Develop your inner relationship with sound...

In this video and blog I share the top reasons why you might be stalling in your dream to sing.

Discover how to start singing for nobody else but YOU! This begins with cultivating your own inner relationship with sound, and singing from a place of pleasure and enjoyment in the sound itself.

If you want more live practices like this, learn more about my online singing classes, Sing Studio.

Watch the video below, and/or scroll down to read the transcript.

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 If you're watching this video, you probably feel a real inner desire to sing.

Maybe you want to find your authentic voice. Maybe you've got feelings within that just want to get out, but you feel blocked.

What is it that's made you hesitate so far?

Sometimes I know that what makes people hesitate is the possibility of having someone else hear you sing. The fear of judgment, fear of criticism, even the self judgment, what you're going to think of yourself, what you might realize or discover about yourself if you allow yourself to sing.

Maybe you don't want the pressure to perform in front of other people, you're just really not ready for that yet, and you don't know if you ever will be.

All you know is you just feel the desire to sing.

Maybe you have ideas from past experiences that you can't sing. Maybe you had negative messages or comments or experiences that shut your voice down. Maybe you've watched a few too many talent shows and you're comparing yourself to others that you see as talented and you don't see yourself that way.

I'm here to give you permission. Your voice is for you before anybody else!

Nobody else has to hear it, at least not until you're ready and not unless you feel ready.

But that desire to sing, that calling, that feeling... it will never go away. I promise you.

It's the reason why you're watching this video.

Singing can be just for you, just for you to get to know yourself, just for you to experience something that you can sense is bubbling up within you that just, just needs to come out.

A part of us getting to know ourselves is getting to know our voices and our expression at what wants to be said, what wants to be given voice through us.

Singing can be just for you only so that you can build a relationship with yourself and with sound, so that you can learn to trust yourself so that you can have a self love, self compassion, self forgiveness practice through singing.

It's so that you can allow yourself to feel joy, so that you can allow yourself to feel pleasure through sound.

Sound is innately pleasurable. It just feels good to make sound, and your body knows this.

So I wanted to share with you today some really simple ways to start developing your relationship with sound and with your voice, just for you.

No matter where you're starting from, and no matter what anybody else has ever said to you about whether you're talented, whether you can sing, any of that - just for you.

So join me in a little practice...

I'm going to get my Shruti Box going, if you're wondering what that sound is.

I'm going to start singing long tones and join me till the end of your breath, taking a breath when you need to.

There's no rigidity in this practice. Stop and start as you need, but just join me.

We're going to hum. I want you to place your hand on your chest. And I want you to feel the vibration of that hum. I'm going to sing around just on some different tones. I'm just going to stop and start on some different tones.

And just keep bringing your attention into the vibration of that sound. Feel that vibration internally. Feel the sensation of that vibration. Internally inside your body, you might feel it in your hand, in your ribs, in your tissues, in your flesh. Feel that vibration pulsating and vibrating in you, and as we continue lean into the pleasure of that feeling, just really feel how nice that feeling is.

Let yourself go into the pleasure of that feeling, and feel also how that feeling moves. You might notice it move into a different place in your body. That's absolutely what will happen if we're singing a different tone. But just keep focusing on the pleasure of the sound.

Notice if the quality of the sound shifts in some way, because you're focusing on a feeling. Just notice that, just be aware of that.

Now, we are going to move into some different vowels. We're just going to open up to ah. So we'll start on a hum, um, uh, and once again, same focus. Focusing on the pleasure of that sound, the quality of that sound, the feeling of that sound.

Let's change the vowel now. Let's go to Eh. Meh....

Still just focusing on how nice it feels to make this sound how that vibration feels in your body.

Let's go back to Mee...

You might notice with this vowel it feels a little different. That's how it's meant to feel. It's meant to feel a little different. Just keep focusing on the beauty and the pleasure of that sound and noticing the qualities that you can feel in this sound.

Now we change to Moo...

You may have noticed where that vowel moved to or where the feeling the vibration moved to when we sang the Ooh vowel higher. This is all part of the pitch ladder. It's all part of the resonance and exploring resonance of the voice so that you can develop your inner relationship with it. And just practice this, loving the sounds that you make.

Because it's from that place of that love and that joy and that beauty that we keep our motivation going and we develop our relationship with ourselves, with our voices, with sound, with music. And this is the true joy of a music practice, is that relationship. And being able to nurture that relationship and explore and discover what emerges from that relationship.

So that's just a really simple practice, it doesn't take much. You can just do that by yourself. You can do that with an instrument. You can get drone apps to help you, practice that in the same way we were doing here, or you can come back to this video and do the practice again.

And if you'd like to discover more practices involving the Shruti box, involving relationship with sound, your inner guidance system with your voice, check out the description below because I have a membership called Sing Studio and, you should be able to join that pretty soon, if not already.

This is just classes to continue working on this together, live classes online, from the comfort of your home so that you can develop that relationship with your voice, in your own space and in your own way.

You can also check out some more of my videos here on YouTube if you want some free practices as well.

As always, love the sounds you make, practice the beauty and the joy and the pleasure of sound, and I'll see you in the next video.

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Practice the beauty of sound, and love the sounds you make!