Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast series by the Gay Men's Brotherhood where we talk about personal development, mental health and sexuality. I am your host, Matt Lancidell. I am a counselor and facilitator specializing in healing and empowerment. My areas of expertise are teaching people how to heal toxic shame and attachment trauma and embody their authentic self so they can have more meaningful connections in their lives. Specializing working with highly sensitive people, empaths and gay men to develop a stronger sense of self-respect.
So today's topic is Finding and Releasing Your Voice. We're going to be talking about self-expression and we are joined by Havier Wallace.
So Havier is a vocal coach, producer and artist interested in the intersection of vocal technique with neuroscience, somatics, fitness, mindfulness and meditation. He is trained with CVT and IVA certified voice teachers and coaches across pop, folk, rock, jazz and classical over the last 17 years and has been writing, producing and performing music for 12 years.
He strives to offer his students a non-judgmental space for exploration and collapse divisions between high culture and low culture in pursuit of empowering students to make their own choices, self-actualize and take their practice and artistry to a new level. That's great. You're bringing some good stuff here. For those of you who are avid listeners, they know that I've been doing vocal coaching myself. So you reached out and I was like, this is a perfect fit.
There's a lot of intersection between the work that we do and I'm looking forward to unpacking this. Is there anything I missed in there that you want to share with the audience? It's just funny as a practitioner also, someone with ADHD, sometimes we... I'm so focused on the next thing that sometimes I need a reminder of all the stuff I've done. So Fio is really neat to be like, oh yeah, I am an competent person.
Yeah, you bring neurodivergence to this as well, right? So I have sensory processing sensitivity and you're bringing... What would you classify ADHD for you? How does it show up for you? Just curious. How it shows up for me is also sensory processing. So it's tied in a little bit with CPTSD symptoms. But for me, I think that I always say to people, I've been a musician for a very long time.
How our cortical processing works, how we map our brains onto sensory information is always going to be super wrapped up in sound for me. So that is the... Yeah, I'm very sensitive sound. Yeah, otherwise with ADHD, it's about that sense of time and balancing priorities. But I think I'm doing okay at the moment. Yeah, good. Good. That's challenging too. And even during these episodes too, like I can hear birds chirping, I can hear the traffic, I can hear you.
Like there's... It's funny, like that's my main domain for sensitivity is auditory. So it's interesting. We can even bleed this into today's conversation because we bring a different perspective into this. But for the audience, basically what we're going to be unpacking to, we've got five concepts we're going to be exploring. So how vocal expression supports self-expression, how to find and release your voice, the blocks to self-expression, the benefits of vocal expression,
and then the benefits of vocal coaching. So we've got a lot of cool stuff to unpack. So let's hop right in. So, yeah, let's maybe start with the first one. So how vocal expression supports self-expression? What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say that? A lot of people that I've worked with are shy people, other people who were described themselves as shy, and I see a direct, direct correlation in people who are shy and having limitations with the voice.
This has also been me as well. So... Yeah, did it all. So if we hold our voice back, if we're afraid of being heard, or we don't want to rock the boat, or we don't want to put ourselves out there too much, we can constrict the voice. Basically, a fish and vocal technique, I don't really like to talk in terms of good or bad, because a lot of it is choice and stylistic choices, but I think what it all always comes down to is efficiency, like how much energy is it costing you.
And so there are surprising impacts from one, if we believe that we're capable, if we believe we're a good singer, if we can sing well, that's going to have a major impact. But we're holding the voice back, we're introducing tension already into a system that doesn't need any more tension. So that constriction really really effect the voice. And I see this correlation of people who have this in their personality, and people who have this as a performer or a singer.
Yeah, interesting. I love that. And for myself, I've always been like a singer, but a closeted singer for most of my life, way too shy to sing in front of people and terrified. I get stage right, these sorts of things. I've really been overcoming this. But one of the areas that I've noticed that for me, vocal expression has helped myself expression is through like emotional toning. Like I'm a firm believer that all emotions carry sound or vibration, right?
So whenever I my journey towards reconnecting back to my emotional self was through using my voice. And it was amazing when I first started working with my vocal coach, I realized I had so much stuff, made primarily fear and shame, literally trapped in my vocal cords. So as I was like singing, I was feeling like heat in my face, and I would feel like shame responses while I was like letting go of some of this stuff from my body.
And I've always been the kind of person that I've always had stuff with throat. So I grew up having strep throat when I was younger, like all the time, like every three months I'd get strep throat. Like always clearing my throat or always trying to swallow. So there's a lot of stuff that gets kind of put into this region. So I'm curious for you, do you see this within your clients and people like there's a lot of release that can happen when you start to connect with your voice?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure about the stuff to do with like getting localized infections and things like that. Although one of my students did knock me out for a week, a couple of weeks ago, I had to be like, guys, can you, if you're sick, please stay home. But yeah, I mean, you're familiar with Bessel Vanderkulk, the body keeps the score, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So basically how I look at it is like any stress, any trauma, anything that stores itself in a part of the body.
This is for that to be in a place like the stomach, the diaphragm, the chest cavity, the neck, the face, all of these are places that can affect the voice because it's one big system that is basically starts with a bellos, which is the diaphragm and the lungs. And everything from there to the outside world can impact and then feedback on the chain itself.
So it doesn't even have to be anything wrong with our vocal folds per se, but any stress or trauma, like you're saying you had a lot with the throat and a lot kind of like a lot of tension holding it, you're here. That's definitely going to have an impact. And I'm very curious about where that crosses over with ideas of energy centers, because a funny thing about my, my work is that my bachelor's degree is biology and master of music. I came from the space that's very kind of empirical.
I've done a lot of meditation and I have this wonderful group of friends who will meditate together here in Utrecht in the Netherlands, where I'm based.
Experiencing energy centers as a phenomenon in your own body when you don't believe in them is quite the thing to experience. So I'm very interested in this idea of like ideas that we correlate with the chakra system and the throat chakra and maybe if these things are like with hell of ideas about expression, not speaking your truth, not advocating for yourself, being shy. I'm really interested to delve more into that and that basically feeds feeds into my work as well.
Okay. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I hear that a lot from people that have like strong science backgrounds, but I always I always say that, you know, like there's an intersection between spirituality and science and that for me would be like quantum physics. Quantum physics has is the intersection is talking about things or metaphysics, right, these sorts of intersections. So I think they're really they're really cool to explore.
I'm glad that you're that you you understand that. And for me that I speak in that language a lot, even though I do have a scientific background as well in the social sciences. But I'm a firm believer that I had a blockage in my throat chakra and I grew up where my voice wasn't encouraged to be to be I was encouraged to be seen or heard.
It was more so, you know, like repressed and then growing up gay again, there was this element of feeling like I needed to hide and I needed to actually this is another interesting thing. I think a lot of a lot of our listeners will relate to this is feeling like as gay men, we have to change our voices.
And the gay voice, right, like if we have a list where we sound like you know when we start first start realizing that we are gay and we haven't gone through puberty yet and our voice sounds really high, right, and then we might be trying to tone it down like bring our voice down and that can affect and start to repress the authenticity of our voice.
And so it's just something it's and I think a lot of a lot of gay men and I'll speak for myself actually I carried a lot of shame around my voice and and always the being like do I have a list or do I talk like I'm gay or is this going to be the thing that outs me. So I think I made a conscious effort to try and make sure that I never sounded gay, right, which is a lot you're it's putting a lot of unnecessary tension on the voice.
Yeah, I have a lot to say about this so we can jump straight into this one if you want. Yeah, let's go let's yeah, we'll just we're going to ping pong I think we'll play with our ADHD minds will just let it ping pong around basically I really relate to what you're saying 100% and it's partly that that sense of like that hyper vigilance that kind of where afraid of being other we're afraid of being seen as LGBT queer gay man.
So we're afraid of that kind of being targeted right but it doesn't just affect gay men this affects straight women even who I've worked with who artificially I worked with someone who realized that she was artificially if you hear what I'm doing with my voice now I'm artificially opening up the throat and I'm making it sound deeper and more boomy and this student that I worked with was doing this as well.
And yeah, basically I also did it and I have to consciously it's so deeply ingrained that I have to kind of pay attention to it because it does put a strain because you're pushing the larynx down. Yeah, we can create these effects, timbre effects like that dark sound anyway as part of performance but I feel like every one of us has this sort of gravitational center of like of like a homeostasis point like a balanced point.
The comfortable space for us to be that has like creates like the least strain from day to day and that's where I try and encourage people to be. I have to remember to put myself there as well but it is brighter and it is more light and it sounds like this it's more in my nose and I had that sense of I think as gay men were sort of not just gay men but everyone sort of performing masculinity in patriarchy.
Yeah, this female student I mentioned she was doing that because she noticed that she would be taken more seriously by men. And these were this was situations where she was in meeting rooms, boardrooms, pitching for things. So I really understand that's why people do it and yeah the short version is it's it's patriarchy.
Yeah, we're trying to create an impression of competence of confidence that we know we're doing when of course you and I know the death of your voice or your perceived masculinity has nothing to do with that. But I think it speaks to the subconscious trappings of the environment that we're living in.
Yeah, I agree and I think for a lot of us masculinity is is armor it keeps us safe the more masculine we are within this patriarchal system the more likely we are to get ahead the more like we have access to resources less violence these sorts of things right. Yeah, I'm curious for if for people that might not understand what that means the term patriarchy do you want to just explain to the audience what that means to you.
It's the idea that society is generally primed around men and male dominance of course this is relative and it's nuanced it's not the same replace it's intersectional the for me class is always like the most important intersectional factor. But then I grew up in the UK and I think we have a very kind of strong experience of class that isn't necessarily present in other countries like the Netherlands. I think for Canada i'm not sure but in the US definitely as well.
So it's not it's not a flawless idea but it's just this idea that generally speaking for the last couple of thousand years the interests of men have been put generally at the forefront and of course shift now and that's a beautiful thing to see but it's we're still talking about the vestiges of that system are still hanging around us you know.
Yeah and when you come to think of it that was what I was experiencing when I was singing and there was shame that was coming through and leaving my body it was shame of because I saw and maybe even still see. Singing as quite a feminine expression right and I'm not sure where that comes from in me but it's like because men and women sing but for some reason it's like anything in the expressive arts I see as is connected to the feminine energy.
Not necessarily the feminine gender i'm speaking more so of that energy and for me there was a lot of maybe injury around like expressing that part of myself and showing that part of myself because of growing up in these patriarchal systems where being gay was like the lowest of the of the low like the lowest of the total pull was that you were a gay man.
And I bought into that belief so anything that would let people into that that knowingness of me I was like shame keep it hidden don't express it and singing for me was a big part of that which is probably why I was a closet at singer from most of my life and.
And I fucking love singing it's the best feeling ever like singing is one of the best feelings for me and yeah so i'm glad i'm working through this that's for sure to like this is a thing is the singing is for everybody I really believe that i'm one of my earlier coaches she really do inspired me with this because she was this really big sort of like box some tall cumber in woman who you wouldn't mess around with you know you.
And she she made metal music and I was really into her music and to have this person who had this very aggressive masculine energy to have this very nurturing idea of like singing is for everybody just really touched me and i've never left that behind like I really think it's it's for everyone and and particularly singing together with other people is like a I think it's an essential human experience that i wish more people have access.
And that's one of my fondest memories of school actually is because we would be had to take music class and we would all sing together and it was like I would feel and like I also get like chills when I see like marching bands like there's something about synchronicity and like working together and making sound and creating this like macro experience of all these micro parts coming together there's something really i don't know why but I get really inspired by that so yeah it's amazing but I do really hear what you're saying it's the association you've made between.
Something that could in threaten you just the singing and space you grew up in I mean I grew up in a military family so half like that is waylands British military on each side so yeah so dancing is also something that I suppressed and that i'm reawakening now but at least singing was something that I was like I could get away with but I really understand what you made that connection. Yeah, I think I carry that with with dancing as well too yeah it's interesting it's interesting.
How did you get into how did I get into singing or teaching. Yeah balls I guess I was just allowed kid yeah I was yeah I got sent for singing lessons which is very lucky you know that shows that there's a certain support on the that side of parenting when I was maybe about like nine or 10 and when I was a teenager I got really big into music and it just became an outlet for me and.
I did it all through my 20s I was writing music was it was in a band and and then I decided later because of Brexit and a couple of other things like I wanted to have any adventure and I ended up coming to music school later in less so 29 years old and i'm because I'd always wanted to do that but I did science instead.
Is it that kind of discouragement away from doing the arts which also impacted me as a kid very strict household and controlling in in ways that are very unhealthy actually yeah but yeah so I came back to the music and and then basically a friend of mine who is a metal singer he screams in a black metal band.
He asked me to give him a few pointers and through that and through some volunteering work I was doing I realized just how much I knew about it and how much I love coaching and so I started. Yeah cool yeah amazing amazing i'm curious so if we if we look at how well i'm curious we we went back and forth between unlocking like the name of this right unlocking the voice finding the voice releasing the voice and we we landed on finding and releasing.
Like let's maybe explore these two concepts like finding and releasing the voice wise wise is important how do we do this let's unpack this a little further. I think that there is something about if you have a burning desire if you have a passion if you have something you you might call a calling like not everyone knows like they haven't all found their passion yet and I think you know that's not that's not a big deal but if you have that burning thing. I think you kind of have to go after it.
I think even if definitely not even even if there's no qualifier there you need to go after it and because you may end up somewhere different than when you were planned. But I think there's a lot of fulfillment and a lot of fulfilling life paths to be found just because you went for that thing. Yeah so for me that that was music and i'm I actually I was actually a radio producer of the BBC before I came to the Netherlands to do this.
So I was in music I was in the music industry I was working at festivals I was producing I was helping sort of do the logistics and the facilitation behind music radio and events. But I just the the it wasn't being scratched. So I had to go for it and so this is sort of partly this aspect of my experience. I didn't plan to become a vocal coach.
I was I wanted to be an artist and in the second best I was going to go for I wanted to write music for films and games because I compose and produce as well as you mentioned. I was interested in the day ended up with coaching but I love it and I it's it's something that I didn't imagine for myself so that's why this idea of like unlocking and releasing because I think there's a lot to do with your drive and things that you want.
So I was intimately connected to how much how integrated are we how authentically are we expressing ourselves are we saying to ourselves to other people to the universe what we want. Are we saying that out loud because if we're not then I think that's the thing that's being locked up. So the real connection between desire and our authenticity and verbalizing expressing and singing is is basically just another form of verbalization right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that.
I'm a firm believer that desire is the compass that points us in the direction of our authenticity, which is why our authenticity is always changing because our desire is always changing. That's it's juicy stuff. Okay, so I want to get to know a little bit more about like how you do this like how you take people on this journey to finding and releasing their voice like do you have certain strategies do you use or do you have. Yeah, I would just be curious to know a little bit more about that.
So it's tricky because I'm not a therapist right and I make clear to all my students I'm not a therapist like a lot of my experience comes from that I've been involved in therapy for a long time and I've seen things happen in myself and in other people that connect these dots. So it's sort of it's understanding that I have I don't take it as like as red but I've just seen a lot of these patterns emerge over and over in different people.
I basically try to be like a big brother who's on someone's team. And I introduce them to these ideas and see like what's resonating what's resonating with you really how I start is I start how any vocal coach starts I.
I have a meeting initially with people and then when we decide we're going to get into a coaching relationship then I get them to bring material they sing it I kind of hear what's going on in the voice and you the classic vocal coaching technique thing is you introduce them to exercises for example they might do unfinished sounds there's the classic baby sound like
when to get people to access twang which is about the position of your epic lot is and few other factors you introduce them to these things to try and get them to sort of see what other things can sound and feel like.
Because often when people like I when people are punks and I teach a lot of people who are doing it themselves so they're punks they get into a habit of doing things a certain way so it's trying to introduce them to hear and feel what it sounds like when you're doing things another way because the body gets locked in so so basically what I do is I try and introduce them to the body as these things are happening.
Because a lot of the time we get in our heads and singing is not an intellectual exercise yeah and it can be really uncomfortable it's really somatic activity because.
Changing anything is an uncomfortable process and you have to be in that uncomfortable space to then have the body kind of adapt to what it feels like so that that's my process is pretty intuitive I see what's coming up for the student I ask people questions I find out about like hey what's what's your thinking behind why you do this thing. And oftentimes that just sort of brings things up on raffles like if they have we talked about stage fright if they have a fear of being.
Stakes because basically a hyper active in a critic is a real contender real challenger and in developing yeah me too yeah and that's really what's behind a lot of stage fright is the fear that we're going to be in danger yeah if we are not perfect. Yeah so yeah these things are really really they present themselves and I think it's basically just that.
My experience and my intuition allows me to tap into these things and like I said i'm not a therapist always make my students aware that that's not a thing that I do and that if there is any I don't touch anything in a place it's too deep to come back from.
I also encourage students to go and work with the appropriate professional if they need extra support also I've helped students that i'm simply not a speech and language therapist so there are some aspects of language therapy that I can't work with so I do my best to support those students how I can and then further on encourage them to get support.
For most speech therapist as well if they need it yeah cool cool yeah okay lots of stuff there maybe we talk a bit about some of these blocks that you that well we all need as human beings when it comes to self expression so we made a list of them here. So it's really curious to hear more about your journey with it so I wonder if maybe you're going to be like an architecture here yeah what what are you curious to know let's lead from your curiosity what do you want to know.
We've never met before Matt Lancet all we met one time so yeah give me give me the roundup of what it was like when what led you to start vocal coaching and then and then what did you what encounter first with your vocal coach.
So November 6th two years ago basically I started and I've always had this desire to want to do this and I was just too scared too scared so finally I made a deal this was last years I was kind of having the new years thing and this one was to face like the year of courage to face fears and I'm still in that carried on to year two because there was just a lot of stuff to meet.
So yeah I hired this woman who I had saved one of her posts on Facebook like five years ago went scrolling finding it I ended up hiring her and it wasn't to be honest it wasn't the best fit I didn't know different though like but in retrospect it wasn't the best fit she is very much I would say I don't I don't know enough about this but I think maybe she's more classically trained she has a lot of perfectionism in the way that she teaches.
And she wants you know and I need somebody that's more flowy because I don't want to learn to be perfect I want to learn to find my voice the authentic and you know the type of singing I do is just like a like tons of different things like I don't have a style that I like to you know I like to play around with different things and I'm always just making sounds and things like that I'm just a very expressive person and
but I kind of I got caught in that trap of like this perfectionism and I tried to play with with with that style that she was putting forward and that's I think why I was meeting a lot of shame and a lot of these things that were coming up for me and I ended up doing two
open mics and they were terrifying so terrifying and but again it's like I didn't feel like I had the support that I needed I felt like there was a lot of this energy around like perfectionism and stuff which was my own stuff it was playing on my own stuff for sure like I've got a major inner critic that that tells me that if I'm not perfect I'm not going to be loved or accepted or I'm going to be criticized or whatever blah blah
I'm just like I'm not going to be a bad God right and that's where my for sure where my stage fright comes from but you know it's I've done a lot of work within the authentic relating spaces and things like that and I've learned how to just let myself break free and and but it still shows up like it's even showing up in today's session like it's like oh what if I forget what I'm talking about or or what if I don't have the right retort when you know you're finished talking it's like it always it's always there it's like this stuff but it's like I've learned to almost
befriend it right as opposed to let it like run the show it's like okay I'm going to befriend this part of myself and and and all of our yeah it's a very wounded part and like I do you have you done internal family systems yeah yeah I have some training in that as well too so I understand it and it's a very young part right and it comes from parenting usually like highly critical
parenting leads to what I like the parent ego we have a parent ego inside of us which is it's our own voice but it's the it's the dialogue that our parents used with us we internalize that we start to communicate with ourselves in that way so you know having highly
critical parenting leads to perfectionism and and having a highly critical inner voice or inner bully for sure and that was definitely within my family systems yeah so that's been a lot of my work believe it or not it's not so much the technical
sides of of it and that's not why I actually hired a coach I think I'm a pretty good singer just like naturally and I got lots to learn for sure but it me for me the what reason why I signed up was I wanted to learn how to unlock my voice and unlock my fears and and find
myself and it's believe it or not since I've started in the last two years like my boundaries have improved my conviction in using my voice to get my needs met expressing my emotions like it's been a game changer so I can see how how you you know you meet that and for you to say you're not a therapist I get I get there's that piece to it but at the end of the day like I'm doing vocal coaching for a year probably gave me more than doing therapy for a year I'll just be honest so don't
underestimate for people is that after finding someone who was a better fit for you or no that still doing that work because I have enough I have enough you know wisdom and inner knowing that it's like I I used what I needed from that with that first vocal coach and I did a lot of great work still because I was still like transforming and then I did hire a new one who is actually trained in in somatic experiencing and she has a psychology background and stuff so she was a perfect fit for me.
So yeah it's it's been it's been an interesting interesting go but it's yeah like I think there's so many different ways that we can heal and grow as human beings and I think you know oftentimes people put like therapists on a pedestal and I just it's
something we have to be a little bit careful with because there's so many modalities within within coaching and within different sorts of personal development that you know like a therapist is good for a certain set of things right it's very much for recovery bringing somebody through a healing journey but there's other modalities that can help people so I always hesitant to not put counseling and therapy on a pedestal because there's so many modalities that people can use to grow.
Yeah for sure yeah I agree with you I think it's just I have this sense of I mean maybe it's my overpowering inner critic but I think qualifications are not everything but I think experience matters and I'm just very cautious with people I'm very careful with people because I don't want to send someone on a spiral you know if it's a touch a really deep wound or something I go in there because they're not yeah I let them lead because they know if they're
ready or not really I agree yeah it's good to understand like somebody scope and to try and stay within it but I try and practice humanistically even in my counseling practice it's like what what I find helps people is authenticity being being real being humanistic and coming together and like hearts heal other hearts that's the way I look
at it like so I don't know I practice a little differently than say a traditional like psychotherapist or somebody like that but yeah I think we're all here to walk each other home like Rumi says like it's it's really yeah we're all we're all bringing pieces to the puzzle in my opinion yeah yeah and it's like you know I'm here on this podcast talking about about vocal coaching in my expertise but like the inner critic is still very alive for me in a sense of like you know how I'm
presenting myself as I'm going along and I'm you know I earlier on I was like I'm like using too much scientific jargon here I'm like whatever that stuff comes up and I kind of just let it let it come up and like you said that if you go to the heart and I think people can always tell if you mean what you say as long as you
mean what you say and you're you're authentic then I don't think it really matters if we're to to this or to that really yeah yeah I agree and I'm I'm a firm believer that presence is the thing that heals and like when we embody the transformation that's when we we are able to really do really good work with people so it's like for example having somebody like let's say you hire a therapist and they're not living the path right they're just like saying the right
things but they're not actually embodying the energy of the transformation that you're wanting to make you're not going to get a lot of value from working with that person like you have to be working with people who are are right it's a good saying is like you can only take
the to the places you've gone right like I truly believe that because once you've gone to those places your consciousness shifts your awareness your energy everything shifts and it becomes open and then people get attracted to that open energy and so yeah I think it's huge practice.
Yeah and also finding a coach that has the right fit and resonance for you because the person you mentioned who was rigid that is a very kind of classical standpoint there is a lot of this rigidity in that space and this is why I kind of consider
myself a punk who went to the ivory tower of the conservatory and then came out the other side because I I was someone that didn't have all those skills when I was a teenager I was I was I had the raw talent but I don't shit about music theory so I couldn't
then go ahead and study that at that time but it doesn't it meet I'm just such a firm believer that there are so many people who are talented and have value and worth that they just because they don't fit in the narrow educational lane of a classical music track.
Yeah. It's it's just a tremendous loss to humanity I think if they don't pursue their passion and express themselves so for me that's I'm really really like passionate about that because now people say to me oh my god you're so talented your voices so this your music is so
that and I'm like I have had to fight every freaking year of my life for this like developed and yeah so that's why I'm so passionate about find mentors who are a good fit for you who are outside of that I have the best shout out to my vocal coach because I think all
of the coaches should also be coached yeah her name's Renee Maranon you can find her on Instagram she is my hero she's the best vocal coach I've ever had and I've been trained by seven or eight different people cool so yeah that's awesome which is good to know about you
because if you're being coached by the best then that means you're going to be able to implement things into your coaching style that is going to yeah so that's what I hope for yeah yeah so we know it's your own locking things yeah sure yeah let's let's move into whatever direction you're feeling like you want to dance in let's go there as we were talking about the specific blocks I think yeah yeah so what are some things that you help people how do you help people unlock their voice
so well let's touch back on on that changing oneself because we know because what you and I do and also the journeys that we've been on in our our own lives right there is there's a desire to change but the trouble is is the the nasty paradox of the desire to change is it can immediately just be another version of the the wound that you're not enough yeah so wanting to change yourself forcing your voice contorting your voice into positions
that it doesn't naturally live in yeah one thing that can really block you up because if you're kind of yeah let's use that example of the artificial deepening of the voice and you can hear I'm doing it again
yeah expansion that dropping of the larynx and you can just it can get locked all these small muscles and tendons can just get locked in that position we know the humans are meant to move and I include all of these bits as well even like all the bits of your face you would not believe how much
them cheek muscles can interfere with singing so there's there's that there's that fear of like as I am my voice is not appealing so I need to force it into another yeah four so that one lock yeah I and I agree and I think what I what comes through is like who am I singing for asking myself who am I singing for am I singing for the audience or am I singing for the joy of singing right and I think for me it's like I
always trying to just like sing for the joy sing so I can feel that feeling as soon as I start to sing for other people I worry about how I'm sounding then it's the joys completely zapped out of my experience and it becomes performative and that's when my inner critic comes in so it's like I'm and that's for me I got to be really careful to not going to too much vocal coaching like that woman was taking me on that
journey because it zapped the joy out of singing for me I was like oh you have to sound like this you have to get this right that right and there's too many moving parts I'm like a hobby singer I don't want to be like a performer I don't want to have an album that's not what I'm doing it for like I do it because I it gives me joy and I think as soon as I make something into a career of location I'm like it starts to feel like it's work right so that was a big reframe for me
like who am I singing for I'm singing for me I'm singing for the joy of singing yeah that's beautiful and yeah it's funny because I get really technical because I'm just a nerd like I at some point I just became this passionate nerd for listening to the specifics of people's voices like I get really I will talk about like specific singers all day long like Kristina Aguilar as Bells Ariana Grande is a lot of an initiation I'm just really into it and there is yeah there are some people that
you have to push to get them to just try the thing but it's not that you want them to stay in the thing yeah so that is a difficult balance between like getting people to just be who they are naturally but I do believe with the voice we sometimes need to break people out of patterns and habits and force them into something temporarily yeah but I'm really careful about how I do that and I explain to people why we're doing it
yeah so I'm like hey we're trying to do this thing so we can hear more of this and do more of this we're just doing it temporarily stick with me here yeah yeah I'm curious for you the percentage of people that come to you because they want to grow in singing
like the technical parts of singing versus people that want to grow in like they want to open up their voice or they want to become more authentic or like for maybe more therapeutic reasons what would you say your percentages of if you had to give it like a ratio
I think mostly the former the latter it comes in kind of by accident or people realize that from talking to me in our first session that we can go there it's not at the pointed end of my marketing shall we say it's like people people tend to associate a vocal coach is someone who helps me sing
yeah yeah yeah so I think that I would love to work with more people who want that more that releasing themselves or that more kind of authenticity or spiritual basis the student I mentioned before the lady who was deepening her voice actually worked with me on that level
okay yeah that was that was a beautiful experience and we both got a lot out of that yeah I think the next sort of blockage that this connects into is that fear we talked a bit already about the fear of being seen about the stage right yeah so it's that terror of that very visceral danger right
yeah fun story I've been performing for a while you already did my bio at the top of the session but I I have a new product I school here I missed that I have a new product that's called the air and I I performed for the first time in February with this new project
and I was used to having a band I was used to having a keyboard in front of me in this performance it was just me in the audience the dry mouth the kind of like butterflies in my guts these things still affect yeah professionals yeah yeah and I think the thing I want to share here
is just like your work is never really done yeah and the sooner you can let go of that perfectionism and go more to the joy you're talking about and the humaneness the sooner you can go to that the better you're gonna be yeah yeah I agree that's what authentic relating is taught me and believe it
or not that's actually helped with my dry mouth because I think dry mouth is the the most intense fight or flight symptom for me my mouth gets really dry and since I've done a lot of work with authentic relating and I did a whole year course of of somatic therapy as well like somatic
experiencing work and I learned how to work with my nervous system I would upregulate down regularly I started I did a lot of titration work and it helped me learn how when these sorts of things come up how I can down regulate my system so my dry mouth is almost gone away like I would
even get it on these podcasts and stuff so working with the nervous system is such a huge piece of you know moving through a lot of these blocks that we're talking about you know trauma fear tension inner criticism like these all the blocks are either trauma or experience in nature
mm-hmm all everything that blocks singing everything that introduces tension into the into the musculature that that's all stuff you can work with in your frame of work or in a therapeutic practice it's all from that stuff so we can work with the voice it's almost like bottom up top down idea
like I think bottom up is is best but we can sort of treat some of these things through singing mm-hmm but then also our singing is going to improve through critics of these things through maybe EMDR I really rate for if anyone who's watching who's maybe got CPTSD or has had a
particularly experienced EMDR I find I found really powerful yeah so these things are interrelated and as as you say like all of these blocks there are multiple modalities we can use to work with them exactly yeah yeah so I think that singing is almost like the bell weather it's it's almost a
representation of like how free you are and how free you feel to sort of touch on something mentioned earlier as well that constriction you want to have clear airflow you want to have clear projection trouble is a lot of us are afraid of our neighbors hearing us
yeah my the neighbor below me so I live in a building the neighbor below me is an opera singer the guy above me loves to sing as well and then I sing so like all three of us like it's so funny like we're belting it out all the time yeah I love that that's great I'm really lucky because in
the Netherlands a lot of housing is really like not like this but we live in a really isolated like apartment so next door can hear it faintly but I don't have to worry about so much but you do have to kind of enter you you have to get into this psychological thing of like fuck it
um that it's for you you're doing it for you particularly like when you do some of the drills that I do and some of the things I force my students to do unfinished sounds like the baby mine or some of it sounds stupid yeah yeah or it's a good um it's a good thing to try and like
it's a it's a kind of humbling thing in a way but also just just sort of surrender to like in the pursuit of the thing that I want to develop I am gonna have to look silly yeah yeah if we want to heal perfectionism we have to learn to tolerate being imperfect that's what singing taught me
it gave me ample ample opportunities to be imperfect and eat a lot of humble pie that's what I just kept consuming humble pie and I was like okay like you know and and it can really feel like you're going like backwards at first until you start to realize oh okay what I'm doing is I'm
expanding my window of tolerance for imperfection and as you we do that it gives us more more window of tolerance it means more space to land into when we are imperfect right and it's just part of it we're all imperfect we're all fallible as human beings and you know learning and that's
a big one that still shows up for me though and I'm wondering if you have a tip on it is this imposter syndrome of like when I did my open mic I just remember being like oh my god like who am I to sing like taking up space in something new is a really big thing for me it makes me feel like
super insecure I don't want to be seen and heard in like not being good at something so the imposter syndrome really really takes a toll on me what would you say as like a coach helping somebody coach through through imposter syndrome um well the first thing I say is I have it too yeah it's normal
exactly and my coach has imposter syndrome as well in different ways and I think the most important thing we can do maybe a share this with each other and like like you said um the roomie poem you quoted about um leading each other home like it'd be hard to heart about it
imposter syndrome really sucks um and that's that's the thing that as a musician if you learn lots of instruments you kind of have to do that a bunch of different times yeah exactly um but that shows up for us also as business owners like every time you have to do something new like maybe
digital marketing or um something like that so I don't know if that's the most helpful answer I like it but it's it's a really hard one and um yeah I think the thing that I remind myself is that everybody started somewhere yeah everybody all your faves they started somewhere yeah and it helps to also look back on what you've achieved yeah what you've done yeah another thing that if because comparison can be a real nightmare right um I always make the distinction with my students
I don't really talk about I say there's good vocalists and then there's good singers um and for me the most important thing is being a good vocalist like a good storyteller and what my favorite singers Karen Drier from the knife and fever ray is someone with a very strange voice but the portrayal
of the character and the emotion is like nailed I think it also looks like Björk or Tom Weitz people with strange voices um they may not be some of them are gifted technical singers and some of them are not um but you feel it yeah exactly yeah eagerly that's a big it's thing for me that's
what gives me the standing hair on my arms like somebody could be the best technical vocalist and I don't feel anything but somebody could be like you know make little like inflections in their voice that someone that's technical would think would be like your voice failed but really that's
what gives me the chills it's like vulnerability and authenticity in a voice in the ability to emote I think you're like the most powerful ability what's it doing in the story of the lyrics of the of the music what's it doing there um not for me is always going to trump like like you know
perfect technicality yeah then people have both and then I love them forever like Caroline Policiek I'm a super fan so um they're both things there okay cool um okay so I want to before we wrap up we got about in a 10 15 minutes um let's explore the benefits of vocal expression
so we've talked about some of the the the barriers some of the things that get in our way um what's the benefits like you know I'm a big believer that how we face fear is we keep our our sight set on the thing that's on the other side of facing the fear right so for me learning how to sing
and doing that it was like I'm going to face this fear so I don't have to be shackled to being terrified of this and I can start to share my gift with people right and use it as another tool that can help inspire people by sent you know sharing my message with people so singing is one of
those things that can put in my toolbox now um so what yeah what are some of the things that that you think are benefits to vocal expression I think that it going going back to what I said earlier about asking for what you want I think if you can put yourself in this position where
where you're working with fear like that's one of the things as you've just said fear is really hard and I I experience a lot of fear where I am in my therapeutic journey to just be super transparent is like I'm doing EMDR right now still and um I'm experiencing a lot of fear and it's very
challenging and I'm just sort of trying to work with all parts and not leave any part left behind just being like practicing this warmth and compassion acceptance to anything that comes up in my my experience yeah that's what's going on for it so with fear I think also we're all different
and we all have our different values and our different drivers so to I think understanding how to beat fear and how to unlock the voice and to express yourself I think you do need to get as deep and clear and on meeting your values as you can yeah um because I'm just trying to think what
mine are because I almost like in this conversation I find I can't access it just quickly this what's the thing that motivates me still and I think it's I think it's just the joy of the flexibility of expression of knowing that I can have this it's like a combination thought and emotion that I
want to express and then being able to do that run or that acrobatic thing um it's just something I get a big kick out of and it's it's fun yeah right so um of course it benefits me in a technical sense as a professional but yeah figure out like what's the thing um that you really want
is it as you said it's the joy for you yeah is it that you want to do a great show that first time uh that you're performing your new your new performance or your new piece or whatever that's also a decent motivator um so yeah the benefits of vocal expression I just I really just think it comes
back to stacking layers because at first when you do it you'll you'll meet that layer of um getting better getting better expressing yourself you're meeting those fears about like um how you're being perceived made maybe making mistakes and then you meet that layer and you go
past it and that's when I think it sort of expands to self-advocacy asking for what you want being authentic self-actualizing I think for me pursuing vocal expression has been part of my journey of self-actualizing yeah I would agree yeah because like I said before I I had a plan I went for the
plan it's great that I went for the plan I ended up somewhere that I didn't expect um that's the self-actualization of play and that's when you build the confidence to know I can um handle it I can handle the unexpected I can fail and handle it yeah there are so many lessons we learn through vocal expression or through through musicality or doing things I think we learn a lot about communicating with other people yeah singing can be a very solitary practice for us now but if you
if you sing with other people there's a very deep resonance like if you're if you're blending if and you we learn about blending you learn about how do we um gently guide our voices to collaborate on a pure sound hmm hmm but also like if you're a songwriter I'm still breaking new layers like
there's a song I'm working on now that's going to be coming out in my new project that is um basically the most up front I've been about expressing my sexuality in in music in like a poetic forum and getting to kind of put those experiences and and dignify it's sort of dignifying lust in a lot of
ways but also emotional devastation right putting being able to put these things there and put it together as a queer person as a gay man for me singing those things to people is helping me be braver in the future yeah it's helping me like thicken my skin it's helping me heal something
because I show I show people the thing I'm afraid to show I grew up Catholic right so talking about sex in any capacity can be really hardcore but me literally singing a song about physicality with other men and the visceral experience of that is uh yeah it's transformative for me and so
all of these things like whether it's you're writing the songs or you're singing other people's songs you're going and doing open mics they all count towards your growth as a person yeah yeah like that good answers um I wanted to add I want it we'll piggyback on what you're saying um for me
in my experience unlocking my voice was really unlocking my power like another chamber another layer of my power I was connected to and um there's something really powerful about being witnessed in being vulnerable by somebody that doesn't view the thing that I'm feeling vulnerable in as vulnerable
right like a vocal coach it's just like oh yeah I hear listen to people singing all day long all right so different than me I do therapeutic work so hearing people's stories of pain right they it doesn't feel vulnerable to me I mean so it's normalizing it
but I'm fucking the sutures out of the wound for some people exactly yeah so just being witnessed for me was a really big piece of it because again I'm singing and I am expressing and I'm using my voice but I'm not doing it in with somebody's eyes watching me that was the biggest growth for me so
and then being able to share this part of myself it unlocked all these things that you're talking about like authenticity self-actualization it allowed me to get better at speaking up for myself and what I want and what I need so there's yeah there's a lot of these pieces here and then we
we also have like somatic awareness right I think this is something that really was powerful for me because I didn't realize that I was harboring a lot of stuff down this channel right so my power center my my my solar plexis chakra and my throat chakra weren't actually working in harmony together
so I had blockages there wasn't this like you know nice flow here so starting to connect with that again my voice being dry and this correlation between my voice and my nervous system so the somatic awareness is really what brought these pieces in alignment so I could start working with
them consciously so that's that's a huge piece of this yeah yeah wonderful I think I think somatic experiencing is actually the most fundamental challenge for a lot of singers a lot of people if they have trauma they're disconnected yeah exactly because you want to be able to feel
and you're in I'm in the position now where I feel a lot of these like micro movements like you don't have to do every warmup every day when you get that that perception then you can oh I've got tongue tension or oh I've got jaw tension or let me work out this little kink today
and I've waited um I I had to get connected to my body through yoga in doing yoga for years now and that's that's a major sort of component of this um but I I will basically I try and persuade a lot of my students to to have a physical practice as well um it's not for everybody I respect that
but it can just give you a lot more access to the body that when you're traumatized you get dissociated or disconnected from your inter reception and that's that's just the major challenge because if you can't feel it then your coach is sort of navigating you through exercises and you
you might not really experience the difference yeah yeah yeah good points alright we got to start landing the plane here um but I'm curious um benefits of vocal coaching and maybe share a little bit about what you do with the audience where they can find you like
your little your little sales pitch so if I'm on Instagram uh I'm on the website yeah I was shooting my head of I should have done that by now but I get a lot of of clients through Instagram and really that's the best way to find me I put a lot of my advice
up on I make a lot of reels I'm also on TikTok so you can find me on Instagram as slash have your Wallace with a J have your with a J uh I'm on in I'm on TikTok is here of a um so it'll be in the show notes as well put them I'll link them in yeah perfect um yeah and basically the benefits of vocal coaching for me I mean it depends you have to get someone who you resonate with yeah that really matters a lot um and someone who helps guide you along and explain why you're doing
certain things someone who will meet you where your goals are at and who will listen to you because this this student is the central point for me yeah so the benefits of vocal coaching are having that's that person in your corner to help you understand what you're working with but also to
support you to like to mention your wins to acknowledge those things it's really important for me I always do a lot of like acknowledging like when students have made progress yeah um sometimes we don't see it for ourselves and sometimes we need someone to reflect us back at us yeah like for
me I think that I find the most rewarding about teaching is I can see someone's potential like I love voices so much and I can hear like if someone has a unique timbre and where the little blockage is that's if we just if we just dissolve that that's gonna take them to the next stage I
love that stuff so much so getting someone who's really enthusiastic and helps you see your talent and potential maybe if you are uncertain or doubtful or some people are really down on themselves yeah that's that's the benefit of getting the right vocal coach but make sure you
pick the right vocal coach yeah exactly it's nice to have somebody in your corner I think that's the biggest piece just any type of coaching counseling therapy doesn't matter like having that person that you can turn to and you know bounce ideas off of and just have somebody
like for me it's just a next to have somebody to hold your hand when you're practicing the hard things of life you know it's like yeah really is this beautiful feeling of feeling supported and cared for so yeah yeah we don't know everything either so like it's great for me as a coach to be
like hitting this like I haven't managed to because cues in singing are all subjective singing is really psychedelic when you think about it we use our imagination to get a lot of the results totally but that having that person like and go to to help me bust down like finding another cue
for students to help them get where I'm trying to get them so yeah awesome good well I'm really yeah I'm really happy with this episode I think it's gonna inspire some people to go on the journey of vocal coaching because I think yeah there's there's a ton of juicy and yummy things that can
happen in that type of connection so yeah and thanks for coming on ensuring your wisdom I always appreciate that and thank you love this conversation thanks for having me yeah yeah you bet for those of you that are listening on podcast subscribe do the things you know that's all the
things to do on youtube drop a comment let us know what your relationship is like to your voice I'll make sure have you and myself review those and if there's any questions in there we'll be sure to answer them for you guys and yeah until next time take care everybody