Awakening Your True Voice
May 31, 2023 09:30AM ● By Jean McClelland
A baby cries and we are
riveted by its urgency. Children play and laugh and we stand in awe at their
spontaneity and the richness of their imaginations. We resonate with their joy
and yearn for when we, too, experienced such openness. Even a young child’s gibberish is filled with inflection and color which
communicates eloquently.
What has happened to
make so many of us self-conscious about creative self-expression and
embarrassed by the sound of our own voice? Why is it a baby can bellow for
hours and never get hoarse, but we feel strain and vocal fatigue after a few
hours of teaching or even after a long chat? Why is it our voices tend to
disappear when we have to express ourselves in a meeting or in front of a
group? Perhaps the real answer lies in understanding what has disconnected our
voice from who we really are.
When a baby cries or a
child laughs, their bodies are totally involved. Emotion flows through their
muscles and is reflected on their faces. This exquisite mind/body coordination
is the result of perfectly timed communication from the brain and spinal cord
to nerve endings in the muscles responsible for breathing and sound. This
process is fueled by “impulse” (chi) which physiologically can be
described as a powerful but mostly unconscious desire to express. We hear
impulse in the roar of a lion, the cry of a dog for its master, and we
experience it in the raging of King Lear.
Bringing impulse into
our consciousness is part of our journey in finding our authentic voice.
Another part is recognizing when we push our voices to make sound and letting
go of that, and still another part is understanding how our body was designed
to breathe. Voice is produced when a steady flow of breath—fueled by
impulse—vibrates the vocal cords. Remember our little baby? What makes its cry
so robust is its perfect coordination between the deep abdominal muscles and
the respiratory muscles. Most of us tend to lose this coordination by the time
we are three or four, but we can regain it.
The search for one’s
true voice is a deeply intuitive process of rediscovery. Sometimes, though, it
can be difficult to let go of preconceptions about how our true voice should
sound and just allow it to emerge. To free our voice from life’s constraints
may make us feel somewhat vulnerable, though at the same time it can be
liberating. We must approach our work with a sense of curiosity and discovery
and Zen-like patience. Then this wonderful freeing process will cease to be a
mystery and never be lost.
Jean McClelland is on the faculty
of the Graduate Program in Acting at Columbia University and a guest lecturer
in the music department at William Paterson University. She is an AmSAT
certified senior teacher of the Alexander Technique and studied with Carl
Stough at his Institute for Breathing Coordination. She is one of fewer than a
dozen people worldwide personally selected by Stough to teach his work. In
addition, she has performed extensively in musical theater and is a member of
Actors’ Equity Association. She
teaches in-person and virtual private lessons and group classes. For more
information, visit JeanMcClellandVoice.com.
