Improve Your Breathing
Make Your Voice A Big Asset
An eartHeart’s great asset is his or her voice. The Source gives her this personal attribute as a tool for empowerment, self-realization, and the expression of gladness.
As a Heartwood Path pilgrim, search deep within to that place that is One with the Absolute, One with God, and One with Awareness Itself and you will be able to give better expression to, not only yourself as a civilized person, but, more importantly, you will be able to give a voice to your Uncivilized Self. This is the part of you that is unencumbered by the stress of the modern world. It is the part of you that can best identify with The Absolute and provide the best healing to yourself and others.
In some of the various activities that follow, you will be looking for, not words necessarily, but rather expressive utterances that are, among other things, the (illiterate/non-worded) raw sounds of emotions and feelings. At this inner place of non-worded expression, this place of inner sound, you will find the real you, doing what you always wanted to do, able to give voice to both the More-Than-Individual-Self and the individual self.
Words are too limited for our purposes here, for they are mere human symbols and thus contain all the ill-conceived aspects of our un-natural modern culture.
In contrast, word-free vibrational sounds are the link between energy and material manifestation.
When one becomes literate one can use words to excel in society.
This use of words—written, read, or spoken—is useful. Words are, however, not all that can be ascertained from sounds. In fact, words can be a hinderance for two reasons: 1) they are cultural symbols of the real thing rather than what is actual or true and 2) they require the use of the rational mind which too often prevents one from tapping into the non-rational mind so full of valuable feelings and useful emotions.
When one sings, tones, or chants word-free sounds, one can enter into an alpha state and experience the sacred realm of the perpetual now, of namelessness, of extraordinary intelligence, of attraction, of aliveness, and of unlimited love.
Making wordless sounds in the presence of an attractive natural object (note that, rather than “object,” we have been and will continue to use the more respectful term “natural being”) one becomes both attuned to a broader perspective and also speaks on behalf of the more-than-human pairing, thus giving true (actual) and partial (incomplete and limited) expression to the Greater Self.
This Greater Self includes your own individual self and your chosen natural being, acting (with your soon-to-become skilled help) as an emissary for the Whole.
Part of the skill required in getting the most out of vocalizing comes from realizing that, like the strings on a violin that produce thin sounds until they are amplified and beautified by the wooden body of the violin, it is one’s larynx that makes the sounds which are amplified, made richer, and made more useful by the resultant vibrations of the vertebrae column and the axial bones. We will be learning how to tone and chant in ways that cause the kind of bodily vibrations that serve particular purposes, including those that lead to personal happiness, mental health, and planetary health. In doing so, we will be undoing the witch hunts, the inquisitions, and the whole host of other dreadful events in Europe and elsewhere between the Eleventh and Sixteenth Centuries that “destroyed the rites of exchanging sexual and erotic vitality between humans and nature” (Gardner-Gordon, 1993, p 53). We seek nothing less than a transformation of the human/earth relationship worldwide; in part, through “sounding.”
For our purposes here, we need to make a distinction between two words:
“sounding” is the making of wordless sounds, without melody but with a rhythm and
“toning” is the “vibratory power of the voice by making long, sustained sounds, without the use of melody, beat, or rhythm. When we make “toning” sounds, they “cause vibrations which may create overtones (high sounds that emanate from a single musical note) that reverberate in a way that is incredibly penetrating” (Gardner-Gordon, 1993, p. 61).
In this course, you will not need a good singing voice. You will also not need in-depth musical knowledge.
Low, soothing tones tend to slow down the heart. Pleasant low tones produce “a grounded, earthy practical sense of well-being. (Low tones) good for getting into your body and getting things accomplished” (Gardner-Gordon, 1993, p. 61).
High, piercing tones tend to speed up the heart. Pleasing high tones can help you to release stress and transcend your day-to-day worries. They tend to produce a euphoric, angelic, other-worldly, or deeply relaxed feeling.
The oral production of sustained low or high notes require deep breathing, another aspect of toning that “contributes to health and a sense of peacefulness” helps eliminate the effects of stress, helps ameliorate heart disease, asthmas, bronchitis, and senility (Gardner-Gordon, 1993, p. 63). Prepare now to overcome any chronic lack of oxygen and to more freely express your emotions—two unfortunate results of that time during your youth when, if you are like most people, you were regularly forced to be quiet, still, and to hold back your feelings (happy or sad).
To Better Breathing…
