I took off this morning in the sun along a new path ... a footpath which took me through ploughed wheat fields, past a tree which looked like a Whirling Dervish, and into an area I had not explored before. I found the further I walked the bigger my smile grew the more my body responded to its adventure, stiffness being replaced by steps of joy and lightness. Then I knew in an instance that I was being reconnected to days in my childhood which were sacred to me; days that I would spend in nature given every daylight hour available. My joy suddenly broke into tears as I recognised I had been silenced back then in my young days. I held the joy but also acknowledged the suffering of the silenced one, the many years of the silence now shifting into freedom once more. My whole body was weeping in release, my light was being restored and I was feeling I could once again begin to communicate my joy to myself, to Mother Earth and to the Dervish tree which seemed to want to commune with me. This was real freedom and real resonance.
I have spent my life working with and observing people who want to communicate something of their inner self but feel useless, pathetic, hopeless, stifled, blocked, weak - and on it goes. The traumas of life have an impact on us that so few are aware of that the work is vast and unravels layer upon layer of suffering in people’s lives and past lives, families and ancestors. My work with the Mind, the Bodymind and the Voice seeks to connect people to the numb parts or painful parts of themselves, to work with it, through it and to bring about a true authenticity of self to offer to the world they inhabit.
In a “Voiced Bodymind Workshop” I ran recently, I had the pleasure of the presence of a lovely woman who had not been at all sure the workshop was right for her to attend. She had called me to discuss it prior to signing up and expressed the fact that she just knew she wanted to sing but didn’t know why. She didn’t feel blocked and just knew without a doubt that she had to sing. How could I argue with that!? She came to the workshop and towards the end of the morning, after a deep exercise, she began talking, smiling and explaining her desires to voice, to sing. Suddenly, as if from nowhere she began to cry. There was something happening to her, connecting her to the beginning of a journey which would indeed open her out into being the empowered, expressive woman she is capable of being. Later in the day she looked radiant and when she sang it was with freedom and power. She was truly expressing some of what she was connecting with inside.
For another member of the group, a person who has engaged in a lot of personal growth work and self searching and who speaks with confidence and light, it was to be a day of dissolving yet another layer off the armour which kept her silenced. Her singing voice to this point did not match the woman she is. We identified trauma in her childhood which caused her to collapse inside - psychologically, her self-worth battered and her heart saddened. This collapse had a knock on effect in the chakras and the body. Her voice, her inner voice was silenced so the actual speaking voice she presented to the world was soft and without substance as if giving a window to her inner most parts, one of a very hurt woman. She courageously worked with this in front of the group, identified the introjected perpetrator and using the power of the body, the life force and her desire to be free to give true voice, she rose and doubled the volume and clarity of the sound. Within this sound was a core of strength not present before, during that day; she felt liberated.
Jung said something like - around 5% of the mind is conscious, the rest is the unconscious. We act out of this unconscious part most of the time unless we work to become self-aware. How many of us know what the body holds, reflecting back to us our trauma? How many of us know what the voice holds reflecting back the trauma of the bodymind and the mind? We have such information in our bone, our breath, our tissue and our sound and yet we spend most of our lives coming at it from the outside, imposing upon these parts of us what we think we are as opposed to feeling and expressing who we are - from the inside. We try to speak, sound or sing and are frequently disappointed with what we are able to achieve and wonder why. Trauma fixes us, blocks the vibration, our vibration and the frequencies of that part of the body or that chakra are missing in the sound of the voice; spoken and sung.
The process work, mindfulness of The Voiced Bodymind, facilitates the individual to identify, work with and begin the journey of transformation and return to the self, the centre. My Whirling Dervish tree in the field brought me back to my nine year old self, back to the authentic part of myself, my centre, the part who had been silenced. My connection to the Divine was once again renewed, enabling me to restore to my heart the expression of my joy. Again I was able to vibrate the highest emotion through which self healing came.
Kahil Gibran said: "We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble"
May we find ways to express who we are truly and authentically through skipping, painting, laughing, turning, creating and whatever is our way, that the colours of our voices may really reveal the truth of us as we live it out loud and cause the Heavens to tremble with Joy.
