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Hi Everyone, This is my first time on this website. I have done a meeting but not posted anything in the forum. I used to attend meetings in Amsterdam when I lived there. I have been experiencing a lot of muscle tension in my body for the last four years. It started with jaw tension and is not the best thing as I work as an opera singer and slowly my life has become unmanageable to it as I try to go on a voyage of self discovery to work out the root cause of my pain. It feels quite an emotionally painful process but I do believe I am getting myself to a better and healthier place. My life is slowly becoming more balanced and my workaholic ways and people pleasing ways are turning themselves around which brings me to my topic of 'let it begin with me'. I see an osteopath to help me and we talked recently about becoming the person I am rather than pleasing and looking for acknowledgement constantly from others. I also know the phrase 'awareness, acceptance and action', because as time goes on I realise more and more and see more the patterns I have used to get me to where I am now. I am finding it hard to know who I am behind all the pleasing and trying. Oooooooh, the constant trying I am beginning to see and I feel exhausted from it. I don't know how not to try with others or please others, and I am realising that the one person I should be pleasing as been neglected along the way. Myself. So I try even though sometimes it feels hard, to speak my truth (say what you mean and don't say it mean), not fear rejection incase somebody doesn't like who I am and I am hoping my higher power shows me the way and leads me to the right people and situations to help me live mot truthfully for myself. I strongly believe my body tells me everything I need to know and I need to listen to it and take the pressure off and just be who I am. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to MIP...it sounds to me as though you have a refreshing openness to hear your guidance. Yes, I agree we hear much through our bodies, and, I have learned guidance comes from other sources as well. Your insights will continue to lead you to transformation as your HP is heard....being who I was created to be, in my questioning, has led me to wonder if that discovery is ongoing until I leave this life? I will see!
I am happy to listen and look forward to knowing you and your al anon experiences as time goes on.....al anon keeps me grounded, in reverance and humble Keep coming back if it works for you. Hugs!!!
Hello~As you have attended alanon in the past, you are already aware of alot of the tools. My guess now is that you need practice, and not on singing! When my stress hits, I feel it immediately in my neck. I have severe back and neck issues. The stress always goes to our weak spots. I hope you will continue to work your program. It has helped me a great deal, and I will continue along my journe side by side with alanon. Lyne
Hi Lyne, Thanks for your reply. I do work as a singer and somehow manage but I am in almost constant pain. I have a lot of tension. I almost feel like I've never had a voice in my family and when all this started I did everything to run and escape it, thinking it would go away. I know now it's a lot of pent up emotions that I held in and that when I don't honour myself it gets worse. So I do stick with the program and know it helps me a lot. I remember my very first meeting finally feeling I had found somewhere where I felt I belonged and was understood. I hope your neck feels better and we keep having the courage to change. Good luck.
I meditate and take better care of myself and I am learning to polity say no to some work colleagues, which helps a lot I am reminded of when I got married. I was working on a big job in Thailand and at the end of the job I had food poisoning. I was due to get married two days later and worried about how I would make it through the ceremony. When the day arrived there were nine Buddhist monks who chanted at the beginning of the service and the sound was so relaxing and beautiful, my stomach cramps completely vanished.
Welcome to MIP Singingnick -I really like your awareness and the principle of honouring yourself.
Thanks for your message. I have also started meditating and do yoga now most days. I needed to get back into my body and out of my mind ruling everything. I have created a lot of anxiety in my mind and I find that the yoga and meditation helps me a lot. I was even pleased recently as I am going on first dates with guys, that I put my yoga and meditation classes before arranging to meet them and please them. I did what was going to make me happy and that felt good. Little steps every day. The chanting monks sounds wonderful. My next thing is to go and do a silent retreat for 10 days and really know how to sit with myself alone. Thanks for your support.
I am in support of you listening to your body and listening to that still small voice within, too. Considering what you've said, I do find myself wondering why your throat hasn't taken a beating, too, considering that it is the place on our body that lets us know we are discounting ourselves. Perhaps singing is your passion and yet you need other outlets to support the rest of you? I'm glad you are going on retreat, enjoying yoga, seeing an osteopath, meditating and attending Al-Anon, too. I don't know if you sing just for fun and being one who has learned to express myself through singing at times, if you aren't already, it might be therapeutic for you to sing just for the heck of it and something you wanted to sing but never have? Welcome to MIP. Keep coming back.
I found a class recently at my gym called 'relaxation' and I attended it a few weeks ago. It was a guided meditation and I noticed that I drifted into a semi-unconscious state: half asleep but half awake. It was very relaxing and the instructor's voice was quite soothing. You might want to look into something like this in addition to your yoga.
I just did a 20 min yoga video last night to try to release the tension in my neck, back, and hips. I know it's all stress related as I just had a physical and everything turned out fine but the pain along my mid spine is becoming problematic. When I went to the chiropractor I asked him why the pain is where it is and the first words out of his mouth were 'emotional stress' and how it is found along that section of the spine. OHHHH, that explains it, LOL!
You sound like you are taking great care of yourself and that's the best we all can do for ourselves! HUGS and support to you, hope to see you around more on the boards!
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Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be!
I actually work full time as an opera singer in an opera house in Belgium so I use my voice every day for my work. I sometimes wonder about the bigger picture in my life and I believe I came in this lifetime to open up by using my voice. I used to get vocal problems but I don't now even though sometimes I am in so much discomfort. It's so strange, because friends who know what discomfort can't believe how free my singing sounds when I say I am in so much discomfort. I think I just learnt as a child to hold my emotions in and singing and music was my outlet and ticket out of the horrors of living in an alcoholic household. I admit I learnt to sing from fear. In fact, I learnt to do many things from fear and this is how I have sang for years and I realise it now. I put a lot of pressure on myself to really achieve something and be someone and get acknowledgement and be this amazing soloist who travels the world thinking this was the only life I was willing to live, so I tried soooooo hard to force things to happen that I made myself sick in the process. Now I am taking better care of myself by being forced to by my body, my life has changed a lot and I feel I am able to start letting some of these emotions out that I had numbed myself to. Singing for me was the only way I felt I had a voice in the world and I'm learning that it's ok to be who I am and say what I want to say to others without fear of rejection and I am learning to trust others and love myself and to try less and surrender my control. I'm not saying I get it right every day, but at least I am aware now. I like your advice about just singing for the fun and picking things I really like. I tried to do it the other day but I'm looking for more ways to just open up and let go. Here's hoping I can. Thanks.
Thanks for your message. I am realising that it's emotional stress and lots of it. I had to be strong and make a living much younger than I should have done and the pressure and stress had finally caught up with me. Whilst I was 'surviving' I was learning to hold all those emotions in. I will never do this again. I will honour my emotions and allow myself to feel them. I also like the relaxation classes. I think we forget to take time to relax, and to really give our bodies the chance of that. Enjoy future classes!!!!
I recently retired from a very high stress job. One of the ways I helped myself "let go" was by creating on the spot operettas that were about the situation I was in at the time. My assistant was a choir director and would laugh so hard at my on the spot production that it spurred me on. She would then add her own music and her own words and it became a two woman show although certainly not a duet. It didn't change a thing about the high pressure situations we were in at the time but it sure got our juices and our joy and our gratitude up and poppin' again. I love to do things because I love to do things. When I attach "have to" to it - even if I love it - I'll hate it. I'm glad you are willing to look at singing music for the fun of it. I took voice lessons when I was younger and quit because the voice teacher kept wanting me to become an opera singer. I didn't like opera and told her so, but she kept trying to train me for it. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew what I loved to sing. She continued to tell me that I had a voice that could be trained for that world and though that might have been true, my heart wasn't in it. I went on to sing what I loved to sing and where I loved to sing it. I do hope you love what you do because music is a universal language that can bring so much goodness into the world. You have to be very talented if you were selected to sing?
And now that I know you sing opera, would you mind sharing what part that you sing? Soprano, alto...? And please share a little with us about Belgium and maybe some of your favorite sights or experiences there? I love learning about other countries from people who live there. Are the operas in Italian that you sing?
-- Edited by grateful2be on Monday 8th of September 2014 06:19:36 PM
Nice user name. Nice to hear your singing tales and that you went for the fun things rather than all the stress linked to it. I am a soprano. A lyric soprano so I would sing things like 'O mio babbino caro' and Mimi from La Boheme. I work full time in the chorus at the opera in Antwerp and Gent. I had big dreams to be a travelling soloist and bust a gut trying to make that happen for years thinking it was what I needed to gain all the attention I had every wanted that I was starved of as a child, but suddenly one day I sang for the opera in Antwerp and got the job the same day, completely throwing me off my plan that I had for my life, thinking they would just take me on for a contract here and there. But I had made a deal with my higher power that I would go wherever I was sent so I went ahead and moved to Belgium. I am originally English and have lived all over, going where the work was. I've lived in London, Scotland, Brighton, Amsterdam and other places in Holland and now Antwerp. I really liked living in Amsterdam because it's so pretty and I felt so lucky to live there and was very sad to leave, but I prefer my life in Belgium now. It's not the best place ever, but the pace of life is slower and less stressed and they have a good food and drink mentality that the Dutch lack. Gent and Bruge are pretty cities and very nice for tourists to see and beer is made by monks in monasteries. The ardennes are very pretty. Lots of rolling hills but where I am there are no hills, making it perfect for cycling everywhere. It's not easy to keep starting again in places and it's 2 years since I moved here. I am very glad that life is giving me less stress and more balance. I needed it a lot, and for that Belgium is very good. It's not easy to understand the culture of people but I love the fact that it's easy to travel to many countries from here. France, Holland and Germany are neighbours and jumping on the eurostar from brussels to London takes just over 2 hours so it's very good for that. I have no idea if I will stay here. I will just see what life gives me. With regards to my singing, I do what I can. I don't think I have truly enjoyed it for a long time as I let myself get caught up in the fight of it and getting work etc....and I lost where it all came from, but I am slowly trying to find where my joy for it was. I feel it in yoga when I do my ommmmm do at least that is a start.
Thank you for giving me a view of your hopes, your life, your experiences and your cultural exposures. I live in a City in the US that is highly populated by Dutch immigrants and their families. I migrated from another state that was highly populated with Belgians, Italians, Poles and Hungarians. My family ancestry is British/Scottish and a wee bit of Irish. So, who knows. Maybe we're related?
Seeing your story about being knocked out of your hopes and dreams for your life and on the road you believe your HP chose for you as a woman trained to sing with the chorus in different countries sounds exciting to me and I get the other part of that story that includes frequent moves and getting caught up in the fight of it and getting work. Challenging to balance one's passion with the need to eat/security?
Being able to rest in the same place for 2 years - what a gift for you. Being able to enjoy the place you live and the ability to visit London, France and Germany must be a perk that you're grateful to notice and to take advantage of in your line of work?
It saddens me to read that you haven't really enjoyed your life's work and I'm happy to read that you are searching for the joy that was once yours? In Al-Anon, we make gratitude and asset lists that can make such a difference for us. In the work I did, I could get bogged down with some of the challenges inherent in what I did. Part of that was having to raise the money I needed to do the work I did. Part of it was over-doing. Part of it was working hard and not always seeing I was getting anywhere or had accomplished much. When I sat down and wrote out where I'd been and what had happened, I began to see that much progress had been made. As you are doing, I also slowly released myself from habits and behaviors that got in the way of my joy because I was too tired to enjoy things. Attending Al-Anon, working the steps with a sponsor, finding ways to have fun every day that was just for me, and making gratitude and asset lists was a big help to me and also helped me see that it was time to retire and do something new for awhile. I don't regret any of the years I lived out my passion or the experiences that I had. I am also glad that I was released from it by my HP that Al-Anon also helped me hear when the time came to admit that it was time to close the door on the past and step into the unknown future.
Keep coming back. Although you are not in relationship to an A, considering your Dad was an alcoholic and you're living where monks brew beer(smile), you have been affected by it in ways that you might not even recognize. My parents were not As and so I was very confused as to how I ended up marrying an A. It took years in recovery to begin to see that not only he and his family were affected by alcoholism - so was I and my family for generations. I am sorry you are in such pain and I do believe that all you are doing will help you and Al-Anon will provide a healing place for you, too.
Keep coming back if it works for you. Hugs!!!
I am reminded of when I got married. I was working on a big job in Thailand and at the end of the job I had food poisoning. I was due to get married two days later and worried about how I would make it through the ceremony. When the day arrived there were nine Buddhist monks who chanted at the beginning of the service and the sound was so relaxing and beautiful, my stomach cramps completely vanished.