The Therapeutic Power of Singing

Lately, I’ve been reconnecting with the many reasons that singing is one of the most powerful resources in my toolkit. I’d like to share these reasons with you, in the hope of inspiring motivation, or at least curiosity about the power of song and voice.

I’m one of those stereotypical multi-hyphenates – an ‘elder millenial’ with a list of freelance job titles. As I’ve developed my business, I’ve sometimes found myself sidelining the voice related aspects of my work in favour of what seem like the more ‘serious’ things that I offer (consultancy and facilitation, executive coaching). It seems that there’s been a stubborn kernel of unconscious bias hanging around in my psyche. Perhaps at some point, I’ve swallowed a bit of someone else’s belief that singing is a nice, but frivolous thing to do. “It’s all very well holding hands and singing Kum Ba Yah, but now let’s get on with the real work…”

But I know that this view is completely at odds with my experience. I’ve been singing since I was a small child – many years of choirs, vocal coaching, competitions, recitals, song circles, pub gigs, festival gigs, protest blocs, tours, voice retreats, vocal rehab and the rest. Most of these experiences have helped me to express and process emotion, connect with myself and others and get calm and grounded. And knowing that these positive impacts are available to just about anyone motivates me to share them.

There’s something fundamentally human about singing. I’m not aware of any cultures in the world that don’t have music/singing (regimes that forbid music as a form of religious or political control notwithstanding). The variations in pitch and different voice qualities involved in singing tend to offer an opportunity to feel and express emotion more acutely than we might when we speak. The long, controlled exhale we tend to use when singing helps to re-regulate and soothe an over- or under-stimulated Autonomic Nervous System. And something in the predictability of melody helps to convey a message to our pattern-seeking brains in a way that’s especially memorable. The beauty of all of this is that it can work whether or not the singer is trained, can stay on pitch or feels confident in their abilities. In fact, a psychologically safe enough environment and an embodied approach to singing can support someone who is experiencing a ‘freeze’ response or veering wildly off pitch to make progress with these issues.

If that’s not enough to convince you to seek out your nearest community choir (or attend one of my workshops), here’s a breakdown of some of the specific ways that singing can be transformative.

1.     Singing to express, process or shift emotions:

One of my supervisors wrote a PhD thesis on singers’ psychology, having noticed that her voice students would often sing what they couldn’t find a way to say. Many vocal coaches keep a box of tissues in their teaching room, ready to dry tears. In vulnerable, emotionally connected performances, we ideally want the singer to have shed any tears in advance and retained enough emotion on-stage to help the audience to connect to their own feelings. But of course, that’s not to say that singing is always heavy or painful. We might sing to express joy, love, anger, power or just about any other emotion imaginable. And we might use music to shift our mood or lift the energy in a space. Singing is a physical activity that requires muscular support, full diaphragmatic breathing and the release of unnecessary tension. This, combined with our connection to lyrics and certain voice qualities (such as the ‘sob’ sound) can help us to ‘shake loose’ emotions that might feel stuck or overwhelming.

2.     Singing as a grounding or meditative practice:

Singing is a form of bodywork in itself. There are so many physical processes at play when we sing, and noticing what we’re feeling in our bodies can offer a sense of grounding in the here and now, as well as helping to train the voice. Noticing where we can feel the sound vibrating in the body can feel particularly soothing for many people – I like to imagine that it’s similar to cats purring to heal themselves (though I don’t intend for this to be read as scientific fact!) Something that does have a basis in scientific research, however, is the established impact of chanting as part of meditation practice. Using repetitive, sung words/phrases or humming as part of meditation has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety and hypertension. I am a big fan of using humming as a vocal warmup and grounding exercise ahead of potentially challenging meetings and presentations.

3.     Singing as protest/political voice:

Like many others, I’ve often felt overwhelmed and powerless in the face of world events (most recently, the horrific situation in Gaza). But I’ve found it cathartic and powerful getting together with others at protests, rallies and private gatherings to sing songs that remind us of our common humanity and call for peace. I’m certain that, for as long as we’ve had language, people have sung songs to tell the stories of those who have been silenced, to express collective traumas and to call others to action. At a recent gathering, a contemplative song sung by a small group in a large crowd drew in a lot of attention and helped people to express their feelings. Meanwhile, world famous artists can use their platform to raise awareness and solidarity for the causes that matter to them.

4.     Singing to connect with others:

When we sing, we’re potentially making ourselves vulnerable – it’s exposing. This is a large factor in many people’s horror at the idea of anyone hearing them sing. But it’s also part of the reason that it’s such a powerful way to connect with people and build community. When we sing together, we can share an experience of collectively creating a sound, potentially synchronising our breathing and tuning into each other. It’s a real bonding experience, and  -as with the concept of singing as protest above – it can remind us of our collective power. I’ve often run ‘singing for wellbeing’ programmes for people who have found themselves in the most challenging situations (homelessness, seeking asylum, serious illness). And much of the feedback from participants has focused on the importance of the collective experience of singing – being witnessed as they took up space, made noise and expressed emotion. A 2013 study showed that choir members’ heartbeats could synchronise with each other as they sang (with more structured music showing more significant evidence of synchronisation). The feeling of being part of a huge wall of sound while singing in a large choir, and the feeling of instinctively harmonising in a small group are some of my favourite experiences – I can’t quite find a way to describe or compare them to anything else.

So, with all that in mind, I’m ready to throw out the last vestiges of discounting the importance of singing. And if you’re ready to find out more, drop me a message or check out my next embodied voice and breath workshop here.

Psychological safety

In recent times, the term ‘psychological safety’ seems to have become something of a buzzword. Outside the therapeutic circles I tend to move in, I’ve also heard people talk about it in relation to team meetings, political disagreements on social media platforms and other situations involving groups of people. And I must say, I am pleased to hear terms like this used in popular discourse (as long as they’re meant genuinely).  

Safety is a concept that can’t have been far from anyone’s mind lately. This may be a more practical, rather than emotional form of safety – assessing the risk of a trip to the local shop during lockdown, asking ourselves ‘should I self-isolate?' when we perceive the slightest tickle in our throats, weighing up the pros and cons of meeting a friend in the park for a socially distanced catch up. These decisions might weigh heavily on the psyche for some of us. Our perception of safety, or lack thereof, is psychological. Material risks may not be directly altered by the power of our minds – they exist regardless of our acknowledgement. But our individual relationships to managing risks have a bearing on how we go on to interact with them. At the risk of shaming different approaches to dealing with Covid-19, it’s an interesting study in our different approaches to safety. From those who were furious about joggers continuing their exercise regime in public because they assessed the risk to be critical, to those who flat out denied that anything out of the ordinary was taking place and that the virus is ‘just a flu’, perception informs behaviour, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever before seen an example of this scale where our choices could so profoundly affect the lives of others.  

When I talk about psychological safety, I’m not just referring to the mental risk assessments we all regularly carry out, but they’re a crucial part of the picture. For me, psychological safety is about creating an environment where people feel emotionally safe enough* to allow themselves to be vulnerable and to be seen and heard as they truly are. The term appears in the therapy and coaching worlds because they are about self-reflection, making sense of things that have hurt us and allowing ourselves to be witnessed in a state of vulnerability. In order to feel safe enough to do this work, we need to be able to trust the person or people we’re sharing with. Our mental risk assessment might involve asking questions like ‘will they keep my story confidential?’, ‘do they have my best interests at heart?’ and ‘are they reliable?’ As someone who is trusted with the gift of other people’s stories, emotions and thoughts, I take the responsibility of building a safe enough environment for my clients very seriously. This influences the physical environments I work in, how I set up and contract at the beginning of a relationship with a client, how I organise my time in order to be consistently available and how I respond to clients in session. Occasionally, things go wrong in a client-coach relationship – with enough rapport, trust and safety built up, we can move past any misunderstandings and use them as a powerful learning process.  

This way of thinking has influenced how I am outside of my professional practice. I tend to be acutely aware of how psychologically safe a given situation feels, and will adjust my choices accordingly. I should also add that I am a naturally risk-averse person. Or perhaps it’s less ‘natural’ and more learned. I grew up in a family that had endured an unusual amount of tragedy by the time I came along. My life, health and safety were upheld as the most precious commodity – not to be squandered by doing dangerous things. Of course, there were times in my youth when I rebelled against this as hard as I possibly could. But the tendency to shy away from risk remains. It’s something I work to override when I perceive a risk to be worth taking.  

And so, as we cautiously creep out of our homes after three months of relative isolation, my risk assessment process threatens to go into overdrive. While large gatherings are not yet permitted in London, there will soon come a time when I need to use the city’s notoriously busy public transport system. The question of trust appears in this context as I consider whether those running services will prepare adequately to manage risks, whether I can trust my fellow commuters to take necessary precautions and whether the ‘powers that be’ are offering sensible guidance (I’ll let you guess my take on that last question). And hopefully, before too long, it will be safe to congregate in larger groups again. I imagine that, in our first forays into a wider social life, many of us will experience feelings of elation, relief and a new appreciation for experiences we may have previously taken for granted. But I also expect there to be anxiety and awkwardness for those of us who tend towards a more cautious relationship with risk. How can we reach a place where we feel able to trust not only the people closest to us, but the people we share cultural and physical space with? How do we build psychological safety on a grander scale? This question feels especially pertinent in the current climate of oppression being brought fully into the light, civil unrest and resistance. And it’s one that I do not claim to have an answer to, but we can start with a moment of self-reflection. We can ask ourselves questions like ‘what makes me feel safe and why?’, ‘how do I react when I feel threatened?’ and ‘how do I react when my view of the world is challenged?’. An honest examination of these questions may yield some hard truths. It can be helpful to discuss these with someone we feel psychologically safe with. I believe that getting to know what makes us feel safe and why we feel, think and act the way we do is at least the first step towards collective safety and from there, on to healing the deep rifts in our societies. 

*I refer to ‘safe enough’ or ‘safer spaces’, rather than ‘safe spaces’ because we can only take steps that contribute to another person’s sense of safety. We can’t create it for them. If someone has a deep internal sense of being unsafe due to trauma, we can mitigate by building enough trust and a secure enough environment for them to begin working on this. It’s neither transparent, nor realistic to claim that “you will feel safe here”.