I am a vocal coach.  I just read that sentence, and it sounds a little strange to me.   Coach vocal.  Voice.  Coach voice.  The definitions of “coach” are all over the place, from a “four wheeled, horse drawn carriage,” to coach as: “developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organizational objectives.”

Voice is defined as: “the sound or sounds uttered through the mouth of living creatures, especially of human beings in speaking, shouting, singing, etc.”

I’m sure Miriam or Webster or whoever it was that determined those definitions … I’m sure they were a sharp couple of guys.  I mean, they know the definitions of EVERYthing, and actually put it in a book called a dictionary.  But neither one of these  guys has shown up to observe what happens when an individual is standing in front of me, aching to sing, but scared shitless to do it.

“I need you to sing something.”
“You mean, NOW?”

“Yes.  Now.  You can sing the alphabet, you can sing Happy Birthday, I really don’t care.  I  just need to hear your voice.”

And so it begins. Without exception, every . one . can . sing.  I didn’t say everyone is a singing star, but singing is as natural a part of us as breathing.   Yet so many tend to be paralyzed at the thought of letting their sound out for the world – or, for that matter, themselves – to hear.

Singing, “being of music,” is natural for us all; we speak the language of angels. So the fear is of speaking in the angel tongue.  There resides in many a sense of unworthiness (untrue), of not measuring up (the big lie), born of a lifetime of people telling them they can’t do it well enough, and to stop (defamatorily inaccurate) .  So I guess, woven into this work I do, is the psychology of gently leading people back to their own truth, and creating a space where they – when they’re ready – will step  into it.

The body is a reed instrument.  As with any reed instrument, playing it requires breath.

I tell every student  that  at the moment they popped out of their mama, with that first breath they gulped in Spirit; they have been doing it every moment ever since.  Ironically, when they first start working with me, people often  find it difficult to breathe.  They become “breathless.”  So we work on the process of permissions … to breathe (doing it already), to have a voice (has always been there), to raise that voice, to speak in tongue … angel tongue … the native language of the universe.

I just think Miriam and, for that matter, Webster, should sit in on a couple of my students’ sessions.  I think they’d be surprised.  Maybe they’d even sing.