This quarter’s In Touch newsletter offers a window into a potent application of the Feldenkrais Method, the exploration of the human voice. Just as with any other area where a client might seek to improve, Feldenkrais practitioners approach vocal production as an action performed by the whole human being.
Here are a few of the thoughts of Moshe Feldenkrais about the voice, taken from his 1972 book Awareness Through Movement®:
“Every child born without some gross defect has the skeletal, muscular, and nervous equipment to allow him to learn to speak through hearing and imitating sounds… in man there is no speech pattern that is fixed from birth; speech develops and grows anatomically, and at the same time functionally… it is the early attempts at speech that have the greatest influence on the development of the mouth and on the relative strength of the vocal cords.”
After describing a process whereby an actor with a hoarse voice seeking to improve his enunciation might discover tensions that require an adjustment of his skeletal posture to release, Feldenkrais concludes:
“What all this means is that the total personality is involved in proper speech… He discovers an entirely new quality in his voice and finds that he can sing. This again opens up new possibilities in wider fields and reveals capacities of which he had never dreamed of before.”
All four contributors to this edition of In Touch bring extensive knowledge, skill and experience with this unique perspective on working with the human voice.
Feldenkrais Trainer Richard Corbeil originally found the Feldenkrais Method of movement as part of a personal quest to understand what might constitute a healthy vocal expression unadorned by the stylistic concerns of modern vocal pedagogy. He went on to compose his own original Awareness Through Movement lessons for “vocal integration.” Richard was interviewed by In Touch editor Seth Dellinger about his evolving approach to voice from his original musical training, to studying the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education, then working with clients and, finally, as a trainer of other practitioners.
Sam Nelson and Betsy Blades, authors of Singing with the Whole Self, also spoke with Seth Dellinger. A Feldenkrais practitioner and a professional singer who first met at the Eastman School of Music, they describe how they each learned from the other and then began to collaborate, teaching individual students and working with choirs, theater groups and musical ensembles. They also talk about a “modularized” approach to Awareness Through Movement classes they developed especially to meet the needs of professional musicians.
This edition of In Touch also includes an article by Feldenkrais practitioner and voice teacher Carol McAmis, originally published in 2005, and written for an audience of aspiring vocalists, her students at Ithaca College. She also includes an introduction to the the article, telling her Feldenkrais movement origin story and sharing the strategies she used to explain her unorthodox approach to vocal pedagogy to readers unfamiliar with this somatic approach.
We hope this edition of In Touch will inspire you to help your students and client find a more potent voice!