For hundreds of years in Western culture, the body, mind, and soul have been considered separate entities with little to no impact or influence on each other. If your mind is sick, you see a psychologist. If your body is not well, you see a medical doctor. If your soul is troubled, you see a religious leader. In Eastern cultures, however, you see one doctor for mind, body, and soul.
While Western thought is beginning to change, and mainstream researchers are exploring the relationship of the mind, body, and soul, the long-held separation continues to influence our way of thinking. Consider pop culture, for example. Magazines, billboards, television commercials, and movies bombard us with images of perfect bodies, usually Photoshopped to such perfection. All of these images narrow who we are to only what is on the outside, a body and nothing more—our weight, hair color, eye color, height, build, and shape.
But the body is so much more. It houses our minds and our souls as well. As scientists are proving, the three are inseparably intertwined and have significant influence on each other.
Singers perhaps understand this connection better than most. Our physical bodies are the muscles, cartilages, ligaments, and membranes used in sound production. Our minds control all of those necessary body parts. Our souls give meaning to the music we make. Thus, a singer’s instrument is her mind, body, and soul.
As opera follows the trends of pop culture, with HD transmissions fast becoming the norm and image more emphasized than ever, the tendency to view our basic worth as reflected in our outward appearance can be overwhelming. Falling prey to such ideas impacts our mental and emotional well-being and, in tandem, our instruments. As one singer shared in response to an e-mail survey on eating disorders (p. 42):
“My voice has always had a deep connection to what’s going on in my head. Every voice lesson we find some mental hurdle that I have yet to conquer. Often, it’s connected to how I feel about my body. Your body is your instrument—your whole body. When you hate your body, it’s hard to love the music it’s making.”
Ildar Abdrazakov, featured in this month’s cover story (p. 24), understands this connection. When you read his story, one word comes to mind: discipline. Most unique is his discipline with his physical body, maintaining an impressive running and weight regimen in spite of cold temperatures or a busy performing schedule. He, in turn, applies that same discipline to his vocal training. For this bass, mental, physical, and vocal discipline are all equally important.
Sometimes it takes an illness to reveal the mind-body-soul connection. Two singers share such stories in this issue. First, singer and voice teacher Donald Callen Freed tells of his 14-year recovery from a stroke (p. 48). His brain injury significantly impacted his physical abilities, including speaking and singing. Through diligent and persistent exercises, many of which he developed himself, he has achieved a near full recovery.
Second, soprano Charity Tillemann-Dick has undergone not one but two double-lung transplants (p. 54). She has continued singing through it all and has learned important lessons about her own body, mind, and soul. “You create the ideal, you imagine the ideal, and you become the ideal of what you are,” she says. “It’s not a competition. The only competition is to get your body, your soul, and your mind in synch so you can produce the beautiful music that’s been written.”
Let us not allow the pressures of the industry to relegate us to physical bodies only. Rather than berating ourselves for what we are not, let us rejoice in what we are: a mind, a body, and a soul. Those three separate but connected parts allow us to move, breathe, think, feel, speak and, yes, even to sing.
