Healthy Inside=Healthy Outside

As I write this, I am acutely aware that some of what I am about to talk about with many you readers will be received by you in a variety of ways. Some of you will welcome a new, (but really not so new) idea, while others will disagree totally.

As we age, we pay much attention to our health and well-being. We are encouraged to eat better, exercise , and generally engage ourselves in activities that are health-promoting and considered “good” for us older folks.

At the same time, some of us tend to concentrate on what’s wrong in the world than what is right with it. We may become “set in our ways”, positional, territorial. We often close down when introduced to any new idea or product that disturbs our sense of security, we might even opine that it’s just some “crackpot’s idea, that doesn’t work.

Soon, we may be labeled as curmudgeons, cantankerous geezers, even old bitties, and it seems we may not even mind those distasteful monikers as time passes. We will often act as if we’re actually proud of them.

But the artists among us, the rockers like Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Steve Tyler…or the Broadway “babies” like Barbara Cook, Elaine Stritch or Chita Rivera they don’t seem to even be aware of their chronological age, although I suspect that most of us as artists, are fairly, if faintly aware of what goes on behind our eyes, and in the deepest part of ourselves, even those parts we keep hidden from the rest of the world outside of us. However, even WE slip into feelings of depression as we age, spending too much time in the past regrets of our youth and feelings of not having been good enough to really make a difference for ourselves or anyone else.

That being said, I will start by saying that I believe we human beings come into this world each endowed with certain gifts. Some of us discover very early on what those gifts are, and for some of us, they can take a lifetime to reveal themselves.

While some may never find them, still others will discover their gifts in the latter period of their earthly experience and wonder why it took them so long to see them.

And sadly some people will merely drift from one day to the next…and never find their gifts. They will live in their heads with relentless thoughts of “don’t forget my pills”, “call the doctor about this new pain”, maybe that drug I saw on the TV will help”, “Nah! Nothing will”. Some of these folks don’t have a clue into their potential. It just takes as long as it takes for each individual rose to blossom.

One thing I am certain of however, and it is that every one of us DOES have gifts, no matter our age, and from my view, our only job on earth is to use them for good…and in so doing, find our own passion , vitality, health, and happiness .

I deal in restoring one’s youth and vitality by showing them the joys of singing, using their breath to heal their bodies and their souls. After all, what’s a gift for if not to GIVE it? Take care of it, use it?

When I tell my clients that their gift of song can heal themselves, and the planet as well, I’m not just being dramatic. I’m dead serious about that. Many of us are just lost! And we are standing at the top of a hill, looking down into a valley, thinking, ‘is that the way…there?’ and suddenly, we hear a small voice, behind us, like a child, and turn to look at it and THAT’s when we see the road back. And the voice was our own…inner child calling us back to truth! All we “curmudgeons” and old “bitties” needed to do was turn our heads. But we are so preoccupied with day-2-day survival game we are forced to play on this planet, that we cannot appreciate the value of our gifts.

I found these quotes while researching for my 6th book on this subject of singing for health and happiness , and I would like to share them with you readers. I know I’ve posted these before, but they are worth reading again.

“To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and to soar ,to coast into the hearts of people who listen, to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found.” Joan Baez – American Singer/Songwriter

“When I am singing, I am inside of it…I feel, oh, like it feels when you’re first in love, when you’re touching someone–chills, things slipping all over me…A lot of times, when I get off the stage, I want to make love”Janis Joplin – American Blues Singer

“Once I had a dream to live and love, and this dream became music. It touched all of the beautiful experiences I have searched for or known. Each sound was a color, and each color was a warm feeling, and my heart kept the tempo.” Les McCann – American Jazz Pianist

“The funny thing about enlightenment is that it’s like you’re searching for something–say your hat–and you’re tearing the house apart and suddenly you look in the mirror and you see it sitting on top of your head. Music is where I experience that. I’m in a flow, I’m in a zone, there’s a definite shift in consciousness, without desire, without my ego, without me thinking, ‘oh wow, I’m sounding great’. Just experiencing it as a flowing living moment.”
Vernon Reid – British-American Guitarist

“For a musician, music is the best way to unite with God”. Inayat Khan – Indian Sufi Master “Music is the harmonious voice of creation. An echo of the invisible world [of spirit].”Giuseppe Mazzini – Italian Patriot and Revolutionary

“He who lets his breath, hence his life force, flow consentingly as a willing sound sacrifice from the depths of his body, sings his life; for singing means to affirm life, to free oneself, and thereby to bring happiness and prosperity to oneself, and consequently to one’s fellow man.”
Marius Schneider

This last quote is the one that gave me the name of my very first website, Singyourlife.com. I have been literally singing my life since I was 3, and there is nothing, not a single I cannot endure as long as I keep singing.

The Runner runs – and it becomes a prayer. For me, singing is my meditation .

I am 73 years young and still singing, teaching, writing, and coaching others in my age range to use their love of singing to replace the prescription drugs they take daily, as they lose more and more of their health and vitality…not to mention their deepest desires. We’re not talking about the ego now. We are speaking of the spirit!These articles that I write represent my mission to impress upon you people, the value of your gift for this planet? How can I make you see that your voice + my voice + all the singers’ voices can make so much music, that the entire earth will be continuously singing.

There’s a little country near Russia named Estonia. It is a small and heavily forested place, the most northerly of the 3 former Soviet Baltic republics.Estonia wanted its own sovereignty and national identity after the collapse of the USSR. After years of being ignored, 50,000 Estonians gathered together in a stadium somewhere in Russia, I think, and began to sing the unique traditional folk songs of their land, and they kept on singing over and over and over and over, day in and day out, until the rest of the world could no longer ignore this little country, and it was ultimately invited into the EU and to join NATO.

I DO believe that you can literally change your age, your body and your mindset, just by singing your song…making your own “sound sacrifice” to heal the hearts of a lost society.

It’s your purpose as a singer, your job (if you will)….TO SING!

Well, please do forgive my proclivity for philosophical discourse, but as Nietzsche once said,

“Has anyone ever observed that MUSIC emancipates the spirit? gives wings to thought? and that the more one becomes a musician, the more one is also a philosopher?”

Guilty

“Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world…a mystery like mathematics, wine, or love. Song shows the world that it is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be…The mystery holds the key to the unseen…There are occasions when the bolts of the Universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden…Glory bursts upon us in such hours, and reveals the radiance of singing.”Salman Rushdie – British Author

In the beginning of my web building, back in 1999, I called myself the “Voiceguru”. That was an ego trip. I’m no guru, of anything, and I can state without equivocation that I have learned more from you than you ever learned from me, singers. Thank you so very much for that.

That being said, go ahead and eat right, and take your walks, and exercise and all the things that Dr. OZ talks about. And while you’re doing all that, why not read some books on music, take some courses, maybe learn an instrument, go to a Karaoke Bar, or, if you don’t want to go to one, host a Karaoke party in your living room, and just SING, SING, SING!!

And continue your love affair with singing. You may visit the home page of my website, www.singyourlife.com/ and check out some of the items for your consideration at the bottom of the page. I have recently partnered with several respected companies to offer you a plethora of products and services to enhance your musical experience.

The truth is that if I can espouse an idea that the musical artist must be about creation and not about competition, then it is reasonable to conclude that endorsing services and products by others is a natural evolution of my own growth and a supplement to your vocal “toolbox”.

So…Need a mic stand? a small keyboard? a book of piano chords? A book of inspiration , history, instructions on techniques of which my own methods don’t cover enough?
I highly recommend the merchants I have researched and posted on the website, and I shall be adding more information products and physical products for you to look at as we move ahead.

Meantime, please comment and let me know if you’d like to participate with 8 other mature singers in a discussion about aging to be conducted on Google Hangout.Thanks so much, singers!
Chrys