We all know that belting out a classic in the car or in the shower feels freeing and joyous – but it can also help you release pent-up feelings and gain emotional confidence. So just how can you learn to sing to boost your wellbeing?
When I first started teaching and speaking to large groups or crowds of people, I began amateur singing in small groups to gain more clarity and confidence around my speaking voice, and the results were profound.
Not only did I gain emotional confidence, I became a better listener and I felt I had instant access to happiness-boosting feel-good hormones without any mediation at any point in my day.
The magic of music
So, I stripped it back to try to make sense of the magic in music. At its core, music is simply a vibration brought to the ear by sound waves. The varying pitch, tempo, volume and rhythm has the infinite potential to shift the way we feel in our emotional bodies.
Science can explain music, but only intellect and emotion can create it. What I learnt was that singing is a whole bodied experience.
It creates opportunities for deeper intentional breaths, and when we sing, as opposed to just listening to songs, the process allows us to tap into our emotions more deeply.
In a similar way to exercise, singing can help us explore our emotional bodies, but it gives us more of an instant, accessible result.
Take yoga , for example. It can take years to hone your skill, gain the muscle memory, mental stamina, breath, strength and flexibility it requires to flow through a sequence.
But music is innate; we feel the rhythm running through us in the womb, we learn to intuitively dance as babies, and we learn to sing confidently as children to our favourite songs. It’s running through our veins, it’s in our DNA and very much a part of our biology.
Singing as an emotional release
When I first started singing in a group as an adult, the teacher routinely brought boxes of tissues into the room. I wondered why, but sure enough, two minutes into practice and the lot of us were bawling our eyes out.
Gwyneth Paltrow even confessed that whilst she was doing her vocal training for her role as a Western singer in the movie Country Strong, she’d dig deep to bust out a high note in rehearsal and then burst into tears.
So why all the tears? “It goes back to childhood triggers,” says Mercedes Sieff, co-founder of the award-winning holistic wellbeing retreats Yeotown . “Badly or not, if you ask children to sing, they’ll all sing. Its only as we get older, we get more self-conscious and for the majority, we stop singing.
“It could be that we’re told to not be loud, or that we can’t sing, it can be the smallest comment and psychologically our subconscious tells us not to sing anymore, because we associate it to negativity.”
So somewhere along the way, the simple joy of using our vocals to create song becomes lost and in turn, joy is lost, along with the freedom to create expressive range.
The importance of singing
“Singing, releases so much,” adds Mercedes. “Every tribe in the world, no matter where you go, no matter how remote or primitive it is, song is always present. It’s a basic human need, so when we stop that, things get stuck inside, sound is a way for things to literally get out of the system. It’s a big release.”
A lot of the release we experience is to do with the vagus nerve, which is the longest cranial nerve in the body. It connects the brain and the gut, lungs and heart – which are all emotional centres of the body.
This plays a critical role in helping us rest and digest. Increasing the tone of the vagus nerve, which is what we do through both singing and creating deeper breaths, enables our bodies to relax faster after experiencing something stressful.
How to sing for better wellbeing
So, whether you have the vocal range of Celine Dione, or you consider yourself more of a meme from the first round of X Factor auditions, there is no rule as to what is best.
You have to follow the feeling.
And in a time of elitism in the world of wellbeing that can dictate parting with a lot of money for extreme detoxes, therapies, cleanses and more, remember that your song exists inside of you. It is waiting for you to ignite it at any point in your day, no matter what you’re going through, even the genuinely hard stuff.
Singing will declare your emotional state, and if you’re brave enough, it’ll replicate that to a listener, so let’s all start singing from the same sheet and start hitting those high notes without judgement.
Article by
Rosie Undewood
Article by
Rosie Undewood
By Rosie Undewood
