What if there were a practice that could help you optimize the quality of your breath in only 15 minutes a day? Learn how to calm your nervous system when you experience performance anxiety? Understand the root cause of most chronic muscle tension that can affect the control you have over your vocal technique?
This goes beyond having an amazing singing technique—this may even be the missing link in helping you sing optimally despite the challenges of outside influences and stress. Somatic Movement for Singers, using the teachings of Essential Somatics®, will teach you to uncover and unleash the hinderances of performing and living well.
The word “somatics” is being used a lot these days, and it’s not always connected to the truer meaning of the word. Thomas Hanna (1928–1990) defined “somatics” as the field of movement education that teaches people to move more freely based on how they can sense and control themselves. Two popular somatic methods are the Alexander Technique (created by F. Matthias Alexander 1869–1955) and Awareness Through Movement® classes of the Feldenkrais Method®, developed by Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) with whom Thomas Hanna studied.
The difference between Essential Somatics® (Hanna Somatics™ and Feldenkrais®) and other somatic practices include the following:
- Understanding that we are a “soma,” a body as experienced from within, and we are the only ones who can create positive and long-term improvement in how we function
- Understanding the three universal and predicable stress reflexes that all humans respond to when stressed
- Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)
- Pandiculation versus stretching
Regaining voluntary control over muscles is a process of “unlearning” what has become habituated through repeated muscle movements patterns by which we can unknowingly create muscle tension to the point that we no longer even know it’s there. Over time, these chronic tensions are so habitual to the point that the brain has forgotten what it was like to move more freely without tightness. We become “stuck in our stress.”
Thomas Hanna referred to this as sensory motor amnesia (SMA), which is the brain’s inability to fully sense and control certain muscles with ease and freedom. It develops through repeated responses to stress that become habituated, thus creating chronically tight muscles, dysfunctional movement patterns, and a sense of “stuckness” in our bodies. SMA occurs in the brain and central nervous system and is the habituation of a stress response.
Hanna said, “If you cannot sense it, you cannot move it, and more you can move it, the more you will sense. This is a rule of the sensory motor system, one solid part of the neurophysiological foundation of the somatic education.”[1]
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SMA can be so unconscious that the person is unaware of what they can and cannot sense or move until starting a somatic practice. All they know is that they have muscle soreness, pain, less stamina, and general dis-ease. Here are some comments that have been made to me by those experiencing SMA:
- Oh, my hips are apparently stupid.
- I can’t feel what I’m supposed to be doing.
- I’m unable to take verbal instruction and translate to the physical movement.
- I didn’t know I was “wrong.”
Nothing is right or wrong, by the way! Often singers lose the proprioceptive sense of where they are in time and space.
When they feel the immediate benefits from the first practice, I hear comments like these:
- I feel taller.
- I can breathe better.
- I feel grounded.
- I feel calm but energized.
- I’ve never felt myself like this before.
- I had pain when I walked into the room, but now it’s much lessened or gone.
Sensory motor systems respond to daily stress with very specific muscular reflexes. These stress reflexes can be divided into three categories: Landau (green light) reflex; Startle (red light) reflex, and Trauma reflex. The characteristics of these reflexes, in habituation, can create postural problems and pain, making it difficult to utilize your body for singing. These are “full-body reflexive patterns that people adopt in response to stress.”[2]
Green Light: Characterized as contraction of the posterior muscles, erecting the back in preparation for forward movement. Common complaints: back pains, knee pain, sacroiliac joint pain, piriformis, sciatica, and over-arched low back.
Red Light: A stress response to threatening or worrisome situations. Physical characteristics: permanently raised shoulders, depressed chest, taut thigh adductors, contracted abdominals. This can cause shallow breathing, which can affect the function of the central nervous system, creating a chronic dominance in the flight-fight-freeze mechanism. Performance anxiety is a perfect example of this!
Trauma: Occurs as a protective response to injury. It’s the pain avoidance reflex, where the waist muscles on one side of the body tend to be more contracted than the other side. It is, however, a deeply compensatory reflex in which both sides of the trunk are now contracted. This can make it difficult to breathe evenly from both sides of the rib cage.
We know that repetitive reactions to life’s stresses can teach our muscles to hold tension, and that tension presents within predictable patterns (the stress reflexes). So what do we do about it? Stretch? Stretching an already tight muscle can cause the muscle to contract even more to prevent it from being injured.
Remember, with SMA the brain has forgotten how to control the muscle in its entirety. It can no longer fully contract or fully release the muscle. If the muscle is very tight already, the brain may perceive that the muscle is only ¼ to ½ the length it really is. Trying to stretch that muscle past what the brain can perceive will stop the ability to stretch further. The stretch reflex is built into our spinal cord as a protective mechanism! Since the brain cannot perceive the whole length of the muscle, it can no longer control it.
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In order to be able to regain full perception and control of the muscle, we have to teach the brain to recognize it again and create new muscle patterns that release the contractions to find a new, neutral, relaxed state. Stretching does not re-educate the brain.
So, what to do instead?
All animals instinctually know how to relax their muscles so they are always ready for action. Take a moment to watch a cat or dog get up from a nap and what them arch and then curl their bodies before they are on to their next adventure. They are pandiculating! Pandiculation is a purposeful, voluntary contraction of the muscle, quite similar to a yawn. This yields into a super-slow release into a relaxed state. The slower the movement, the more your brain can sense what is happening. The contraction does not have to be big. It can be just enough for your brain to recognize that something is different. Through pandiculation, the sensory motor system can restore control over the muscles involved in the stress reflexes of the central nervous system. Pandiculation resets the brain’s ability to both sense and move the muscle. You can’t change something you can’t feel.
As you pandiculate, you may notice shaky, jittery, clunky, or uneven control over the movement. Or, the brain may have difficulty altogether in being able to have any movement control at all. The brain may feel a little “dumb,” as if it doesn’t understand. This is SMA! It’s information for your brain. Try to move more slowly with smaller/less effort to teach the brain.
Try this movement for pandiculation practice:
- Whether sitting or standing, take a moment to sense the position of your shoulders and your head. Slowly turn your head from side to side to sense the range of motion. Notice whether you have any discomfort in your neck or shoulders.
- Sense the space from the base of one ear to the top of the same side shoulder.
- Sense the space from the base of the other ear to the top of that same side shoulder.
- Compare the space for both sides.
- Slowly shrug your right shoulder up towards the ear and, with control, slowly and smoothly release the shoulder all the way back down to a fully, rested place. The movement should be in super slow-motion. Breathe normally while you do this. Pause and rest before repeating this movement two more times. Notice whether the space at the base of the ear and top of shoulder is different.
- Repeat this movement on the left side, making sure you pause before each repetition.
- Come back to a neutral stance or seated position and sense the space now. Slowly turn your head from side to side to sense range of motion. What did you sense and feel?
Were the movements smooth? Was it more difficult on one side versus the other? Did it feel shaky and jittery? Importance is in the sensing, not in judgement of the answer. In my teaching of singers in voice lessons and in my university somatic courses for both singers and instrumentalists, it is pretty amazing to see the immediate results after each practice. An outside observer watching a typical somatic class might just think everyone is taking a nap because the movements are very small and slow. But to the somas exploring the movements, and perceiving the effects in the first person, it’s very powerful. I had one person say, “This is magic!” because the results were instantaneous.
This practice can help a myriad of singer complaints, including these (and more):
- Neck pain
- TMJ pain
- Tongue tension
- Jaw tension
- Shoulder difficulties
- Postural difficulties
- Poor breathing and support
- Vocal stamina
- Performance nerves
As both a voice technician and a certified Essential Somatics movement teacher, I help the singer sense where they hold tension and then guide them to release it in order to positively influence the technical challenge. The brain doesn’t distinguish the difference between physical and emotional responses to stress. For every stress there is muscular tension. Sensory motor amnesia is strong! It takes time to “unpack” ineffectual singing techniques and retrain the brain to be more efficient and coordinated. The movements are accessible to all and can be modified as needed. Anyone can do it at any time.
You are the only one who can truly know you in the first person. There’s much that can be learned through somatic movement that will have a direct and positive impact on your singing. There is no time like the present to start exploring and creating a better version of yourself.
Check out the footnote references for reading materials. Go to essentialsomatics.com to learn more. And check out my website periodically for specific how-to info for singers and online courses at www.cristinacastaldi.com.
Footnotes:
[1] Thomas Hanna, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1988), 25.
[2] Martha Peterson, Move without Pain (New York, NY: Sterling Publishing, 2011), 13.
