Sing Your Heart Open

by J. Robillard

I attended Hannibal Means’ “Sing Open Your Heart” workshop recently. There were eight participants in the class. The teacher, Hannibal Means, is a Viennese opera singer and voice teacher. I was initially attracted to Hannibal when I heard him perform at the Crimson Circle meeting on Saturday. Here was this big guy dressed in colorful African garb, with a jewel in the center of his forehead. His eyes spoke volumes… I could not get over how much his eyes expressed constantly! (I told him that his eyes are like jewels in his face.) There is a constant sparkle and a constant energy projection through them. His singing voice evoked deep emotion in me. So, when I heard he was giving a workshop, I wanted to go. I had never had a voice lesson or even been attracted to going to a singing workshop until that moment.

At the beginning of the workshop Hannibal asked each of us what we wanted from the workshop. I said that I wanted to have fun and wanted to discover something new and passionate about my voice. Hannibal looked at me and said “You are filled with rage. When was the last time that you expressed rage?” I was somewhat mystified by this, but stayed open to anything that might happen in the workshop. I was currently feeling nervous and shy about being in a group of people I didn’t know, and not knowing what might happen later.

This was an opportunity to apply my meditation practice to a new and unknown experience. Here I am, required to sing out in front of a group—something I have never done before—and I could sound really bad too, and I could even express rage or cry or feel tense and closed… but I had already told myself going into it that I would accept whatever came. I would allow myself to be whoever I was going to be and just be the observer of that. I would have no expectations about my performance. For sure—energy would move in me. If nothing else came of it—I would discover myself in this new situation.

In the beginning of class Hannibal spoke of his own rage as a teenager. He said that he was so angry that so many people were lying with their voices, that he stopped speaking for a few years and only spoke with his eyes. He spoke with his eyes and he played his flute. Aha! That’s why so much energy is pouring through his eyes! Later I shared with him and the group that I want to do that also—express through my eyes with that intensity.

So, first we began the breathing exercises. The main thing that I learned is to “Sing from Jerusalem” or “sing from your pussy” as he also described it. Hannibal quoted Caruso as saying that when he sang, he could hold a dime in his butt cheeks. This is the correct way to pump the energy up from the lower body and out through the voice—on the outbreath, contracting the pelvic muscles. I practiced this all evening.

Then we began singing tones and tunes and numbers, one at a time. A different note for each number. At this point I was feeling nervous and a little anxious, and I remembered my meditation practice of opening to the emptiness/Awareness in the very NOW moment, which immediately helped. I sensed the tension and nervousness in my body as a solid energy overlay, but as soon as I went into the Now, that solid energy broke up into little chunks like rocks that were permeating my energy field. Okay… rocks of unexamined material… but I accepted myself where I was, rocks and all. I allowed my awareness to fill the whole space of the room and I stayed in the now moment when it wasn’t my turn to sing… not focusing on how the others might perceive me when it was my turn. So, when it WAS my turn each time, I just sang out without regard for anything not pertinent to the singing. My voice cracked but I didn’t care. I sang loudly and let my body feel natural and do what it wanted to do. I was so much “the singing” that I really don’t know how I sounded but it sure felt great! I was the singing… not the singer, not the “product” of the song, but The Singing.

Hannibal began an exercise in which we each were required to sing Silent Night with the expression of Rage. As I sat listening to the others in the group, my energy body was activated—I felt little explosions, vibrations, and pulsations moving through my whole body. Instead of focusing on my own upcoming turn and what I would do, how I would perform, I again tuned in to the Now, into the Silent empty openness of the Self, and allowed my awareness to fill the whole room (and not focus exclusively on the person who was currently singing and projecting rageful emotions, or stuckness, or whatever they were feeling.) I wondered how I might muster up some of my own rage, but immediately it came to me. The feeling of being a Jewish mother and having my children ripped away from me in the concentration camps… the FEELING of being having my babies stomped on the ground by soldiers and being driven from my home (as a Native American). Rage came easily and when it was my turn to sing, my fists were clenching and my feet were stomping those soldiers into the ground, my face expressing the hatred that I felt, and my voice automatically singing Silent Night. I can’t even remember it now—I was so intensely in the expression of that moment. Mind was elsewhere. When I was done, Hannibal said “That is your power! I Am That I Am!” He also said something else about me singing the song of the dolphins and the whales. (He had instructed me to sing in a high voice in the beginning—something I have never done, bringing my voice higher and higher to the highest notes…) And I vaguely remember doing that. Later in the workshop he helped me to do it again by saying “Sing to the stars!” and I just sort of began experimenting with my voice, loudly and with really high notes. The feedback from  Hannibal and Jean (a participant) after I sang again, is that these really high and pure tones were the song of the stars, the sounds of the dolphins and whales, and tones that evoke higher consciousness, pure consciousness, “I Am.” I was amazed by this feedback because I had been so much “the singing” that I hadn’t really heard myself until I was told what I did. Still, it didn’t feel amazing to me. It felt like Being natural in the moment that I was doing it. Ah, so that’s what natural action always feels like. Just that. No pretense, no trying, no performance. Just Being in the moment however that moment is going to come out and however I’m going to be within it.

The last piece that I’ll share is that we had each chosen a power animal for the evening—just picking the first animal that came into our awareness. Everyone else had a predator—hawks and eagles and bears and raven. I had a deer. When I told Hannibal my animal at the end, he sang “Home on the Range” to me, emphasizing the deer and the antelope playing… key word being play. He later said that my natural expression is innocence and purity and play. (He saw this in me as I hadn’t said any of this to him. How could he know? And yet he DID know.)

All in all, I’m very content and happy that I allowed myself to take the risk of showing up at that workshop, and also just Being me however I was going to be in that situation. I discovered something new about my voice (the dolphin sounds), I had a lot of fun, and I felt “seen” for who I am by Hannibal and others in the group… and I experienced the power of Presence/Awareness in the Now moment to deepen my experience of physical expressions like singing… Being the singing, being the action. Instead of expressing the Power of Self-Awareness in the Now only while sitting in meditation, it now begins to express its aliveness in Action.