Whole Singing – our Playful Conversation with Music

Blog #3 Whole singing Series – our Playful conversation with Music.

I think we can all remember a time in our childhood, when we were overtaken with the flow of our own play and imagination. Being a twin, my sister and I had many moments like that. Our world of play was effortless and seamless. Looking back I can see now how that world of play my sister and I engaged in was so very important to the work we both do as adults. It was that practice of flowing with my imagination and the practice of allowing creativity that lended itself to my conversation with Music.

Imagination and music seem to have the same source- our higher self, Great Spirit, life force…God.

There is a wonderful book, “The Music Lesson: a spiritual search for growth through music” by Victor l. Wooten. In this book he encourages us to look at our relationship and conversation with music.  I immediately related it back to my childhood and my conversation with play.  Imagination and music seem to have the same source- our higher self, Great Spirit, life force…God. My understanding is that it is all the same thing and when we trust and allow that force to come thru, then we play, we pray, we converse with music. We sing!

       Thankfully,
many of the greatest spiritual teachers, scientific minds and
musicians were brave enough
to stand by themselves and share their insights.

In our modern society of separating all the parts to make a whole we have done ourselves a disservice. We have become perfectionists and become very self-conscious. We have become fearful. We have taken on the attitude of “I must be taught; I must have a class if I am to know anything.”  This is very interesting because if you look through history, it is the greatest out-of-the-box thinkers who have evolved our world the most. They had to trust what was coming through them.  Thankfully, many of the greatest spiritual teachers, scientific minds and musicians were brave enough to stand by themselves and share their insights. That was not learned from a book or a class.

Give yourself permission to have a playful conversation with music

My question to myself and to you reading this is, are we brave enough? Are we brave enough to go back in time and remember the feeling we had as a child of that easeful play? Are we willing to bring that feeling and flow into our conversation with music and allow and trust what comes. My challenge for you is to go PLAY an instrument or go sing. Do not go PRACTICE. Go Play. In your play as a child did you judge it did you analyze it. I think the answer would be no. But for some of us this ease of play is very hard to tap into. Therefore, make sure you do this on a regular basis. Give yourself permission to have a playful conversation with music for say 20 minutes a day. See what comes. What sounds, what words.

Once you have become familiar with your relationship with play, the music follows and so may your singing. The feeling you will feel when you come from this place while singing is that of the easefulness of childhood play. It is a wonderful feeling. This is what I have come to know as Whole Singing.