Body-Mapping & Communication

The following is part of a series of journal entries of my experiences and reflections using LearningMethods in my private voice teaching. The two students followed are “Emilie” age 14 and “Courtney” age 13. Both students began lessons with me September 18th 2018, and the journal entries continue until December 4th 2018. All lessons were audio-recorded for the purpose of these reflective journals.

Body Mapping

Today I started off both students with body mapping. I discussed misconception of the hip joint, as well as arm availability that I offer as an alternative to shoulder rolls. Throughout body mapping we went back and forth between our now old-understandings (hip moves from pelvic area) and our updated understandings (hip moves at the joint where the leg begins). Going back and forth allows the body to experience the different sensations between the two movements which allows for deeper learning.

Reflecting back on this decision, I feel it may not have been the perfect time to discuss misconceptions of the system simply because neither student expressed any interest in human structure or any issues of pain/discomfort in their singing. I don’t believe it was damaging in any way to discuss body mapping however, I do not want to impose my agenda on my students.

Courtney, lesson 3.We spent about three minutes at the beginning of our lesson talking about school and tests she has coming up. While normally I would not try to indulge too long in conversation about their week, I was happy that Courtney was talking more, and I feel it helps to continue building a safe space for lessons.

During warm-ups I realized Courtney was hugging her binder which was causing her to slouch. I asked her to leave the binder at her chair and walk around the room and find eight different things in the room while she does the warm-up, and that I would ask her to share them with me after the exercise (making it clear that I want her to have specifics).

The purpose of this activity was to improve her physical coordination in order to better positioned for singing, but I didn’t want to tell her, “Sit up, relax your shoulders, open your chest wider, etc.” as that would micro-manage the system and cause a disruption to its natural flow. By asking her to stand and engage with the room, it gives her something to direct her attention which allows the whole system to coordinate itself in order to achieve this task.

After Courtney shared the items, I asked “Did it feel any different doing that exercise after you stood up?” Courtney, “Not really.” I then shared the purpose of the exercise while trying to be clear that she was not severely out of coordination. I did not tell Courtney the purpose of the exercise before having her do it in case she would try to achieve the “desired” outcome rather than fully engaging in the experiment. If we try to skip to the “desired” outcome, this is us trying to fix the symptom rather than working to understand the issue and our system does not actually learn.

I realize listening back to my audio-recording that asking, “Did it feel any different doing that exercise after you stood up?” was too vague a question. My fear was that if I had asked something along the lines of, “Did you notice any differences in your system/structure?” That she might have said yes in order to get the question “right” or to please the teacher.

However, students who are somewhat new to voice lessons will require reflection questions to be more specific in order to help them understand vocal skill and technique. If Courtney has never realized that the way one sits influences our coordination for singing, it is an unrealistic expectation of mine to think that she may discover that without any guidance.

- September 25th 2018