
This week a big theme in my voice studio has been allowing oneself to Be Large. Regardless of one’s physical size, it’s a fact that for many of us, the idea of taking up space is challenging. Whether it’s because we’ve received the message loud and clear that we are “too much”, or been shamed for stepping into the limelight (or for even simply showing up), it can feel extremely vulnerable and scary to inhabit the performing space in a big way.
For singers, I’ve observed this diminishing of self to have multiple manifestations: it can cause us to hold or squeeze our breath; it can cause us to choke off our sound; it can make us lose connection to our feet in the ground and result in us relinquishing our means of support; we may collapse our sternum, shrinking from the connection to our audience. Any of these ways in which we make ourselves smaller and thereby more “palatable” mean that we deny the fullest expression of our sound. We become half a singer, half a performer. In trying to conform to some sort of pleasing (read: unthreatening) persona that we believe is being imposed upon us (and sometimes it is!), we step away from who we really are in all its grandeur, and minimize the power and presence that is rightfully ours.
For some, the internalized message is that they are physically too large (fat shaming) and that they don’t deserve to occupy space. For others, it’s that they have been told that their personalities are too much; they are seen as being “extra”. In both cases, it’s a telegraphing from society that when we stand our ground, when we open our hearts and throats, that it’s an unwelcome intrusion. So this week my students and I have been playing with being loud, being grand, being large and owning the room. And each time they are brave enough to explore this, we notice that the room is full of gratitude for their bigness. As Marianne Williamson once wisely said: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”. Owning our Inside Voice and sending it to the OUTSIDE is one of the greatest gifts we can give. As I often say to my students: “when you are big and brave and show up in all your glory, your warts and all, you give others permission to do the same”. BE BIG, my friends.