Primal Singing is about connecting with our
emotions through voice, about liberating and giving voice to our
inner being, about breaking through the barriers of
self-consciousness and fear that alienate us from who we truly are.
Let me tell you about my own journey.
In the beginning … Primal Singing as therapy
My first encounter with Primal Singing was in
2003, as accidental as it was serendipitously life-changing. Still
emotionally fragile from the upheaval of a divorce, I
recognised that I might benefit from therapy through this
moment in my life. And so it was that, on the recommendation of a
friend of mine, I began therapy sessions with gestalt psychologist Dr
Carlos Velasco in Madrid.
It was through Carlos that I discovered Primal
Singing, a therapeutic technique that he had been developing over
many years and practising with patients since 1995, and which he
summarised for me quite simply as “whatever comes to you ...”.
Yet behind that deceptively simple statement lay years of theory and
practice:
Carlos had got into Primal Singing in 1990, when he met a french psicologist, Michel Katzeff, who had been in North America with a group of Native Americans receiving the transmission of this ancestral techniques, the "internal singing". He sat on the floor with him, held his hands and helped him to sing for the first time in this way.
The potentialities and emotional impact of it, for
a conservatory trained singer such as myself who had until that
moment been singing only Opera and Lied in concert, were truly
revelatory. Primal Singing was suggestive, meaningful, and promising
… but I still needed to know how far could I take Carlos Velasco's
insightful method into new directions.
I decided to give myself the opportunity to
explore it more deeply, freed from the interferences of my classical
training; and therefore didn't take any bookings for public
performances for one year. I was to spend that year doing only Primal
Singing in my home. That was my first year of training in Primal
Singing! And far from being dull, it was to be a very intense and
productive experience.
I had the chance to experiment with my voice with
a completely different approach from that which, as a classically
educated singer and music professional, I had been doing for many
years before. This required an open mind and attitude, it required
(and this was challenging for a trained musician) uncritically
accepting the vocalisations that I was producing, observation of the
mind and body as it happens, and the discovery of the immense
potential it had.
It taught me that it can be simultaneously a
method for developing vocal technique with conventional voice
students, a way to do healing body/mind work through sounds, as well
as aesthetic experience in and of itself. It proved to have the
potential to help raise awareness of our own emotions and feelings
towards people and situations. It was helpful in developing a deeper
sense of non-judgement towards others, and I could even feel how it
helped the body and the voice connect harmoniously together through
the power of emotions.
I will offer a demonstration on Primal Singing on Thursday the 30th, at The Flying Dutchman, in the exhibition "Rainbows through the Lenses" organized by Four in Ten, LGBT service users asociation at the Maudsley Hospital. 156 Wells Way Camberwell, London SE5 7SY
1'Funciones
del Canto Primal',
http://www.psicoterapia-transpersonal.es/Taller%20Canto%20Primal.htm
