Q: I just finished practicing my vocal exercises for the first time with Navigating My Experience [available on writings page of website]. After re-reading your article and instructions, I went through the steps of emotional, mental, physical - feeling my anxiety of even starting because of how awful my voice has sounded and how hard physically it is to even make a sound. I stayed with that for a few minutes then asked myself how would I like to feel at the outcome - buoyant, light, loose, my voice open. I remembered a time when I felt like that singing in a jazz church vespers where my voice soared in the rafters. I began my warm up exercises, with a few bumps and then behold! My voice got it! The sound that came through me was totally different from all the hard work sound from before. My voice was light, lovely, more on pitch, open, emotionally alive but not shaky (filled with "drama"). Navigating My Experience is how I will be practicing from now on and looking for how to apply it in all of my life.
A: Yes, this procedure is efficient. Remember that "buoyant, light, loose, my voice open" are not feelings - they are a string of mental concepts. Make sure when you again ask yourself how you want to feel at the outcome, that you engage with your answer as pure, non-mentalized, 'felt-perception'. This relates to a conversation I was having the other day about therapists. The best thing a therapist does is ask: "So, how did that make you feel?" Then, they completely mess up by allowing the person they are facilitating to actually verbally reply to their question. Because the appropriate reply to such a question is not a string of verbalaized words delivering a series of concepts - it is a silence in which the inquired resonance of felt-perception is experienced. The therapist does not have to be informed of this for it to be valid. Feeling is the validation. The accurate answer is "a feeling", and feeling this feeling, not talking about it. So, trim the fat from your next navigational experience by not answering yourself with words, but with pure felt-sensations. A feeling is only a feeling when felt - not when discussed. Approach your navigational intent this way and perceive the enhanced capacity of this perceptual tool.
