Imagine a feeling of harmony, a sense of oneness with those around you, and, at the same time experiencing a lovely, gentle, sense of yourself, in fact a real connection with both yourself and your community. Sound too good to be true... no, not at all, it can be just as simple as coming together and singing.
Now you may say that’s fine for those who can sing, but I can’t. Well the fact is that we were all born with a beautiful voice! Working together to re-discover our natural resonant voice is a path to knowing ourselves and re-discovering what makes a community tick.
Many of the qualities that make a community function well are represented, as a microcosm, in the community choir. One of them is the ability to truly listen. Community awareness is underpinned by good listening, but really it first starts in our own backyard, that is, with ourselves.
When you start to listen to yourself and begin to really feel what is going on in your own body you are able to bring an awareness to your life that creates a new, truer foundation. Then, as you start to let go of the old negative patterns and beliefs that you have about yourself and your self-expression, the true ‘you’ can emerge.
We have often been working at life through a veil of old beliefs. Feelings of ‘I don’t deserve to be heard’, or having to push to be heard… are swept aside as we ‘do our best ‘ to be part of our families and society.
These are also the hindrances that end up making people believe they can’t sing. AND then it spreads into NOT being able to express yourself clearly, feeling repressed and deeply undervaluing yourself.
Listening to others without judgement or criticism allows the space for them to feel the freedom to express themselves. In a community choir you need to hear and attend to your neighbours at the same time as expressing yourself fully. If you become self-centred and just go for it without an awareness of the overall sound, (the big picture,) your voice will no longer be contributing to the One Voice, which is the overall sound of the group. This can only be self-serving and fractures the sense of oneness in the developing community, (or choir).
When everyone starts to claim their true selves, their sound becomes resonant and clear, and there is also an innate alignment that happens within the tone of the group. This becomes very apparent in traditional community choirs in Europe where the tone of the voices align to become a feature in themselves.
When people discover their Natural Voice there is a sense of oneness that develops, not just for themselves, but for all that they are a part of. The sound grows together as one, everyone is fulfilled, and there is no separation. When we come together with this awareness it cannot help but to benefit the individual, the family and the community.