Pamelia S. Phillips - Singing For Dummies

To feel the weight of your head, allow your head to feel heavy, as if it sits right on your shoulders. This weight and pressure doesn’t feel good after a while, so you want to feel an opening up and lifting of the head that comes from inside the body. Trying to push up the head only causes tension in your neck. Your head weighs about the same as a bowling ball — it’s pretty heavy, so it needs some help to stay up.

You can visualize your head balanced on top of your spine. The opposite of this sensation or visual is the head sinking or pressing down on top of the spine.

To keep your head balanced on your body, you want your shoulders to be evenly balanced. Your shoulders sit on top of your rib cage, and their position and balance are important. Roll your shoulders forward to feel how it stretches and curves your back and collapses your chest. Then roll your shoulders back to feel how it thrusts your chest forward. The ideal position for your shoulders is neither forward nor back, and pressing neither up nor down; it’s an even balance.

When you move your shoulders, you can also feel your shoulder blades moving. If you tighten your shoulder blades, you feel tension in your rib cage. For good alignment, you want your shoulder blades open and released across your back; you want the shoulder blades to release downward as you inhale. To balance the shoulders, you also want to feel the connection between your arms and your chest. Look at Figure 3-1 to see the connection between the arms and shoulders and notice how the shoulders sit on top of the rib cage.

Releasing tension in your body allows for a more open sound and easier breathing. You may notice that I don’t ask you to relax. If you relax, you may fall limply on the couch to watch your favorite sitcom. For singing, you want your body aligned but released and free of tension. Releasing means keeping your body in a state of readiness: ready to move, breathe, and crawl out of your comfort zone and sing for the world. Think of body movement as fluid motion even when you’re still.

To release any tension in your arms and hands, you also want to check in with the areas surrounding the arms and hands.

Chest: Check the position of your chest to make sure that it’s open and lifted, not pushed up.

Shoulders: With your chest open and lifted, notice the position of your shoulders. You want your shoulders centered, neither too far forward nor too far back.

Arms: Tighten your arms and notice what that feels like. When your arms are tight, you feel tight across your back and perhaps across your chest. Release the tension in your arms and notice that they feel as if they opened.

Elbows: You may have discovered that when your elbows are tight, your back and shoulder blades are really tight. All your muscles are connected and need a balanced relationship to support the body. Your elbows can also feel like they have a spring in them, similar to the visual you may have explored with your ankles and knees earlier in the chapter. Your elbows and your body should have distance between them; you don’t want your elbows to press against your body or push out from your body.

Hands: The same tension release can apply to your hands. If you tighten your hands and wrists, you can feel the tension move all the way up your arms and across your back and chest. When you release the tension in your hands, you may feel as if they aren’t as heavy as they were when you tensed the muscles in your hands.

Believe it or not, tension in the head and face is pretty common in singers. You can see tension in the face when the eyebrows lift or the brow furrows. The facial muscles may also hold tension, even though you may not see the face wrinkle. Read on for information about how to release both obvious and invisible tension.

Look in the mirror at your face. Tighten your face so that you can see the muscles squeezing together. Now release that tension and notice what it feels like. When the tension releases, your face may feel wider or more open. Tense and release several more times so you can really feel the difference. Notice any tension in your forehead from the muscles wanting to either lift or furrow the brow.

One area that commonly generates tension is the forehead. If you notice your forehead wrinkling as you sing, stick a piece of clear tape vertically on your forehead between your eyebrows. You can feel the tape move when you tighten your forehead. It’s normal for your eyebrows to occasionally move as you sing or speak, but keeping your forehead free of tension is the goal.

Next, notice any tension in your eyes. Tension in your eyes feels like squinting or a tightness behind your eyes. When the eyes are open and free of tension, it feels similar to the opening you feel behind your eyes when you see something that surprises you. Pretend that a friend you haven’t seen in a long time walks through the door. Notice the opening of your eyes and a feeling of space behind your eyes. The opening or release of tension behind the eyes also helps the forehead to relax.

Releasing the tension in your head and opening the space involves allowing the muscles to stay pliable on your head. If you squint or concentrate really hard for a long time, your head may start to hurt from a tension headache. To prevent that tension, massage your scalp. See whether you can get the skin on your scalp to move around. It might not move much if it’s tight, but you may get it to move a little by massaging and stretching it. You can also visualize your head expanding from the inside out.

Look in the mirror again and notice the space around your mouth. When you’re annoyed or frustrated, the muscles around your mouth may tighten. To release the tension around your mouth and face, look bored. If you pretend to be really bored and dull, you’ll feel tension around your mouth release.

Maintaining your posture while you walk makes a big difference in your appearance and your ability to sing while walking or moving. You may actually have to sing while walking around the stage. Church choirs sing as they process, and backup singers groove to the music as they dance. What if you have to cross the stage? You want to look glorious for the entire time that you’re walking onstage and when you land in place to sing.

To maintain your posture while walking, keep your eyes up and look ahead as you walk. You can still see where you’re going even if you’re not looking at the ground. You also want to be able to land in correct alignment. When you have to walk onto the stage for a performance, you want to land in alignment so you don’t have to adjust your position.

Practice finding your alignment when you’re standing still. Then walk a few steps and land in place. Did you land in the same alignment? Look down at your feet to see whether they’re parallel and the same distance as your hipbones. If not, try again: Walk around and then land in alignment. Eventually, you’ll confidently land in alignment and know that your body is ready for some fabulous singing.

You also want to practice walking with an awareness of the weight and pressure on your legs. You want to feel the sensation that your weight is evenly distributed on your legs and feet and have a sense of buoyancy. Feeling your weight sink into your legs makes you feel much heavier. Pushing into the floor or pavement causes you to feel pressure and tension in your legs. Of course, you want to connect your feet to the floor, but you want to feel an opening sensation, as if your feet touching the floor causes your legs and muscles to open — not contract and tense. Try walking and pushing into the floor, and then walking and visualizing your body with springs that open when your feet connect with the floor.