Last Thursday I had the pleasure of working with the folks in Maria Vetere’s International Studio in Niagara Falls, ON. We spent the better part of 12 hours together, whether online, in person or in class together. It was an extremely inspiring and fruitful time we had, with laughter, tears, revelations, admissions, recognition of patterns and reflections on process. The online observers (some of whom were also active participants, from various parts of the globe) had a good time coming up with hashtags of my various sayings and mantras throughout the day, and some of their own invention. One such hashtag became the title of today’s blog: #itsachoice. It’s something I say often in one form or another, most often in reference to something or other a singer is doing in the process of making their sound and presenting their art.
In the Body Mapping Educator® world, the concept of choice comes up when discussing awareness and inhibition. Awareness in the global sense means we are aware and cognizant of where we are in space, what’s in the room around us, the actions our body is doing and any number of additional things involved in our music making–essentially, we are aware of the choices we’re making as we’re making them. Obviously this is true to varying degrees, because awareness is a practice. Inhibition enters into the equation when we become aware of an action or behaviour we are doing that is working at cross purposes to the goal we might have in any given moment. We are aware of what we are doing, we notice the actions we have taken (or might be about to take–aka: habits), and we elect to inhibit those actions. In other words, we choose differently than what we might otherwise do were we not aware.
The hashtag in this case got significant air time because the singer I was working with made a classic statement when I asked him why he was doing a behaviour that he clearly realized was disadvantageous. He said: “I always do that” and I provocatively asked “why are you choosing that?”. He looked at me wide-eyed, not knowing how to answer. I offered to him that he had a choice, and he could choose to do something different if he wanted to. This choice is available to him so long as he is aware of what he’s doing (the flipside of NOT being aware is that you are in default mode–aka: habit). This seemed revelatory not only to him, but to many others in the group.
Here’s the thing. As singers, we often choose to disempower ourselves and remain numb to the actions we are taking in our singing, because we don’t want the responsibility. We’d rather shell out large amounts of money to “experts” who will tell us what to do at every turn. But if we began to become truly aware, to notice our actions, our movements, we would recognize that there are infinite numbers of choices we can make. If I notice I am holding tension in my neck, I can release that tension (at least to some degree, and more if I practice doing that again and again). If I notice I am holding the breath at the end of a phrase, I can sigh it out instead (again, more and more with practice). We can make choices that serve our singing, or we can default to ones that don’t. We can also choose not to choose. What do you want? This, or that? It’s a choice.