Keep Your Feet on the Ground

The easiest way to sing is when you're standing. Obviously you can sing sitting down, otherwise roadtrips could get boring. You can also sing lying down, but here's where standing while singing makes all the difference: your feet are on the ground, holding you upright. So long as you don't lock your knees or hunch your shoulders, your foundation for expression through your skill and art is solid. From this stance, your breathing mechanisms are not compromised: stomach, diaphragm and lungs. From this stance, you have space to let the music move through you. While it may be just a few degrees more than sitting or lying down, that freedom makes all the difference in your ability to be recognized for your craft. 

Now apply this concept to a bigger scale, to living your life. Are you standing with a solid foundation to express and create from? Or are you manipulating your stance? Are you manipulating the space you could take up, just because you feel like you shouldn't take the space? Simply: are your feet on the ground? When your feet are on the ground, you’re not only a stronger singer, you can move. 

Here’s where the voice factors in here, to keeping your feet “on the ground”. Here’s how your voice can lead you to a place of disconnect with reality, or it can anchor you down into the present. Your vocal organ takes up the mass of nearly 50% of your body. From the base of your torso to the top of your head, you have your stomach, diaphragm, lungs, throat, vocal chords, voice box, jaw, tongue, soft pallet, face, sinus map, and then all the muscles in between. Why is it then, that this multi-dimensional organ in our body takes up so much space? It’s because it’s the organ we can use to direct our lives, to anchor down into the present, to keep our feet on the ground. But here’s the thing on space — the vocal organ is a tool not to just sing and communicate, but to process information of our experiences, in which, we only have a max capacity of space to store information. Suppressed words, emotions and fears, being the number one culprit taking up space, infringing on the strength of our voice, which then can lead us to lock up in an internal cage of the mind. Anytime you suppress something you felt, you store that information in your system. Overtime these become accumulative clutter on your psyche, reducing your energy output, slowing down your response time and engagement to the life in front of you. Your voice holds the key to your life. 

So let me ask you, do you know what it’s like to find the words that were suppressed 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago? Do you know what the sensation feels like in your body to recognize, express and release them from your system? Especially if those thoughts, questions or expressions held negative connotations, fear or worry or anxiety — the words carry the weight and that weight stays in your system for as long as you keep it there. This doesn’t mean you have to share out loud, unless you want to. What this means is to find safe ways to express and connect with yourself, so that your system feels safe enough to release those suppressed expressions. In all honesty, this is a level of intimacy with the self that not many are willing to take on. But all you’re doing is securing your foundation…so why not do it?

Here’s what happens when you don’t ever release what needs to be released — you further corner yourself into a shadow of isolation and disconnection. Instead of allowing life to flow, like water through you (remember we are walking water), you decide to put up a dam every time you don’t want to “deal with it”. Overtime, your system reacts instinctively to do this, because you’ve trained it to do so. What this does to the voice then, your organ for directing your life, is weaken it. 

Everything that you suppress shows up as tension and manipulation around your vocal organ: digestive issues; shallow breath; clenched jaw; tight throat and tongue; gum recession and sporadic mouth sores; molar pain; jowls; cortisol and fluid retention; tinnitus; restless leg syndrome even. In short, your body will try and make reserves for water (life) because you’re not allowing life to “flow”. It will scream out for help for you to release — either until you listen or the build up hits a breaking point. In that corner of isolation and shadow, your voice is weakened. Your stance and confidence for movement in life is manipulated and weakened. But here’s the deal: you get to choose if you stay there, isolated in a corner and in a shadow, floating away from your life realities, or if you will step into the flow of life and anchor your feet on the ground. You get to choose what kind of “singer” you’re gonna be. No one can do the work for you — no one. 

I also mean this in the literal sense though — keep your feet on the ground. The more you keep your feet on the ground, the more you are engaged with life, the more you are in your humanness. Cause think of it — we don’t actually like hyper-psychologized life. We can engage with it and live that way for a time, but our humanness will always call us “back down to earth”. So if you’re like me and have a lot of thoughts, a lot of ideas, theories, and maybe have been susceptible to the void breaking and entering in your psyche (you can repair this, difficult but it can be done) — then start creating. Write, journal, compose music, craft clay, garden. Get your feet on the ground to keep your mind out of the stratosphere of the void. It’s just the best way to live. 

Can you hear me Major Tom?

-B 

If you are needing help in this space, to regroup and anchor yourself into the present; to release what’s been suppressed — attend my free training, “Finding Safety Through Self Expression”. Click anywhere in this paragraph to register.