Voice workshop day-2

It was the second day of the workshop. We gathered at the venue around 9 and proceeded with our activities.

Before Break:

We started with the hunter game. The rules were quite simple. One person will start the game, he will be the hunter. He will try to touch other participants. If he touches anyone, he is out but if the other participant said some other participant’s name before being touched, then the guy whose name is spoken is the new hunter. This activity was a warm-up for the body as well as for the mind as we had to listen also whose name is being called and confirm we are not near to him. This was great starter for whole day. Then, we commenced to do some exercises which we learnt yesterday. It involved some relaxation technique which succeeded with exercises involving necessary tension in the body.

We started with the bend down and feeling our breath in the back. This is just to let our mind know that we can breath there also. Then we went to plank position and then to warrior’s pose. In all this position’s we were always taking note as where are we placing our breath. If it’s in the back or hips or chest. From warriors pose, we retracted steps and came to standing position. We learnt new thing here. “Necessary tension”. Since now, we had thought that only relaxing is enough to have a good speech but now we got to know that tension also plays important role in speaking effectively.

One of the main focus of the day was to understand how your breath plays a pivotal role in each aspect of life, not just speaking. The next activity was movements. It’s difficult to document this activity but let me try. Firstly, You will move your one hand and all the other body parts will follow that hand. Similarly other hand, then one leg, then other, then waist. Meaning one body part will be primary and others will follow. Then we tried with two moving body parts. Breath was always in our mind as how it changes with the movement. Now we were to dance to the music. Dance without a care in the world. Slowly or sometime abruptly changing the pace of the dance taught us very crucial fact that breath also follows our movements. If we are moving fast or abruptly, suddenly the breath will will also become shorter and shallow. Moving slowly will cause the breath to move slow and it goes way into your stomach. What we are to do is to isolate these two activities which is a very advanced stage. It was 10:30 now and we took a break.

After Break:

Now was the time to take movements to another level. We stood at one end of the room. All we had to do was walk till the other end of the room. It was to be done with the least movement possible. So no part of your body will move without your knowledge. If you’re rotating the toe to maintain balance, you should know that movement also. Even eyelid movement should be known to you. We reached and waited on the other end of the room till our whole queue arrived and then we took a u turn, changed the hands position and walked back in the same manner. We reached the other end and again waited for all to reach. Reaching and at the hint of trainer, we just dropped ourselves to the floor. We stayed there for a while and then started to get up without using our hands. The activity was over now. We had a feedback session as to what we were feeling while we were doing that. How our body felt and what we did about the pain which was happening in the body. We noticed extreme concentration and tolerance which some of us never experienced.

The session after movement was again Suzuki. It was more extensive and gruesome than the first day but somehow It was not as tiring. We performed acts which involved breath, body and mind altogether. Again focus was on the breath, breath and breath. we were also pushing the earth down with our body weight. Suzuki is a very detailed technique which is difficult to explain in the scope of this blog. Probably I will write a separate post once I have more experience in this.

Next activity was text reading. We did a sample of this on day 1 which I forgot to mention in the post. This was to tell how text reading should be done. How breath length and duration changed the meaning of what we want to convey. How can we achieve this and master at the same time. It’s all about when you inhale. All the meaning and impactness of voice depends on when you inhale and exhale. Each inhale is a pause and that changes the meaning. Consider below example:

• I am the thief.
• I am, the thief.
• I, am the thief.

All three sentences have same literal mean but expression changes with each comma which represents here a pause. Each pause represents an idea which should be decided already by speaker. This is very thin and important technique to master. If you see Narendra Modi speaking, his each inhales is on a different idea. Which is why his voice is so effective. After learning about this, we also did a practical. I would like to mention our trainer here who patiently came to each individual and helped him really understand the process to do this.

After this, we touched on few theatre techniques ie. viewpoints. Viewpoints is a technique which works as a medium for artists to work on movement, gesture and creative space. This was the conclusion of the workshop. We clicked some pics and bid goodbye.

I will be updating the feedback which I experienced in last few days regarding what it changed in the way I speak or live. Thanks for reading.