Are You Someone Who Can Talk But Can’t Sing?

Why Singing Your Truth Is Harder Than Speaking Your Truth?

This week I received these very fascinating questions from a singer-songwriter on the path.

"Dear Kara, There are things that I can say loud and clear, but when I try to sing them, my heart scatters into a million pieces... Why is that? Kara, why is singing your truth so much harder than speaking it? I mean, in both cases my voice is connected to my bloodstream, isn't it? What makes the difference?"

It is tough for us to know the depth of our truth and feel the pain and passion of our lyrics. As transformational songwriters we are aware that we write on a path to personal empowerment. On the path to answer bigger questions, our art reflects who we are.

Even if we are in a safe place within our own four walls or working in a personal coaching session on our material, it is still tricky to bring our songs out into the open.

Every song has its own timing. Some are written quickly and take years to produce. Others are written slowly and are never released on an album. Others are easier and jotted down in minutes and performed the same night.

I asked my client to speak the lyrics, which she did and it worked. She could stand front and center in her story and speak clearly her truth.

I asked her to return to the piano and sing the song. She froze. We went only to the two lines of the refrain. Sing your truth. And time stood still as the memories, the longing, the disappointment, the lost love welled up inside of her. She was reliving the pain all over again. The voice is close to our heart and she had no place to escape to.

The new love song was too powerful to rush through the small vocal fold opening. It could not slip out into the world without collapsing. Not until her whole body mind system had integrated the experience would she be able to move on. We held the moment, breathed through it and I suggested to her to wait with putting it into concert.

When we do concerts, we need to feel safe before we step into the lights. Concerts are not a time to dig into wounds. This is a time to rise and sing from the scars that have healed. Always honor your heart and body and be gentle.

Every song has its own timing. Some are written quickly and take years to produce. Others are written slowly and are never released on an album. Others are easier and jotted down in minutes and performed  the same night.

I asked my client to speak the lyrics, which she did and it worked. She could stand front and center in her story and speak clearly her truth.

I asked her to return to the piano and sing the song. She froze. We went only to the two lines of the refrain. Sing your truth. And time stood still as the memories, the longing, the disappointment, the lost love welled up inside of her. She was reliving the pain all over again. The voice is close to our heart and she had no place to escape to.

The new love song was too powerful to rush through the small vocal fold opening. It could not slip out into the world without collapsing. Not until her whole body mind system had integrated the experience would she be able to move on. We held the moment, breathed through it and I suggested to her to wait with putting it into concert.

When we do concerts, we need to feel safe before we step into the lights. Concerts are not a time to dig into wounds. This is a time to rise and sing from the scars that have healed. Always honor your heart and body and be gentle.

So today I answer her questions posed at the end of the class.

Dear Kara,

There are things that I can say loud and clear, but when I try to sing them, my heart scatters into a million pieces... Why is that?

Kara, why is singing your truth so much harder than speaking it? I mean, in both cases my voice is connected to my bloodstream, isn't it? What makes the difference?

Answer: The speaking voice is more stable. The larynx does not tilt when we speak. It stays more or less in the same position. When we move into singing we move into balancing thousands of tiny muscles. Our larynx begins to swing as the sound vibrations are released. We add our words and the melody adds depths and new heights to our words.
Imagine this, you are sitting on a swing with your feet on the ground. Very lightly you move back and forth and keep your feet touching ground.

This is the feeling the larynx has while speaking. If you can speak your truth, it is the first step to freedom. Honor yourself that speaking your truth is now natural. Many people hide from voicing up. Many people shrink while sharing their true feelings and views of our world.

Now imagine sitting on that same swing and lifting off the ground.
Imagine trusting the tilt and the backwards upper motion.

This same tilt is what happens when we begin to expand our singing range into the higher registers. This same feeling of release and trust is what happens when we sing higher intervals. At times we feel like we are flying and there is no earth under our feet. Do you remember those first moments of having to lift your feet off the ground and trust that the swing would hold you?

Now you need to learn to trust that your voice will hold you.

The throat is a home to expression and communication. It is the home to joy and sadness and fear and bliss. Our voice is a powerful transformation tool we have for changing our life and the lives around us.
When we sing our own words and melodies, memories are triggered and a thousand images appear. Our throat wants to close in to protect our heart. To sing we need to keep the throat wide open.

So our conditioning of protection is in conflict with our need for liberation.

Fact is - Most singers with big open voices are not singing their own compositions - melody and words.
Fact is most word smiths and transformational songwriters, do not favor big melody lines for their brilliant words and almost all sing with constriction.

Why? because we are always instinctively looking for ways to protect our hearts.
If we sing with an open throat, then we choose a strangers words. If we sing our words than we shrink the melody lines.

The big voices like Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand, Patti Austin, Whitney Houston (early years), were not singing originals.

The great lyricists that sing from their own life stories, like Bobby Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ane Brun, Adele, Sting, Leonard Cohen, are singing either within a smaller range of notes - keeping it within the speaking range or singing with constriction.

Adele suffered vocal hemorrhaging, Sting suffered nodes, Whitney suffered a huge downfall with her voice.

The path to feeling fearless while singing our truth and not collapsing, is the path of self discovery. The path of meditation. The path of compassion.

Yes - how wondrous it is when the heart scatters into a million pieces. Why is that? Because that is the journey. We are meant to bring out our song to the world and scatter it with the wind. That is how we were born. The wind breathes through us, our tears water the gardens, our voices tell the stories. And if we are able to tap into the melodies that are to be born through us, our heart will be broken into a million pieces, our albums played in thousands of different life situations in strangers' homes, in restaurants, on a TV show in Hong Kong. We will land in strange cities with our precious songs, longing to share them with others.

Sometimes we are lucky and welcomed, and sometimes we find ourselves walking all alone with the melodies and words circulating through our bones, tattooed on our skin and no one is there. We have in these moments only our songs to guide us, and we will still sing, for the music asks us to.

If we don't sing, and keep our heart safe, we will feel like a coward. We are born to sing. In the process, we will be stripped, bared, have to endure the lights like the phoenix endured the fires, we will doubt and we will fall, and yet if we listen, the music of our soul is always guiding us through. This is the blood stream, this is the air stream, this is the stream of consciousness. And we will use the moments of vulnerability to feel deeply alive, one, connected to our bodies and to the audience; and we will rise. Naked, just like how we came to earth. With one face only.

The essence is all that can remain. All that is false falls away. It is a good process when the heart breaks wide open. We simply need to remember to be gentle with ourselves and surround ourselves ONLY with caring and kind people. We will not survive the idiots. So treat yourself with the respect that is given to children, to roses, to butterflies - and you will be able to stay here long enough to do the work you have come to do; to sing, write and share. At the end of the journey - your heart knows that you are the scattering and in that vastness there is peace.

It is harder to sing your truth than to speak it. When you have mastered it, you are free.