Student: Stephanie J.
Date of Lesson: 2/19/14
Brief Overview of lesson: I started our lesson by explaining to Stephanie that we were going to learn a little about the body today and work on some body mapping so that we could understand the accurate map of our bodies. I asked her first if she had had any classes in anatomy before. She answered that she hadn't but that her husband had, and she sometime would help him study. I said, "That's great! Let's start by standing in the mirror. I want you to stand for me as if you were going to sing in front of an audience. Take a look at your body and try to memorize this picture." Her body seemed a little unbalanced, and not very upright. Her shoulders were a little curled in, and I could see that her upper abdomen was a bit collapsed and also her head jutted a little forward.
"Now close your eyes, and I want you to think about the information I am about to tell you."
"The first thing I want to talk about is our spine. Our spine has different sections. The lowest section of our spine is called the lumbar vertebrae." I quickly pointed out the cervical vertebrae in her neck, the thoracic in the torso, and I told her that the lumbar were the lowest ones deep in the middle of our body. I said, "The lowest section of our spine is the wearing bearing part of our spine and that is where most of the weight is distributed. A lot of people get in the habit of having their muscles hold themselves up. This causes tension, because the purpose of our spine and skeleton is to bear weight. Does that make you think differently at all, about the way you position your body?" (position: not a good word choice!) She replied with, "Umm...I don't know. A little." I then said "Well does that new awareness make you think differently or feel differently?" She said, "Umm, maybe just think a little differently. I don't know I always feel like I use my core muscles to hold myself up and to stabilize myself." I told her "Okay, well for right now I want to you release your stomach muscles and just let your body stand upright. Another thing I want to tell you about is the A-O joint. This joint is between your ears, right in the middle of our head. This joint is where the head rests on the rest of our skeleton. If you can imagine it, and think of that looseness between your ears having your head rest on your spine."
She then said "Okay is it kind of like, you know how teachers say to imagine how there's a string on the top of your head. Would that be the same thing? Like is my head kind of hanging there on top of my spine?"
I chimed in and said, "It's just resting there."
she said, "okay."
I asked again, "Does that make you feel a little more loose? Did you change your body at all?"
She said, "Umm, I feel like I lifted up a little bit. Like my head. Cause I feel like I was leaning forward."
I continued, "Okay, I'm going to tell you one more thing. Our arms aren't attached to our rib cage. They are attached to the clavicle. So imagine that, and let them rest on your skeleton as well."
She said, "I don't know where..."
And I replied, "I can show you some pictures after you open your eyes. So open your eyes. Do you notice anything different?"
"Umm. I feel more relaxed, but straighter."
I said, "More upright?"
And she said, "But when I think of upright I think of being tense. And I looked better."
I chimed in and said, "Yeah I noticed that you kind of had your shoulders rounded in a bit. Not that your posture was terrible, but they look a lot more released. And then your head is now resting on your head, because before you had it jutted out a little bit and it looked a little uncomfortable. It's just interesting how when we learn more about our body how our awareness changes how we hold ourselves." (hold not a good word!).
Next we sat down and looked at some pictures in the McCoy book. I accidentally brought the McCoy book, when I meant to bring the Malde book. Fortunately there were some helpful pictures I could use to guide her with. As I was searching for the page Stephanie said to me "I've been doing a lot of running and following training programs and stuff and a lot of it is like that tighter core leading forward. So I have to separate that from singing. It's just interesting."
I replied, "Yeah, we can talk about that some more when we talk about our breath."
I showed her the picture of the arm being attached to the clavicle and she said, "That's really interesting."
I then moved on to a picture of the location of the atlas and the A-O joint in between the ears. I then pointed out the different sections of the spine on a diagram.
I then asked her a question, "So in the past, you've had some voice lessons. How did they describe breathing to you?"
She said, "I don't know. I took voice lessons for a few weeks when I made choir in high school. She asked me how I breathed, and I talked about how you breath with certain vowels, and she said 'No, no, no. Like how do you breath when you're singing?' so then we just talked about how people imagine how their lungs fill up with air, but that you really want to release and expand, and feel the air filling down here. And my last voice teacher did a lot of breathing exercises with me and told me like, this one helps me release more, or expand more, but I didn't really understand why I needed to do that. Or if she told me I have forgotten."
I then said, "Okay, well would you like me to tell you?" and she said, "Sure!"
"Okay so our lungs are organs, so they can't expand by themselves. They are encased in sacs that are full of fluid, and these sacs are what allow the lungs to expand and fill with air. I'll show you some pictures in bit, but I'm sure you've also heard to sing from your diaphragm. Well we don't actually have vocal folds there, we're not singing down there. Do you know where the diaphragm is?"
"Yeah, does it look like this and does this?" as she put her hands together to make a flat/straight line under her bra-line, and then moved it up and down.
I said, "Yes it goes up and down when you breathe."
She said, "And I'm not actually sure where it is. Is it underneath your lungs?"
I said, "Yes, it is underneath your lungs and fits inside the rib cage. It is shaped like a bowl."
"The only reason I know that is because doesn't the diaphragm spasm when you have hiccups?"
I replied, "I'm not sure...I'll have to look it up."
"So as we breath in the bowl shape kind of flattens as if moves down and then as we exhale it returns to its original position. This isn't something that we can control, but it just happens by itself. Our brain can't actually send a command to our diaphragm."
"So your teacher probably talked about feeling the breath going down there. And when we do breath you can feel that area expand. So that's not actually the air expanding in your stomach, but rather the movement of the diaphragm pushing the organs out of the way so that it can contract. Sorry I'm probably explaining this way too much and confusing you."
Stephanie spoke up and said, "No, no! I find this extremely interesting because I know that you actually don't breathe air all the way down there, but she said imagine air filling up down there, so I wasn't sure what she meant."
"Okay, yeah so she was talking about feeling the air expand down there, but not actually going down there. If you ever feel like I'm overwhelming you please tell me, and I can stop talking."
Then she said, "No, keep on going!"
"So when one muscle contracts, for example my bicep contracts, another muscle, the tricep has to release and vice versa. So when our diagphragm contracts as we inhale, our stomach muscles (which wrap all the way around us) are completely released to accommodate the movement of the diaphragm."
"So that's a way to get more breath support? Cause I know that you can't control the diaphragm, but if your diaphragm is being used to its best ability are you able to get better air, or breath support?"
"I'm not sure how to answer that, because I don't want you to think that you can control that."
"Right, and I don't mean that but I mean that if someone doesn't release all the way like at their core doesn't that mean they can't take better breaths?"
"It just means that if they aren't releasing those muscles it is causing unwanted tension in their body. So a lot of times people will think. So when we allow our abdomen to fully release our breath becomes much easier."
"Okay, so doing that will help me get more air?"
"No, its just helping our breath be more efficient."
"Oh okay, cause I mean that's what all voice teachers tell me, that I need more air, and doing something will get me more air."
I then said, "we actually don't need a ton of air to sing, if we breath too deeply and get too much air it can cause stress on your voice. Is this a good discussion for you?"
"Yeah, it's very interesting."
"So when we inhale our stomachs release, and our diaphragm contracts and then we begin singing our stomach muscles aren't contracting like we are doing crunches. But they just naturally come in. And that will just happen; you don't have to think about that. I just want to be clear that we aren't gearing up to do a sit-up while we sing."
"And so then like when I'm singing a really high note. My voice teacher would tell me to engage my core. What does that mean?"
"I don't recommend that."
"What does that do? Give you power?"
"Let me think about how to explain this...So a lot of voice teachers talk about support."
"Another voice teacher said that when you're getting to those high notes, she told us to contract muscles and do things that we would be worried we would pass gas. She said that you should feel the urge to do that."
"What do you mean, like squeezing muscles?"
"I have no idea, but she would tell us that. Have you learned about that?"
"Well I'm not sure what she means by that, because in my class we have talked about how different words mean different things to everyone. Like in our last lesson I said 'make it ugly' and that meant something completely different to you than it meant to me."
"Yeah but she talked about being relaxed and then also like again engaging our core."
"And I heard that in high school. But I'm not sure if that was just a teacher that was trying to convey an idea using the wrong vocabulary, or if it was someone who just clearly didn't know what they were doing. I had a teacher like that and I didn't understand. But the last thing you want to do is tighten or squeeze, because that means you are out of air. There's air all around you, so just take a breath instead of engaging your core or squeezing."
"So the words that I was trying to find were support and control in breath. So that's what people probably mean when they say engage your core they mean support the air. I think this was the wrong page to read to you...Scratch that...Okay, so when I feel supported in my breath, I feel completely released down here."
"Yeah, and when I think support I think of contracting and squeezing. But I'll try to remember that you mean support, or when you want to support the air you need to feel released."
"Yeah, I almost feel like I'm open down there and I feel released and open. And when you're breathing correctly you should have the down and out feeling while you're singing. Don't hold it there, but feel it reactivating while you're singing....I'm going way too much into depth."
"No, you're clearing up misconceptions."
"I want you to feel like you're not confused. So if you ever are please ask me, and I will try my best to use the correct vocabulary."
"Okay so we need to sing, I want you to keep those things in mind that we talked about. Don't burden yourself, but just think about it."
"Have you done any singing today?"
"A little during class."
Vocalizes: We began with yawning. Stephanie had some genuine yawns coming when she opened her mouth. I told her if she had another one to notice the way her body feels before the yawn comes, and then try to describe that feeling to me. She said that it felt closed at the beginning and then felt open towards the end.
Then we tried yawning, while tilting our heads back as if we were drinking a glass of water. She said that it felt really good.
We began the chewy hum afterwards. I noticed that she was kind of holding her teeth, so I told her to make sure she was moving her teeth. She also was trying to make it too singy so I told her to not sustain it afterwards. It felt a little pinched, so I asked her to feel the yawn jaw feeling.
I noticed she had her hands crossed and together in front of her, so I asked her to let her arms rest at her sides.
We tried it again, and I asked her to feel her head rest on the top of her spine and notice that buoyant feeling. I felt that I received some free sound. She even yawned in one of them. I told her, "I really liked how you let the yawn come, because if the yawn comes it means we've been closing down a little and it is releasing and opening that space."
I then tried to teach her the light [u] 54321 with the rounded lips. I modeled it for her first. She asked me what my tongue was doing and I said that the tip of it was on my bottom retainer and there was an arch in the back. So let's not phonate, but blow some air out of your rounded lips. This will help you feel that space back there while maintaining the yawn jaw. So blow air and then if sound comes let it come. She said that it felt really open.
I had her try it by herself, and I could tell that she wasn't grasping what to do. I tried to explain that it was light and it was more of a sound rather than a singing.
I wasn't very successful, and she still couldn't figure it out. I should have moved on.
She said that she knew that I was doing something different, but she couldn't wrap her head around how to do it. It closer to what I wanted, but not exactly.
Assessment of student: I think that Stephanie may just have a hard time verbalizing how she is feeling, because I know that when we talked about the nitty gritty details she was understanding and giving me lots of feedback. I think that this was a good lesson to have even though we didn't sing hardly at all, because we had time to address some subjects that caused confusion in her singing, and I was able to clarify some of them. Although, I'm sure I confused her a lot, because I got confusing in my own speech...so I will need to clarify some things in my next lesson.
Goals for future implementation: I'm going to not talk so much, and try to be more thoughtful and succinct in what I say, because I feel like I wasn't very clear in my motive and in what I had planned.
How will you modify your teaching based off of what you learned from the lesson? I need to replace some of my words with words that will have a better connotation for Stephanie. For example, instead of using upright I need to use happy, balanced, alert. I think those might elicit a better response from Stephanie instead of making her feel tense.
Questions for Cindy: I feel a little defeated. I am sure that I said some terrible things. How can I improve in teaching this subject matter?
How do I teach the light [u] 54321 vocalize effectively? I tried just to have her mimic me but it did not work. I even tried having her think of it as very light and sigh-like almost. I also asked her to think of it as making a sound rather than singing. Nothing changed the output I was getting. SOS!
Takeaways for the student:
1. Think about the lumbar vertebrae when exercising and singing.
2. Head resting on the top of your spine.
3. Think-let trust.
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