It was then when I was offered the opportunity to
do my first workshops in Primal Singing. As before, I started in Yoga
centres, offering this technique as 'mindful singing', and getting a
wonderful group of people willing to sing and express themselves. I
taught at the Yavanna Centre and at the Allegro Spacio, both in
Madrid.
We would do mainly Primal Singing, but also often
followed by short songs of students' own choosing. And it was
clearly the intense Primal Singing sessions that provided the
essential groundwork for students to then be able to meaningfully
sing their own songs.
Thus I remember how workshop attendees, once
attuned to a state of mind that will lead to it, would choose a
meaningful song for them and work their emotions over it. The woman
who had been forbidden to sing from the age of 12, for example, who
now came for a singing lesson in her 60s, and chose a children's song
she always loved, through which she got in touch with so many
feelings almost forgotten consciously. Or the stiff dancer who chose
a song of the loss of youthful innocence, whose muscles relaxed in
resonance with her singing that connected her with those primary
emotions.
Such were the incredibly powerful experiences that gave me
the assurance and confidence to know that I wanted to develop the
Primal Singing method further.
Later on, it was time to move out of my 'comfort zone', and I
started to offer it as 'emotional improvisation as a tool in modern
singing didactics' for students of voice, particularly at Escuela de
Musica Creativa, the largest private music school in Madrid. You can
see, published below, a typical example of a workshop in
Primal Singing that took place in Madrid in 2007.
For a vivid short summary of what Primal Singing
can do for people, I would recommend you watch the following video:
'Before and
after Emotional Work
session'
During these years, I persevered with my
experimental work, observing body expression and body changes as
Primal discourse takes place, observing how audiences and
participants react to it and would find in it a channel for self
expression they didn't have before, or they didn't realize they had.
I recognised that the health-related aspect of my Primal Singing
practice had been growing more salient and more obvious in light both
of my own lived experiences, reactions, and personal transformation
and of those of participants in my workshops.
© Maria Soriano 2014