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Experience the POWER of SOUND
on March
4, 2013, I find this
beautiful demonstration of Chris making an audience sing
Born in Australia, Chris teaches internationally about the
power of sound, …
and has shown that discovering your natural
voice
is a major key to
self expression,
self-empowerment
and physical and emotional health.
"Everyone is born with a beautiful voice", he says. …
Chris’ music brings harmony, healing and peace of mind.
His extraordinary voice and vocal range open the heart and soul,
and his humour and compassion instills
self-esteem, confidence and healing…
Chris presents … the ‘big picture’ of sound
awareness that is sweeping the world today.
He teaches about the natural gifts of voice and music
that nourish body & soul,
nurture creativity
and open our awareness to become all we can be.
Chris and his wife Jenny ... are dedicated to teaching the healing power
of sound, singing
and the attainment of knowledge and empowerment that comes from discovering
one's natural voice.
... Chris is dedicated to recreating harmony on the planet -
in people, between people and between people and the planet.
Harmony for Chris is ...a result of being present, which is the same as
really listening.
While the eyes see ahead to a "vision"
and are thus orientated to the future,
the ears are the key to reality in the present moment,
for hearing is always here now.
A Celebration of Sound
...a Vocal Adventure
...the Healing Power of Sound
...the tuning-up of large groups of people.
… freeing experience to sing as part of a large group,
in which one can let go in a way otherwise only experienced in the bathroom
of an empty house.
The non-judgemental support and co-creation of the other participants
enables undreamt of vocal achievements
while people's pride and joy in their shared creation
always brings them both together and out of themselves.
Discover your natural voice
Who likes the sound of their own
voice?
This is a question I ask people time and time again,
when teaching them how to love their voice,
or how to discover their voices.
The response is usually the same:
...whether it's a crowd of 500 or an introductory workshop of 30-40,
80-90% of people will laugh and put up their hand and say
they don't like their voice, or they don't think they can sing in tune.
you started to selectively filter your sound, becoming "tone deaf",
and actually perhaps becoming a little bit deaf.
You see, you really were born with a beautiful voice.
You were born with the ability to sing beautifully, with total openness.
The image of dancing and singing through a field of flowers
with total lack of self-consciousness
is potentially each one of us.
We are also born with the ability to actually heal with our voice.
This healing quality of the voice can range from
the communication of wonder that comes with just listening to a beautiful
singing voice
to the actual pure quality of a tone affecting the physical and emotional
body of the person to whom it is directed.
..
... to have a free-flowing instrument of expression...!
... the voice is one of the main keys that we have been given to access
a state of communion with the divine
-
… we want to be free of the limitations of these trapped and wounded
aspects of ourselves.
… One of the immediate and tangible results of freeing your voice
is the enhancement of your ability to listen.
"They" say that the average adult hears some 8% of their aural
environment.
.. the ability to listen without judgement,
to listen without thinking what you would say,
or without wanting to jump in to correct or to agree with the speaker.
This ability to be a true listener is like giving a gift to someone.
When a person experiences the safety net of your attention and focus
they have the chance to perhaps express things
that they have not been able to express ever in their lives.
Nature has provided us with so many aural cues
for coming into the now, or elevating our consciousness.
When we start to access the purity of our own tone,
we will start to be aware of these aural cues
- in the wind, in the ocean, and in the song of the birds.
... that high-frequency sounds charge the cerebral cortex.
When you are in a state of heightened listening awareness,
you can actually feel the effect of a bird's song ...
you can feel it ripple through your body, and subtly alter your awareness.
... to loosen up... laughing, moving your body, feeling free to groan,
to make noise, to yell.
At this stage we are not even thinking of the tunefulness of the voice.
So many people need to just become unstuck with sound in general,
so the first thing to do is to unstick the voice.
The first sound we really concentrate on making is
a deep heartfelt groan.
A full groan that reaches down to the belly, and beyond,
is perhaps the most relaxing sound that the human voice can make.
You actually feel it reverberate in your belly, and through your hands
and even your legs.
When people first go to groan, they will probably encounter also the need
to open their mouth!
... when you have been nursing the suppression of expression of a lifetime,
just opening your mouth fully can be quite a journey.
Sometimes even at this stage, people already experience some of the emotional
release of freeing their voice.
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The
search for meaning --a
caroline jones interview © ABC Radio 1990 [2013 not found]
Caroline:
Grown up lonely, South of Broken Hill,
used to take flutes and flagolettes to the bush to echo bird calls and
hear their replies.
His search to find himself, his vocation,
and a mature experience of the deep sense of beauty glimpsed in youth
has taken him through four years as a monk in an obscure Indian cult ashram,
four years as a professional martial …
Eighteen years as an entertainer, singer, instrumentalist,
into the life of a troubadour, travelling round Australia,
offering people a breath, song and dance
experience
to help them find the unique, pure tone of their own voices
and through that, a sense of harmony and healing within.
What others may call workshops, Chris
prefers to call 'play-shops'.
...
Chris uses ... a process of groans and 'aahs' and creative movement and
breathwork....
Chris: In the desire to protect people, and to protect the weak,
I tried to make myself the perfect warrior and I tried all different sorts
of martial arts.
I aspired to being an officer in the army, and was very concentrated in
that area,
to the point where I had my own body guard business called Personal Protection
Pty Ltd.
And it wasn't till really only a couple of years ago that I really put
it all together,
that what I was protecting was a very frightened little child inside of
myself
who'd been so scared, and had such a perception of beauty so young that
had been squashed,
that had needed this incredible body and agility and accuracy
and all the things that go with martial arts to protect it,
until I actually came to realise that, yes,
I was actually protecting this very frightened child,
I actually finally met that little child inside of me
and I had no need then for the psychic barrier of a martial artist.
The time I spent as a monk,
I had an awareness after the initial visions of beauty,
and that the things that it was possible for a human being to experience
that no-one had told me that, there had been no input what so ever,
that actually life as a human being could be incredibly exciting, energy
filled, feeling in harmony,
and no-one had sort of mentioned this that life was good, at all,
and so the life style and the life that I'd lived had been really sort
of average Australian,
there had been no real focussing of the mind,
no sending one inside to discover the inner stillness,
and so I'd spent four years really striving to find God inside myself
and I felt that I was in the same place
then as with the martial arts,
because I was striving, I was trying,
One of my 2012 songs
[Nr.7]
I would meditate for so long
that I'd feel like a Michaelangelo picture of the fingers of God and man
that never touched,
and I would sort of weep,
this incredible desire to experience totally letting go into an outside
feeling of oneness,
...
Caroline:
Was there a turning point that made the possibility of that reality much
more constant?
Chris:
When I realised that I had to be totally responsible for everything in
my life,
when I found that I couldn't blame my partner for my lack of love,
when I accepted total self responsibility, .. and no longer was I a victim
of the outside influence,
and I realised that whatever I had, I had created,
and also then whatever beauty was coming in, I could create more of.
...Then there's always been the Mr. Good Guy
and the part of me that's always wanted to be loved,
so I would never have offended anyone,
and always trying to make everyone else feel really, really good.
And that's a pretty standard sort of persona in our world
at the moment where people are ignoring themselves and being do-gooders.
Caroline:
Someone helped you to see that in yourself?
Chris:
Again its an accumulation, I actually realised;
one of the turning points also was I had to be taught by women.
I had to open up to the intuitive guidance of women,
because there's just so much that men have to learn,
and they just cannot learn it by themselves at the moment,
there's too much of a back log of the patriachial system.
...
Especially because as a man one is not encouraged to dance freely.
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singing
as therapy - an interview in National Radio (NZ) 29/8/94 [not
found]
Kim Hill:
Chris . . . a toning teacher.
His techniques for uncovering the natural voice
aim to help people experience the healing power of uninhibited singing,
alone or in harmony with others.
He has worked with drug withdrawal groups and depression groups,
stress management groups, prenatal groups, professional singers, ...
and reckons that being able to sing frees the soul.
Chris James joins me now -
....
Chris :...
parents have been fighting,
and the very sensitive child's ears have chosen to shut down certain frequencies.
Kim Hill:Why
would they choose to shut down on the singing frequency then?
Chris:They haven't chosen to shut down on the singing,
they've chosen to shut down on the hearing,
and so when they are asked to sing at some stage, which always happens
in school,
then they've just gone "Bang, you sing this note"
and the child's hearing has been just - not damaged, just withdrawn -
and so they've not heard the pitch correctly at that stage.
If at that time the teachers have the understanding and the knowledge
to almost aurally prepare them to sing first,
then... those children who you thought were out of tune at that stage
would be in tune.
Kim Hill:And
how do you aurally prepare them?
Chris:
With adults, what you do is you get them to loosen up their body first,
and then to very much relax, and then to still the mind, and ~~~
Kim Hill: So
when I'm standing in the shower after aerobics, I should be sounding like
~~~
Chris:Well
the shower is an interesting - everyone likes to sing in the shower because
it's resonant...
Kim Hill:So
it's actually getting people to come out with the noise...and then you
can tune it . . .
Chris:Well, coming out ~~~yeah~~~
one of the first exercises that we teach is the deep belly groan, ...
You get them to drop down into their belly and get the sound reverberating
through the body,
and from that point on, you get them to go into the stillness,
and then to listen,
and what the frame of reference that you give them then is -
you give them very pure sounds.
When people are in a very deep listening state,
it is almost like you are re-programming their system with these pure
sounds.
Kim Hill:You
don't just work with people who want to sing
...you work with people who have other problems that are helped by enabling
them to sing.
Chris: From
being asked to open the Australian Home-birthing conference, where when
you ~~~
Kim Hill:Singing
in childbirth?
Chris:Yes,
well it's actually the opening up of the throat ... feel free about making
sound.
The benefits go from releasing cramp and tension
into lubrication of the birth canal
into just free and open expression . . .
Kim Hill:You
don't have to worry about it being in tune do you?
Chris:
No, exactly ~~~(laughs) God, am I in tune?
..What we found working with drug rehab there's -
when you uncover some aspects of your voice
you are also enhancing your will.
And your will is quite a damaged phenomena in this generation.
Kim Hill: How
does that connection happen, the singing voice and the will?
Chris:It's
the obvious one of self-esteem, that's the surface thing.
When people who have never sung sing in tune with a group,
... there's a big emotional release there,
because people feel this sense of wonder.
Which organised religion has known and tapped
into,
this source of wonder in group singing.
...,
the combination of the fundamental tone and the harmonic, as in Gregorian
chants . . . The other aspect is
... when you have (demonstrates) UH very
deep sounds,
the deep UH
that goes right deep into your belly,
you'll find quite often that people with damaged
self-esteem
are not able to make powerful sounds.
And quite often women , who have given their
power away
are not able to make a strong percussive sound.
That's one classic example.
You work on that percussive sound,
get that part of your body resonating,
and you start to feel directly the energy,
the possibility of being able to change your life.
...the direct effect on your body can only be done through singing,
and you'll find these references throughout history, to the mystic classic
musicians,
who felt this direct connection between the song and the voice and the
spirit.
....
Kim Hill:On
the basis of your theories, singers should be happier people than most
. . .Prove it!
Chris:.....Professional
singers have felt removed from that by the mechanical training that they've
been through.
... young students finding their own centre, dealing with teaching on
a more metaphysical level.
a community [Chris came just back
from Findhorn] that sings together experiences
a high degree of bonding.
...It uncovers the deeper transpersonal aspects,
but gives you a lot of fun at the same time.
....
Chris:(Demonstrates
overtones)
........................
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