Felicity’s Blog

The whole body is a ‘thinking’ organism and the ‘thoughts / energies / vibrations’ which occupy the various parts of the body at the moment of ’sounding’ through the voice WILL be heard. This is the beauty and the terror of the voice. It leaves no hiding place, it’s a kind of emotional / spiritual / mental nakedness. The work we do as singers is emotional / spiritual / mental fitness training (or purification) which means we sound from a pure place, a true place which is positive, loving, creative and joyful.

I think the causes of negativity in the bodymind are social. We live in a deeply wounded, diseased, insane culture. Every time we engage with any part of this society (individuals / businesses / media / buildings / cities) we experience an onslaught of negativity and unconsciousness. Sometimes it is very subtle (the thoughts of an individual in the same room), sometimes it is very obvious (negativity in the news), but almost always the members of society are utterly unaware of it in the same way the fish is unaware of the water. It is too close to see. There are sparks of authenticity and truth and, indeed, I think it is our role as awakening people to be those sparks.

Why do we sing? I would say it’s so that the ’soul’ of life can hear itself. It’s so that the compassion and wisdom of life can bring healing to tired souls and crazy minds. The joy in us, the clarity of thought, the peace, the insight into the true nature of life is expressed in words, notes and rhythms and brings healing, inspiration, refreshment and calm to the whole of humankind, in some small measure. I believe we can look at society around us, look at individuals and audiences and be the the compassion and truth that is required. We can be like mirrors that reflect back to our society it’s own image, but coloured and transformed by love and insight.

It’s Valentine’s day so what more appropriate than to speak about the voice of love. The wonderful mystic and writer Rumi has this to say among many many other wonderful writings on Love:

Seek love, seek love, for it is the gem of your essence.

If Love is the Gem of our essence then we owe it to ourselves and to others to express all that we are which is pure love. Love is not always soft and touchy feely…. sometimes it is tough and sometimes we have to be tough with ourselves when we need to give ourselves love. Sometimes it’s hard to recognise which voice is which …. perhaps the only way is to open our hearts  and face the demons which hold us prisoners in our own lives. Our true voice will never ask us to do anything which is damaging to ourselves. If we listen and follow the voice we will surely live in the moment, in the flow and live  our true essence which is Love .

Shalom

Do you feel your voice lacks something? Come to that, does your life lack something, many things? We may all have the propensity to fall into the old trap of ‘lack’. Not enough money, food, lovers, clothes… just not enough. Our audible voices will reflect this.

I have just spent a wonderful day with Maggy Whitehouse. The UK’s leading guru on prosperity. What that woman doesn’t know about abundance, poverty mentality, riches, Spirituality and lack on all levels is’t worth knowing about and more importantly, how to address these issues! You can check her out on www.pureprosperity.com Maggy inspired me yesterday – so much so that here I am spending my day off writing this to you, for us… for you and for me. I get a lot of pleasure from writing, being creative in many areas and from this joy comes a feeling of abundnce and a sense that I am the richest person in the universe…. . even if no one else reads this, I am exercising my voice…. I am tapping into my creativity and joy and from this will come yet more abundance and joy…. even better if someone DOES read it!

So how does this effect my voice? Well…. I am breathing better, the energy in my body and energy field is expanded and I feel inspired to make sound. I find as I articulate words my sound drops into my body as I really engage with my passion. Where is my passion located? Below the belt! Yes, my voice is open all the way down into my feet. It isn’t constricted in my throat, it is open and flowing, because I have, am in the flow of – joy. The false vocal folds retract when happy…. they are located in the larynx and retract naturally when we are in this state. If we are fearful, they constrict thereby causing the voice to sound, pinched, abrasive etc.

Find your passion, your bliss, your joy…. feel abundant and rich because you have every potential to be….

watch this site for more on this subject… come and visit me at the “All Angels Weekend”in Bury St. Edmunds Suffolk over the 5th and 6th December where I will be doing a short workshop and giving voice readings…..

Felicity

I often used to think what a good thing it is we can’t remember our birth , our infancy, our early life in this body. I don’t quite think this way any longer. Sometimes it would be good to be aware and alive to the inner voices that keep us prisoners in our own lives; voices that were instilled in us very early on in our lives. These patterns of behaviour, the obediance to these internalised voices keep us slaves to our crooked thinking.

I realised very recently, as I go into the second half of my life, that many of us have been the”good girl or boy” all our lives. We have made ourselves slaves to the one who feels she/he has to – “get it right”. What a sadness it is to have held back, silenced and imprisoned the creative spark of the Soul’s voice….. what a tragedy to have kept this spark from lighting up the world with all the other “alight” sparks….

Have you held back? Have you witheld your voice, the truth of who you are?

Now is the time to awaken to who we really are….. allow your *voice* to be heard….. discover who you are…. do something out of your comfort zone… feel the feelings, hear the voices and do it anyway… your soul is waiting to sing. Find out more about your life path through perhaps astrology (see: www.lanawooster.co.uk ) Go to a painting group/ dance class…. tell someone how you REALLY feel…. speak up for your soul…….

If like me, you feel being “good” has been a smoke screen, then just let it go… what does it matter in the grand scheme of things?…. turn it on it’s head and live the “goodness” of who you are… and not who you believe it’s right for you to become!

Gustav Jung said something like: ” It is easier to be who we think we are rather than who we actually are” ….. oh yes…. what words.

Shalom

It’s been a while since my last blog. The Summer has flown and now we have the most glorious “Indian Summer” here in the Eastern part of the UK. This is often my favourite time of year.

Having a new academic year of us I wonder how many of us have sprung into life with renewed intention for our lives and have begun new activities? I for one have made some changes in my personal life and yet catch the old patterns hanging around like some seedy individual offering the girl sweeties through the school railings. It’s perhaps a scenario which is a bit shocking but I wonder if you look inside and listen if you too have this voice…. stopping you from being the person you are, seducing you into believing something else is better, when all the time you know those sweeties are really not the best thing for you.

See the new way, experience it in action, feel it, long for it, open up to it and let it become part of you. Breathe it… speak it, sound it out…. this is who you are….. then it has life and the sweeties fade into the past where they belong.

How about joining the wonderful new website iPeace at – www.ipeace.ning.com – in 3 weeks it has grown to 3,000 members all over the world!

Have a good month! Live, love, be and breathe Peace.

I have just returned from visiting my daughter and new grandson in the USA. I lived there for 7 years but returning this time to Indiana was quite a different experience from living in Colorado in the 1980’s. The situation I found myself in evoked alot of thinking in me about FEAR. My own and that of others. I went to Barnes and Noble bookstore a couple of times and the second time, the day before I flew back to the UK, I came across Marianne Williamson’s book: “A Return to Love”. I have resisted reading anything by her till now and am not sure why. Perhaps I was afraid of the language she uses which is heavily Christian based, I’m not sure. I certainly didn’t want to get pulled back into a world which I left many years ago. There was a fear there about this…. I was closed in my mind and in my heart.

I bought this book and as it happens, I have nearly finished reading it. I have been quite warmed by the content as it has given me even more to think about in my relationships with fear and love. I bought it because I wanted to spend more time thinking about my personal relationships, how I “re”-act to others, what triggers there are for me and perhaps find a way forward to do things differently.

I noticed before and during my trip that my own voice of fear could hold me back from my AUTHENTIC LIFE. It has indeed held me back from my authentic life in the past and had it not been for my friends and therapist encouraging me to go, I perhaps would have backed out and not gone to the USA at all this past week.

Whilst there, I met varying types of people; some I was afraid of and some who clearly seemed afraid of me – and of life, in many ways. Others, I seemed to embrace with my whole heart from the word go and didn’t look back and I felt similar responses towards me from them. What intrigued me, as I sat with certain situations, was how I could and did stifle my VOICE. Not my audible voice necessarily but my inner voice of self emowerment and authenticity.

The levels of LIFE in the USA are many. I saw affluence and I saw deprivation. I witnessed sadness, depression and lack, and a huge need for love. Body language, eye contact, voices all gave away what was really going on with some folk I met. I was touched by a country and a people who on the face of things have much and yet there is such a need for a balance and real spiritual context in which to grow. Many are of course involved in these things already as we can see from the vast amount of wonderful Spiritual and Psychospiritual work that comes out of the US but for the people I met this particular visit, they didn’t know how to find it in themelves to even begin to look.

I also had the great pleasure of seeking out and visiting several times a wonderful Natural Food store and Cafe. Three Rivers Co-op: www.3riversfood.coop If you ever go to Fort Wayne Indiana they do the best decaf coffee and their own mix of Granola! Here I met some lovely people working towards happiness and wholeness on our planet. It was a real joy for me to go there and I thank them for it.

FEAR could have stopped me from going to the USA and the result would have been contraction in my body, mind and soul. I faced it and did it anyway…. I am glad. The result for me is a stronger more centred state, a more Authentic Voice. A Healing. All I can hope for is, that in some small way, by me being present with my authenticity, others will have been touched a little by this.

” Where LOVE is, FEAR cannot dwell”

Just this week I encoutered an event in my personal life which, on the face of things, didn’t silence me as I found myself yelping out in pain as a result of someone physically hurting me. The interesting fact to me was and is that I felt silenced, unable to express anything of what was happening by moving my body out of the line of attack and or addressing what had happened with the person inflicting pain on me. I noticed I just allowed the event to disapear into the ether – that was until I found myself sitting in my car sobbing. I recognised this as a pattern I have repeated endlessly since possibly as far back as my birth…. a constant silencing of my own voice, my authentic voice.

I was driving today listening to radio 4 and someone being interviewed who, as a child, had her arm removed as a result of cancer. The way this been conveyed to her, that she was to have this done was difficult. Obviously difficult for the Mother to tell her and for the child herself but now, as an adult, she was very positive about it, the family ethos seemingly to be “we just get on with it”. I heard something else in her voice however… a holding it all together.

Should we hold it all together and just get on with things, burying the true feelings? I don’t feel we are taking care of ourselves when we do this. I wasn’t taking care of myself earlier this week when I was physically harmed. It was a natural, habitual reflex, one that only by seeing, releasing the trauma through the recognition and the tears was I able to begin to find balance about it and more importantly begin to address the patterns I have laid down in my life.

My Authentic Voice needed to be heard but was so traumatised that it couldn’t be. How many times in our lives do we stifle our inner voice? Why do we do this and how can we allow it to be heard?

Thoughts for the week… by for now

Flick

I am writing the first ever blog on this website on the 5th of May 2008. I am hoping it will be the first of many. The site was launched yesterday and still needs many things doing to it but I”m glad to be here, I”m happy to share, discuss and debate ideas around the bodymind, voice and psyche…. and in fact anything that may seem relevant in the moment.

This is one way in which i feel I have a voice… I am hoping you will feel you have a voice also and that together we can create vibration to hold to release to heal ourselves and those around us. If you lost your voice, were silenced or silenced yourself at any point in your life then this is a place for you to begin to or continue to find it again.

Happy voicing…. “Breathe in only that which can be sounded out”

Flick