Bringing Back That Lovin' Feelin'
Or how the Art of Attention can save your relationship with your creative practice
This spring, here in Helsinki, as nature was coming back to life after a long winter, the joy of making music for the sake of connecting with myself, my creative Source, and with other humans resurfaced in me again. Over the past 5 months, I’ve found back to what music meant for me long before it became my profession. Singing in a choir and playing in the bateria (the percussion ensemble) of a samba school have allowed me to experience what it’s like to have music as a hobby again - something I haven’t experienced in years! As a trained professional musician and someone who has mainly been in the role of the leader for several years now, I’ve felt enormous joy engaging with music purely for my own joy, learning to play new instruments for the sake of my own curiosity, and being a part of a group and a community where I contribute with my part and am inspired by the leadership of others. I’m spending time with my voice just because I want to, not because I have a performance goal related to it. I’ve rekindled creative dreams, such as learning to play the guitar. I’m writing again. My creative energy, that I had slowly been summoning back, is now flowing through me like a life force.
Last time I experienced something of a pivotal change in my own relationship with my creativity, singing, music and creative practice was 7 years ago. I believe the experiences I had back then laid the foundations for what eventually would evolve into my approach to teaching voice and coaching singers - that I later came to call Sing From The Source™, as well as my artist coaching work and the Create From The Source podcast project. What happened back then was that singing and music-making had become very goal-oriented for me. It was connected to preparing for a specific performance, being on stage, or it was serving as a functional tool that I was using in the vocal coaching sessions and voice work classes that I taught, to help others in the process of solving vocal technique problems and designing their own sound.
Yes, I was singing and making music basically every day…but I wasn’t spending “quality-time” with my voice and my musicality, exploring new sides of it, or “singing and playing just for the love of it”, without any performance outcome or other functional goal attached to the activity. I told myself I didn’t have time for that, and my crazy schedule seemed to confirm it. I was combining a self-produced theater tour with busy teaching schedules both privately and at a performing arts institute, filming for a demanding educational project in the online voice learning realm where I also was the curriculum designer, traveling both locally and internationally for various projects, and was living in a state of constant hustle. My lifestyle wasn’t sustainable for my health or for my creativity, and my body was showing clear signals for me to slow down: I was having recurring migraines, frequent periods of coming down with a flu, and eventually I developed a chronic laryngitis.
My creative ideas seemed gone, and I could not bear the idea of coming up with a concept for new theatre tour for the next season despite the theatre impresario insisting on it. In those times I also noticed I was beginning to lose touch with something essential: I was slowly falling out of love with singing. By the time that the last show with my theatre tour was done, I stopped singing because I didn’t feel like it anymore. I felt drained, exhausted, and singing had lost its spark. I hit a total wall, and after having lived in a state of burnout for the majority of 2 years, my body saw the opportunity to show me that things had to change significantly.
A long healing process on many levels started. Somehow I feel this process really took 7 years to complete! It’s as if the last remaining parts of my creativity that had seemed lost after the burnout, and were snowed under by life in pandemic times, returned back this spring. A part of me thinks it’s quite interesting that this healing process took 7 years, considering the same number of years shows up when we talk about life cycles or karmic cycles 😉.
What I want to focus on here, is the part of the healing process that had to do with reigniting the spark for singing and music-making.
The relationship between the art and the artist is quite fascinating. I like to see it as a love story, a love relationship. And we all know those can get rocky when the flame seems to be gone and things become routine. We also know that falling out of love can be something of a confusing and painful experience. And painful it is, when the “artist inside of you” starts to cry out: “Look at me!”, “Listen to me!”, “Spend time with me!”, “Ask me how I’m doing!” – but you’re too busy with other things (that ironically enough, involve that inner artist somehow, but perhaps not in the way it would want you to spend time with it).
Now, I’m not a relationship therapist, but I know pretty damn well that if you and your partner have “Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, it won’t just magically re-appear by itself. There’s work to do. You’ll have to give each other real attention again. You have to step from a place of “driving on auto pilot” to a place of awareness. Remind yourself of what made you fall in love in the first place. Learn to listen and look at things without judgement or preconceived ideas. And practice forgiveness, because that’s what melts the shield that (self)-judgment has built around your heart.
One of the game-changers back then in finding back my love for singing and music-making, was actually finding back to meaningful practice. Not just practice in preparation for a rehearsal or performance. But daily practice. And more importantly: Practicing the art of attention.
There can be so much judgement and fear involved in practice and music-making, or in any creative act, really. Being judgemental about what’s happening, or having a preconceived idea of what’s possible or not, due to previous experiences. Fear of not being or doing enough, fear of missing out, fear of failure. Fear of not having enough time. So we rush, we try to do too much. We don’t do certain things, because we are sure in advance that it won’t help anyway. Or we don’t do anything, because just getting started is difficult. The expectations, judgements and fears keep us from actually getting to work. And then we end up feeling shitty about that.
This is where the art of attention comes in and offers another way.
Around the same time that I was falling out of love with singing and music-making, I joined a mindfulness course that taught me how to use the MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) techniques developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I had read his wonderful book “Full Catastrophe Living”, but wanted to dive in deeper by practicing it under guidance of a teacher. I was tired of living in that state of constant hustle and stress, and longed for ways to become more present and experience more inner calm.
The practice of mindfulness could be described as paying attention. You’re shifting from the constant state of doing to a state of being, where you’re slowing down, learning to observe your mind, watch your thoughts, and how to let go of them instead of letting them drive you on auto-pilot or getting all caught up in them. The cultivated awareness leads to new ways of seeing old problems, among others. This moment-to-moment awareness is a very desired state indeed when it comes to singing, music practice, or any other creative practice. As Kabat-Zinn points out in his book:
“The present is the only time that we have to know anything. It is the only time we have to perceive, to learn, to act, to change, to heal, to love.”
Prior to having had my experience of “falling out of love with singing”, I had gained much knowledge on how to practice singing and music efficiently. I had meditated on my yoga mat, and I was now doing the mindfulness course. What I hadn’t considered before was the connection between mindfulness, meditation and efficient singing / music practice. It was as if the Universe decided it was time for me to explore this…because not long after I had signed up for my mindfulness course, my own vocal coach in New York that I was seeing online 4 times a week for a vocal technique program, started integrating meditation techniques into all of our classes! Finally I could see the interconnectedness of mindfulness and creative practice, and experience first-hand how the cultivated awareness coming from the meditation practice helped me both tap into my creative Source and show up differently in my creative practice.
I learned many things about staying in the present moment, accepting what there was, and observing things with an objective and open mind.
I started approaching my singing practice from a gentler place, with curiosity and mindfulness rather than from a judgmental, fearful or outcome-driven place.
I spent time on small details, learned to check in on how my voice felt every day and started to notice even the daily changes in my voice.
And here’s the thing: attention makes space for transformation.
Eckhart Tolle writes in “The Power Of Now”:
“The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful. It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary of possible. Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”
What I learned through my daily practice and practicing attention, was to meet my voice with more loving kindness, no matter what it sounded like or was behaving that particular day. When something was “unacceptable, unpleasant, or downright awful” I learned to accept the situation and then act.
Instead of freaking out about it, going on a self-bashing spree or trying to immediately fix a problem with a “quick technical fix”, I’d pay attention to what my voice and body was telling me in that moment. I’d apply just one technique, tool or exercise, and then observe the effects of that. Sometimes “acting” meant taking care of my voice by canceling an appointment or changing my plans, rather than trying to push the limits of what was energetically or physically possible. By paying attention and staying in the moment, I learned to listen to my voice and body in a more profound way. I started actually noticing the small changes, the subtleties that I would have missed out on if I’d just reach out for the “quick fixes”. And little did I know, that the solutions to many issues were often found outside of the toolbox of the typical go-to fixes.
Showing up for my voice, musicianship and creativity every day and doing the smallest possible thing on a consistent basis, made me not only feel accomplished, but it made me fall in love with practice again. And falling in love with practice made me feel that lovin’ feelin’ towards my voice, my musicianship, my art. It also brought new life and love into my teaching, because it opened up new doors for explorations in topics that I was genuinely interested in. That’s quite different from exploring geeky topics just because everyone else seems to be studying that topic, and you fear you will feel stupid if you don’t.
Another important practice in bringing back the lovin’ feelin’ was revisiting “old flames” and songs that were meaningful to me, but had been forgotten because they were not in my performance repertoire at that time. I spent countless hours with the “Joni Mitchell – Complete So Far” and my Tom Jobim songbooks. I stayed blissfully unaware of all the chart hits, while happily singing “Happy Talk” and “Save Your Love For Me” – my all time favorite songs from the Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley album. I’d loudly sing along with my favorite Juan Luis Guerra songs, without feeling a tiny bit embarrassed of getting half of the lyrics all wrong. I’d even return to repertoire I sang way back during the years I had classical singing lessons, for no performance-goal related reason whatsoever. Singing Pergolesi’s “Se Tu M’Ami” just gave my heart wings, that’s why.
I’d also find myself back playing instrumental piano pieces, like my old Chopin and Bach repertoire, improvising on the Fender Rhodes, or attempting to play along a Herbie Hancock solo, terribly failing at it and having fun while doing so. I’m not setting out to make a career as jazz pianist anyway, so who cares. The point is, it was fun. It felt great.
It was kind of like going for a date night with my own voice and musicianship. And we all know that great date nights are like magic for that lovin’ feelin’ 😉
The good news is: through daily mindful practice, playfulness and “returning to the Source”, I fell back in love again with singing and music-making, perhaps even more so than before! This experience also gave me insights that I was able to apply in the years that followed. In many ways, I’ve been returning to similar practices this spring, completing my “7 years creative healing cycle”. It’s also taught me about the importance of prioritising the mindful approach to creative life, and maintaining playful practices and date nights with your creativity, as a way of “safeguarding” yourself from creative burnout.
My wish for you is that this story will inspire you to connect to your love of creating, singing, music-making, art-making. Because in the end, that love is the most important thing there is between you and your art. So remember to nurture it with mindful attention and loving kindness, and make many date nights with it! ❤️
XO Katja
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