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from: Katie Rose

Category: Voicework

L_ve Y_ur V_ice in 2012

L?ve Y?ur V?ice in 2012

I have just discovered that the word Free has its roots in the words for Friend, Lover and Beloved. So to free something is to love it. So if we wish to liberate our voices, we need to love them. We must court the voice like a beloved, romance it out of its hiding places and love its eccentricities.

Technique can support the voice, as long as it is an act of love. Like any other part of us, the voice benefits from stretching, moving, dancing, working out. However If we exercise compulsively, as some sort of self-punishment or from a place of judgement where we are trying to make the voice fit with an outside model or image, this is not love. Love is using technique to support the unfolding of the voice in all its glory.

Some of the world’s most beloved singers have the most eccentric voices with the most wonderful textures - and personalities to fit. Think of the gravelly texture of Tom Wait’s voice or the Wuthering Heights of Kate Bush’s magnificent voice. These are artists who have not tried to make their voices pretty but have allowed their voice to be a vessel of expression.

We are each of us unique containers of enigmatic energy and when we love our breaks, wobbles or cracks they can become our redeeming features - personally and vocally. Our depths contain our divinity, and when we are brave enough to dive deeply we discover vast resources of energy and expression.

My invitation to you this New Year is to love and appreciate your voice as your beloved, to realise it is not a separate entity from you to be beaten into conformity, it is your friend, your beloved and it goes forth into the world carrying the feelings of your heart in its tones.

Loving your voice can be saying: Yes, I will allow song to arise out of me every day for five minutes in the shower or when I’m listening to my favourite tunes or every week at choir/singing lesson/kirtan. Yes, I will record my songs and learn how to listen lovingly to my voice and share it with others. Yes, I will have that difficult conversation with my colleague/lover/friend that I’ve been putting off for ages. Yes, I will take a stand and be a voice for the voiceless. Yes, I will join in when small children come up to me singing and shining with their inner sense of voice intact. Yes, I will meet and love my resistance and the voices of shame, rage and fear as they arise. Yes, I will allow my joy, inspiration, ecstasy and exuberance to overflow in cascading melodies. Yes, I will start singing my own song rather than that of my parent/teacher/sibling/partner because no one else in this world can sing my song. Yes, I will dissolve my personal song in the Universal Song that sings in the whisper of the wind and the rustle of the leaves.

How will you love your voice in 2012???

xxx

Please join me to celebrate and liberate the beloved that you are at the following Valentine’s Celebrations:

? 7th February - The Garden of Roses - Victorious Valentines - featuring Illumina and Rebecca Rainbow - 7.30-10.30pm - Inspiral Lounge, 250 Camden High Street, London. NW1 8QS - Free
? 14th February - Valentine’s Celebration at Spiritual Connections with Heather Andrews-Dobbs, Cate Mackenzie, Andrew Marstrand, Katie Rose, Sabi Hilmi & Laurence Morland, The Spectator (downstairs), 6 Little Britain, EC1A 7BX. £20 - Bookings: Heather - 07773 127178
? 18th February - Love Your Voice - A Workshop in Free Singing - Katie Rose in collaboration with C.R.I.S.P - 3-5pm, South Norwood, SE25, £20/£10 early bird by 1st Feb, £25/£12.50 after 1st Feb, bursaries available - Bookings: Catherine Pestano - catherine@naturalvoice.net

I am also offering £5 off plus an additional free 10 minute gong bath for any Vocal Coaching Session booked by February 14th.
Please email therosewindow@gmail.com for more details.