Tuesday: Part 2

I've had a lot going on in my head recently, my mind constantly racing, unable to let go of one particular situation that I'm in the middle of processing. I'm finding it hard to relax, to enjoy my precious time with Joe, to focus on anything else. In fact, the only time I stop thinking about it is when I am singing. The healing vibration of singing takes over and it is the only thing that can soothe me.

Maybe I just have ADD, but I've always prided myself on my multi-tasking abilities. I can bake a loaf of bread, load the dishwasher, cook eggs, and memorize recit at the same time. I can do laundry, make cookies, talk on the phone to a friend all at the same time. Okay, so it's not so amazing. Most of you probably do the same thing. But it's the same at work, I am ALWAYS doing more than one thing at a time. It's a skill I've cultivated, and a skill that has trained me to drive myself crazy. It's almost like I feel guilty if I am only accomplishing one thing at a time.

When I am practicing, all of that noise goes away. I am completely engrossed in what I am doing, totally in the moment of the music, thinking only about how to make my voice sound it's best. It's one of the few things I can think of that you can do during which it's nearly impossible to think about anything else.

Maybe that is why I find singing so incredibly healing. It really seems to me like a portal into a divine place of intense presence. A place where all I can focus on is the vibration and the sound and the emotion. It takes me out of myself. IT quiets the mental noise.

Like chanting and the purring of a cat, it has been suggested that the vibration literally has the power to heal us both emotionally and physically.

Since the pursuit of the opportunity to sing can drive us so completely insane, it's a good thing that singing itself has the opposite effect. Or I'd be so much more crazy than I already am.