HEALTH
“Sound has a profound effect on the senses. It
can be both heard and felt. It can even be seen
with the mind’s eye. It can almost be tasted and
smelled. Sound can evoke responses of the five
senses. Sound can paint a picture, produce a
mood, trigger the senses to remember another
time and place. From infancy we hear sound with
our entire bodies. When I hear my own name,
I have as much a sense of it entering my body
through my back or my hand or my chest as
through my ears. Sound speaks to the sensorium; the entire system of nerves that stimulates
sensual response.” ~ Louis Colaianni, The Joy of
Phonetics and Accents
Voice Yoga takes us on a journey. Through awareness of breath and tone we can connect the vibrations of our body and the crystalline quality of
our mind. Through sound we are liberated.
“Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone
off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is
through moderation, harmony, and a ‘sound
mind in a sound body’.” ~ Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
Why use the term sound mind and sound body to
describe health? Because in the beginning there
was sound. The “uni-verse” is created from sound.
Our universe is filled with diversity of color and
frequency. Conversation is the fabric that holds
our life together. Poetry and songs are the verse
that hold our hearts together. The world is created from our words and music is the soundtrack of
our lives.
the sounds in your environment as nurturing or
harmful? How can we move from harm to harmony through the use of sound?
TONE - extended sound becomes tone. In the
simplest definition, tone is sound in time. Toning
requires us to not only produce sound, but consciously create a certain sound, enabling us to
consistently repeat the tones for a certain length
of time. Each tone has a frequency or pitch that
can be measured and repeated. Tone also allows us to begin to understand harmony. Once
we move from sound to tone, we can begin adding other instruments, such as piano, or guitar, or
harmonium. In Voice Yoga we begin with feeling
at home with one root tone.
“Every tone is an event. A tone contains limitless possibilities. Musical tones are conveyers
of life force. Hearing music means hearing an
action of forces.” ~ Victor Zuckerkandl, from his
book Sound and Symbol.
SEED SYLLABLES - think of poetry and books
as a luscious garden. Yet where are the seeds
for all the words we know? These can be found
in seed syllables. Different cultures have different seed syllables, yet all capture the essence
of moving from sound into tone and tone into
language. Seed syllables have the open round
feminine quality of the vowels merged with the
closed male aspect of the consonant. The beauty
of learning and singing seed syllables is that you
can tune your body-mind-spirit and discover the
beauty not only of A E I O U but also sung sounds
such as Y M L R.
The following compon [