It takes a long time to decide a name that summarizes what you are doing and a second to realize that you got the right name for it. Nevertheless, I can see that sometimes the “Singing4health” name can convey too narrow an idea of what it is about, as it can be easily associated with disease (dis-ease) as opposed to “health” or with “healing”. Friends have automatically imagined that I am doing singing activities only for people with specific health problems, especially since it's well known that singing is particularly good for people with breathing, postural or stress related problems. But health is actually about everybody. We all relate to it in every possible way.
According to the WHO “
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease or infirmity” so in this respect Singing4health is addressing a wide range of people. It is not about having or not having a health problem, it's about the approach taken. And it includes not just physical and mental health, but another not less important one, the social well being of individuals, and we could even talk about healthy societies as societies that structurally will promote all these three for individuals.
In this respect, a choir is a little society in itself, that reflects common issues and the same complexities as bigger structures. We want to focus on the way things are dealt with in the choir, and not just in the contents. We want to address the reasons why we are singing, and continuously evaluate whether what we are doing is meeting our aims or we need readjustment. We can address individuals with different capacities, heterogeneous and multi-level groups, skilful singers and beginners, and many of the core activities are actually going to be equally addressing skills from which everybody will benefit.
How does this translate into practice? We want a group of people who will feel confident singing together, who won't feel under pressure of their peers to follow at a specific speed, who will find in the choir a space for self expression and at the same time feeling of belonging to a friendly group and connection to others, a group that won't stress them and will make people feel good and positive about singing, in every aspect of what belonging to a vocal group entails. A group that can integrate and take in the creativity of the individuals, and that without leaving aside important aspects of performance (if the group decides to perform) will give equally importance to the fact that we can contribute to the group's achievements without need to impose, that will help people realize that as important as the fact of singing, is singing and been able to look into other people's eyes.
So if the group has basic skills, we want to embrace all capacities and help them get into a positive exchange. If the group is more skilful, we want to explore their creativity and take in as much of people's abilities, never forgetting that achievements like singing at a time, smiling or having a good posture are never simple and need a deep an enjoyable work process. And it's all about health.
Breathing is health, expressing feelings is health, good posture is health, rhythm is health and a good communication is so healthy that it will transcend and apply to other parts of life.
