Week 6 - Come Up with a Vocal Warm-Up
This warm up was taken and developed from Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklater
Lying on your back, let your whole body give in to gravity.
Send your mind into the soles of your feet and think of relaxing your toes and feet so that they appear to drop away from your ankles.
Imagine your ankle joints are filled with air.
Let your calf muscles relax so that the flesh, skin and muscles seem to dissolve off the shinbones.
Imagine your knee joints are filled with air.
Let your thigh muscles relax so that the flesh, skin and muscles seem to dissolve off the thigh bones.
Imagine your hip joints and thigh sockets are filled with air. Your legs no longer attached to the body.
Let your buttock muscles, pelvic muscles, groin and lower belly muscles relax so that the flesh, skin and muscles seem to dissolve and melt.
Be aware of your spine giving in to gravity from the tailbone to the skull.
Let the small of your back relax, but realise there’s a natural curve there too - don’t try to flatten it.
Let the whole stomach area dissolve and melt.
Picture the part of the back that is between the shoulder blades spreading away from the spine to either side.
Imagine the rib bones as soft as the belly: let them give in to gravity.
Imagine your shoulder sockets are filled with air, so that your arms are no longer attached to your body.
Be aware of the weight of your arms and hands, your fingers, heavy and abandoned on the floor.
Let your attention travel back up to your arms, through your shoulders and into your neck.
Let your neck-spine give in to gravity, but realise there is a natural curve there too - don’t try to flatten it.
Feel the weight of your head on the floor.
Let the jaw muscles relax so your teeth aren’t clenched.
Let the tongue relax inside your mouth so it isn’t clamped to the roof.
Be aware of your face muscles, let them melt so that the skin of the face feels heavy on the bones. Let go of the cheeks, the lips, the forehead, the eyelids.
Let the scalp muscles relax.
Now let your attention sweep back down through your whole body, abandoned on the floor.
Imagine you could melt down through the floor.
Take some time to enjoy this sensation.
Now become aware that in the middle of your still and relaxed body, there is an inevitable, easy rise and fall of your breath.
Feel the cool air being drawn in from outside through your nose or mouth, travelling down to the centre of your torso, being released through your hip joints and thigh sockets.
Flop a hand onto the breathing area so that you can feel from outside what is happening inside.
Notice that on the outgoing breath, the area under your hand can fall straight toward the ground.
Maintaining the same breathing, feed a deep sigh of relief far down into your body, imagine that sensation of the sight, of the relief falling out of you.
When you’re ready, take that sigh.
And again, maintaining the same breath, feed a deep sigh of relief far down into your body and when you’re ready, take that sigh.
And again, maintaining the same breath, feed a deep sigh of relief far down into your body.
This time I want you to think of a vowel sound. What shape does that vowel take in your mouth? Is it a low pitch sound, a medium sound, a high sound? Is it loud, is it quiet?
When you’re ready, take that sigh using your vowel sound.
And again, maintaining the same breath, thinking of your vowel sound, feed a deep sigh of relief far down into your body and when you are ready, take that sigh.
Now send your mind into the soles of your feet and think of putting your body back together again.
Let your limbs reconnect to their sockets, let your melted muscles and skin drift back towards your bones like clouds, feel your body and your spine slowly rise from the ground, and when you are ready, open your eyes.
