and remembering what smart, happy, fulfilled, successful, healthy people did and how they described how they felt. Of course I fall off the wagon once in a while…okay, I have a LOT of bumps and bruises…but that lesson still stays with me.
Recently I saw a friend who was struggling with a certain physical condition chase down his pills and vitamins with an almost full bottle of wine. I asked him, “Do you drink every night because you like the taste or you like the feeling?”
“The feeling.”
I’ve seen this in people who over-eat; who love the taste and feeling of coca-cola; who are addicted to cigarettes; who cheat; and the list goes on and on. The people who drink are almost always exhausted the next morning and age quicker than anyone I’ve seen. The folks I know who over-eat have endless health problems including diabetes, heart conditions, bad knees, etc. The folks who drink dark soda are also struggling with diabetes and obesity. The folks who smoke have asthma attacks, develop other habits like nail biting and nervous ticks when their nicotine isn’t around, and gain weight. The folks who cheat have a void in their life, are unhappy, and are guilt-ridden. In all these cases, these folks are using a substance or an outlet perhaps as an excuse: to avoid coming back to their true self and listening to their heart. They can’t remember how good it feels to eat clean. They can’t remember how it feels to suck in clean air. They can’t remember how drinking a gallon of water (lemon water in the morning!) a day will clean out toxins and reduce “fine lines of aging”. They can’t remember how loyalty for and loving the shit out of another human being feels. They can’t remember these natural highs.
I wish one by one I could turn back time to when they were eleven.
I wish I could have them at the moment when they were at their happiest, truest, most honest self.
I wish I could tell them one thing.
“Remember the feeling.”
Beautiful message. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey as you learned to “Remember the Feeling” and taught us to also connect with what we do and feel.
You bring a smile to my face and heart!
Deb