Humiliation

Humiliation. Sometimes this is just what is needed to nudge us out of our comfort zone into a new, better version of ourselves. But damn humiliation is not tough to swallow.

I started voice lessons. I agreed to them in a drunken state on my birthday. Maybe, subconsciously, as I enter a new year of life I decided I needed a new life adventure. But voice lessons, after a lifetime of letting others convince me that I cannot sing? Then again, I have managed for two years in the choir. Now, our new choir director, glutton for punishment, I think, wants to prove (to himself or me is questionable) that I can sing alone (maybe not solo performance, but alone without one of my trusty altos next to me).

Lesson One: Breathing. The aspiring yogi that I am, I figured this would be easy. I teach breathing in my yoga classes. In fact, for all those who wonder, yoga breathing and breathing for singing, while similar, are two very different animals. And this one had me by the tail. Wrought with nervousness, I then lost my ability to breath properly at all – I am breathing backwards to the point where instructed to suck in air, I blew it out. I don’t think I felt this much like an idiot since, well, my first yoga class. Patient in his frustration, my instructor suggested I lie on the floor. Then, he put is hands on my stomach and told me to breathe out while resisting his hands. Despite that, I was a bit horrified at him pressing into my squishy stomach and my pelvis; I think I passed this test with excellence. All that yoga did pay off a bit. In our half hour lesson, we never got beyond breathing. I do not think I improved much, if any, in that half hour. Yet, he insisted that we would pick up next week, determined to show the world that even I can learn to sing well.

I still have some doubts and only hope I will shed my embarrassment before next week to avoid a repeat of this lesson. Perhaps trust in myself and my voice, letting go of the doubts and self-consciousness, is the real lesson I am to learn. In that case, I hope my instructor is blessed with a good dose of patience, as this may be a long haul.