welcome to the

introduction to

Vocal Chaos Magic

a liberation workshop

Light your candle and place it before you to consecrate your space for practicing magic.

chapter 1.

Electric Fire technique

Expand lung capacity & become a clear conduit

This ancient Tibetan breathing technique is the last of the Six Yogas of Naropa. It honors the fierce female deity, Kali. Tummo literally translates to Tum (Courage) and (Mo) the feminine. This technique builds inner-fire by building the electrical charge in the body.

You'll enjoy longer durations of meditative states, deeper breath for longer vocal notes, increased endurance, mood elevation, increased control of adrenal responses, higher body pH levels, and countless other benefits.

Poetic theory: Electricity connects to the clearest conduit, the tallest tree, a lightning rod, an enlightened person. When we increase our electric charge and practice compassion for all beings, we become a clearer conduit, making us more attractive to the electricity abound: other people's hearts, distant lightning storms, birds, dragon flies, etc. Practice this technique to become a powerfully influential sorcerer. 

This is the light version. To learn more, sign up for private coaching.

1. Breath

Inhale fully (100%) for 35 sequential breaths. When you exhale, just release to about 30% (don't push out all the way out). You may feel dizzy or experience muscle contractions and tingles. It's all O.K. Focus on the energy, following it through the sensations in your body. As you breath, try to keep your shoulders relaxed while stretching your chest and upper belly muscles. Make the breath circular. Use a mudra, index finger to thumb, to help capacitate the charge.

People with vaginas: imagine the breath entering through your vagina and exiting through your heart.

People with penises: image the breath entering through your heart and exiting through your penis.

Everyone: Allow your perineum (root muscle) to flex and lock on the inhale and allow your exhales to be gentle and sensual.

If your throat feels chapped from the breathing, slurp the air in through your whistle shaped lips and exhale with the back of your throat somewhat closed off, as if you were fogging a pane of glass.

2. Witness

After you 35th breath, exhale naturally and wait. Notice the effects of the oxygen alkalizing your body. Notice the thoughts you have as you scan the electricity coursing through your body. The goal here is to stay as relaxed as possible. You can increase your soft relaxation by imagining a ball of white light in your heart, expanding out to envelope your friends, lovers, adversaries, and strangers with loving kindness and equanimity.

You might explore timing yourself to see how long it takes before for you need to inhale. Recording retention times gives you a map of your progress. You'll find, with practice, your retention times effortlessly grow longer and longer.

3. Final hold

When you finally need to breath, inhale fully and hold on the inhale. You'll feel the fire. With practice you can draw the fire up from your root, into your belly, up into your heart, through your vocal chords and out through your third eye and crown. The fire is like a flaming dragon that likes to slither up and around. You may notice tension: muscles that have been tight for years. The dragon's fire may smooth or spasm then relax these muscles. It's all O.K. Don't force your holds too much. Don't pass out!

Release and breath normally. Witness the effects of the practice on your body and mind.

4. Repeat

Repeat this process two more times. (Steps 1, 2 and 3)  For best results, do three rounds each morning when you wake up. Practice on an empty stomach when possible.

WARNINGS: Do not practice under water, in a shower, or anyplace where suffocation could happen. Do not practice while driving. You may feel lightheaded and dizzy. Practice at your own risk. 

Chapter 2.

Warm-Ups

Rousing the phoenix

After the inner-fire meditation, our body is smoldering with electrical charge that begs to ascend into a thunderhead. The voice is your phoenix, the catalyst. It rises up from your charged core into your burning heart. As we lift our voices, our tongues lick the heavens with the flames of our heart song.

The phoenix sleeps hard and heavy. It must be roused from its slumber by gently prodding its true beastly will. Don't force it. Honor it by allowing it to relax and wake slowly.

This technique is a great warm-up before vocal performances, incantation rituals, public speaking, and meeting the day. If you struggle with "stuck voice," keep practice this ritual before you leave your bed each morning

Give yourself a stretch and a squeal. Explore sounding your voice high and low with multiple yawns. Give each yawn your full presence and witness how it pleases your voice to express in high and low yawns and squeaky stretches. As you stretch, sound the feelings of resistance. If you feel like grunting or squeaking like a rusty hinge, do it! Sound what feels good. This wakes up the voice and honors the nature of your inner beast. Notice, when you relax into stretching and yawning, your voice can swing higher, lower and louder than you might expect. Practice throughout the day whenever you feel inspired to wake your voice and play with your range.

chapter 3.

techniques and archetypes

mimic the moon

Our non-dual reality begs the conversation about the vast and varied characters that color our lives. These characters infiltrate our subconscious mind, absconding our psyche in dream-like states. Careful observation and mimicry of archetypal expression helps to bring our sub conscious desires into the light of consciousness. As we grow more keen to identifying the key vocal expressions of the characters in our lives, we gain a better understanding of how these spirits influence our subconscious. We discover the patterns in their inflection, the vulnerability in their dissonant tones, the authenticity in their vocal posturing. We discover the subtle dramas of each teacher as they offer lessons of the archetype.

Take out your note pad. As we review each vocal technique, create a single character to represent each flourish. It can be as simple as a triangle, wavy line, double line or figure 8. Make it something you can easily remember for the association. We'll use your character later when designing a sigil.

3-01.

Sexual Cheese

and spiritual chocolate

Time to pretend! Time to channel. You are no longer you. You are an empty vessel. You don't have to worry about anyone judging you because you are no longer you. Some of the most powerful performers, wizards and vocalists in the world fake it till they make it. Even Beyoncé uses this technique - she's actually Sasha on stage. The great Lamas of Tibet encourage inhabiting the spirit of an enlightened being as a first step to becoming enlightened. So this is kinda like, "What Would Jesus Do?" except we're going cheese-balls and fiddlesticks with the art of "Hamming it Up."

You are now a Bee Gees Brother

Sing out a "Hee, Hee." Keep it soft, breathy, light. Give it that silky, Velveeta cheese disco charm. Run through the vowels (long and soft) and feel that sweet spot tickle your fancy. Keep it real cheesy. Explore descending in pitch, starting soft and high moving down to loud and low. Notice how the play of cheesy channeling mitigates the tension of hitting those high notes.

Watch Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon play to this style on SNL. 

the world just got really nasty

Let out a bewildered "EEEEW!" Give it a more pronounced swing, like you're really offended. Now try it Bee Gees style.

You're now in the mood to make love and you've got a gold tooth and bed of roses to prove it. Go down, real low down, slow and soft. Let out an "OOOH" and an "Ahhh".  Keep it Velvety. Keep it Velveeta.

You're now a bag of popcorn

Make your voice raspy. So raspy that it grates on a single pop, one or two at a time, kinda like the ghost from the movie, The Ring. Now speed it up, moving from the nasty low, up to the cheesy high, "eee-hee." Explore starting a phrase with this rasp to heighten the nastiness of the funk. Explore singing, "I'm gunna love you right." using the Popcorn technique.

Spiritual Chocolate

Think of a thing that needs to change in the world. Sing, "We got to..." and end everything you say with a breathy "ah", like an Evangelist preacher. "We got to cast some Magic Spells... AH!"

Add emphasis to the verb in volume, pitch, duration, and diction. If the phrase is particularly long, explore racing through the first portion until you reach the verb. "We got to summon up the spirit of the ever loving Holy rollin' lightning lover and CAST some Spells... Ah!" Then add a subtle pregnant pause before finishing out the sentence slowly, deliberately, with spiritual chocolate conviction..ah. "We got to summon up the spirit of the ever loving Holy rollin' lightning lover and CAST some spells... Ah... (pause) so we can save (Pause) our blessed sacred heart..Ah!"

Try it while squinting an eye or shaking your head subtly with passion. Notice how adding strategic pause draws emphasis to the words, like a tease and release.

Now you have the key components of the Sexual Cheese archetype.

Think of a unique magical gift that you, as yourself, possess or hope to possess. "I've got the power..." Sing through that sentence with sexual cheese and spiritual chocolate. Start the phrase with the raspy pop-corn voice. Add particular emphasis to the verbs. Swing that pitch up to emphasize that power.ah. Then bring down to a delicious ending.

When you sing it again and again to a point where you're really having fun with it, capture that genie in a bottle. Pull out your voice-memo app on your phone (or any recording device) and record yourself singing your power phrase in the Sexual Cheese and Spiritual Chocolate Style. If you are inspired, share it to the Incantations Facebook group so everyone can be inspired by how silly and playful you are as you claim your power.

3-02.

Cultural Flava's

gritos mexicanos

The goal of a grito is to express joy and excitement with a nod to laughter. The first sound is typically held as long as possible, leaving enough breath for a trailing set of laughing sounds.

Pretend like you've just had a shot of tequila. Holler the "Ah ha ha ha hayi" sound, as though you're laughing, but sustain the first note. 

Ululations

Ululations are conducted much like the word sounds, "ULULULULULULiiiiii!" Articulate the phrase as quickly as possible, as loudly and as high in pitch as possible. Ululations are used in Balkan and Middle-Eastern flourishes. 

Trills and Meends

Trills are similar to an ululation, but without the consonant sound and more like a quick shake of a single note or rapid alternation to the note above. Pretend like you're a goat. Say "Ba ah ah ah ah." Try running through the vowels as a goat and explore pitch. Trills were very popular in England around the late 1800s. Think Snow White, singing over the wishing well, or Tony Tim singing Daisy Bell.  We also hear trills in old American blues music, classic Mongolian music and Indian Music. In Indian, Alankaar vocal ornamentations, an sliding undulation between two consecutive notes is known as a meend.

Vibrato

Simply, an oscillation in pitch. Vibrato is a common vocal flourish that became very popular in American jazz as a derivation and culture counter to the English trill. Its slightly slower in pace. Today, its a common flourish, pervasive in American jazz, R&B, Middle-Eastern and Celtic vocal stylings. Start with a "ya ya ya ya" and make it faster, and ore subtle, using the back of your throat to make the sound, rather than the front portion that makes the Y. Some people find success by nodding their head Yes to drill the technique. 

Yodels

If you haven't been able to yodel, try pretending like you're Scooby Doo, moving from the lower diaphragm (chest voice) to the upper part of the throat (falsetto). Or try moaning like your Mom just gave you a bunch of chores, sighing down in pitch, "Oh Mama!"

Just to relax into the high parts, let out a YEHAW, like a true Texan. Repeat: "Oh Dee Oh - Dee I Dee Ay - Hay - Yay Yodel oh Ho Dee...." (Smile on the Dee) to hit the note easier. 

Yodels are not just inherent in Country and Western music. They're also very common in Flamenco music to emphasize extreme passion and heart ache. And in Bavarian music, yodels were used to call to fellow sheep herders across mountain sides. The counter of the low chest voice compels the higher pitch to project further, maximizing volume.

Jazz & POP ornamentation

In American jazz, we get lots of  sliding - Good Morning Heart Ache. The human voice is one of a very few "instruments" that can achieve an actual "glissandi" slide, in addition to the trombone and saw.  In Be-bob we accent off beat, achieving a jazzy cadence. 

In Pop and R&B ornamentation, we practice runs - flourishes of extra notes. As opposed to jazz, pop uses less sliding and more exaggerated punch on the notes, giving it the poppy feel. 

Chapter 4.

Tonal Magic

Sound literally makes geometric shapes. Similarly, our words influence the shape of our world by charming perception and planting thought-seeds to take form. For thousands of years, the Vedas were sung because ideas are easily remembered through melodic rhyming. With rhymes, theres less room for recollection error. A rhymed melody can violate one's daily life by arresting the mind with euphonic patterns. We can disrupt patterns in our own daily lives by creating catchy limericks that influence our subconscious to align with our conscious will. The holographic sound in our heads can induce deep states of hypnosis. We each have our own path to tonal magic. Let yourself be moved by the following techniques.

4-01.

Anatomical influence

Chest voice or full voice

This is the conversational voice we use when we're doing things like ordering a drink at a bar. Usually we are yelling but we can also speak or sing from this part of our voices. When people say, "use your diaphragm," this is what they mean. Folks who have trouble hitting low notes or feeling heard in a loud room can rely on chest voice to project the sound when the pitch is lower. 

Falsetto or Head Voice

Falsetto or head voice is sung using the upper part of the voice before the lower larynx is engaged. When we sing our gritos, bee-gees style, or ye-haws, we are using head voice or Falsetto. Falsetto can easily achieve the higher notes while singing softly, whereas the chest voice would have to amplify to achieve the same high note as a falsetto voice. 

Skilled singers train in the space between full voice and falsetto, exploring volume to shift up pitch and mood. Try hitting really high notes with a softer Falsetto. Play with the effects of volume on the two spaces. Yodel and yawn!

lavish Nasal Stylings

The soft pallet is the back of the lower part of the mouth, where the tongue descends into the throat. Many people sing with the muscle in the soft pallet spread wide which creates the nasally sound. Explore singing with the active soft pallet to achieve the sound of a disgruntled Popeye. It is more challenging to sing falsetto (head voice) with this style, however, once you've figured out how to achieve falsetto in this style, you can easily hit very high notes like female Indian singers or cartoon Popeyes. Pretend like you're a Japanese school-girl and laugh maniacally.  Famous singers who use this style include: Stevie Nicks, Buddy Holly, and the munchkins. 

Jeweled Throat Stylings

Some folks don't like their nasally sound and want a richer, more guttural tone, like Kermit the Frog. Notice how your soft palette changes shape from being more flattened in your throat (nasally) to more hollow, vertical shape (throaty). The throat is more closed off from the middle and top. Famous singers who use this style include Billy Holliday, Duke Ellington and Feist.

If you have trouble eliminating the nasally quality from your tone, pretend you're an Emu. "Gu, Gu, Gu, Gu," make the "G" clearer to take it out of the nasal-region. Explore shifting pitch using the "G" consonant.  Notice how the soft pallet relaxes when the lower-back part of the tongue makes the G sound. But don't be afraid to deliberately embrace the nasal styling to inhabit key archetypes.

Overtone Hypnosis & Holographic sound

Choose a fundamental note using your chest voice - try switching slowly from O to E and practice in either an enclosed space, or a space with white noise so you can hear yourself better because the overtones are harder to hear from your own head and easier for others to hear. Eventually you'll isolate the movement to just the back of the tongue. O to the E sound creates a subtle harmonic of the fundamental note.

When we add the pure note from a singing bowl or tuning fork and we sing in proximity, additional harmonics will naturally unfold. Practice toning different notes with your singing bowl and notice the additional harmonies shifting place around your skull. We call this holographic sound.

a note on Cymatics

Sound waves actually make geometric shapes that correspond to Yantras and mandalas. It is strongly recommended that you research the physics behind sound and let yourself be moved by the implications.

4-02.

honoring the beast

euphony in tongues

Take the melody for Happy Birthday. Sing it slowly, in as many fake languages as you can possibly imagine. Enjoy exploring the accents, pace, volume, ornamentations and most importantly, meaning. Notice how the removal of our native language tends to free the intention up for more authentic vocal resonance.  The words tend to sound better in our own natural and we genuinely express the feeling behind happy birthday.  This is because its coming from a place of more creative freedom. 

Chapter 6.

weird channels

shapeshifting 101

When we deliberately observe and inhabit our archetypes, they are exalted and brought into balance. When we give our broken, missing, and dangerous archetypes a platform for expression, they are less likely to create out of turn. For instance, when we cast a magic spell, if we are unconsciously rejecting a part of ourself that deeply needs to be expressed, that archetype's creation is likely to dominate our spell. If you are getting "bad" results in magic, its likely that one of your key archetypes needs compassion and a constructive platform for expression.

These abandoned inner-archetypes are a lot like sideshow freaks. They don't fit in, but they exist for a very important reason. If we can get to a place of embracing these broken and abandoned inner-freaks, we can bring them into balance.

Introducing the Freak-Charmer Method

According to Carolyn Myss, we create through twelve primary archetypes. Four of the twelve are common among everyone: Child, Victim, Saboteur, and Prostitute. The remaining eight are discovered through rich inner work.

Take some time to create a gesture or hand movement that exemplifies one of your twelve common archetypes. Think of a short rhyme, a jingle to represent your chosen archetype. Compose the jingle as if the archetype is actually moving through your life. For instance, the prostitute might traditionally sing something like,"If you want to buy my wares, follow me and climb the stairs." But in your life, the prostitute might say something like, "I'll work all night with the corner office in my sight." His/Her voice may be slinky and sly and raspy from too many cigars or blow-jobs. Give your archetype's voice color with accent, tone, pitch, dissonance and pause. Think about what makes them sad, joyous, belonging. Dwell on their hidden motivations and create a sound from that motivation. Allow yourself to be moved by this archetype.

What would they want to sing and rhyme to make sure it gets stuck in your head everyday? What needs to be remembered? What kind of freak-show does your archetype need to perform?

Knights of the round table

Now you'll choose 8 more archetypes that you feel have been with you throughout your life, good and bad. Read the list aloud. The most resonant archetypes will stand out visually. They'll stand out in your voice. While some may seem negative, you decide what negative really means. 

An Abridged list of Archetypes

Of your chosen eight, choose the archetype you have the most negative or shameful feelings about. Take a few more breaths using the electric fire technique, focusing on giving this Archetype your full attention. Ask your heart what this archetype most needs to express.

6-03.

sound sigils

the blessing & invocation

Return to the page in your book where you made your characters. Take nine electric fire breaths, focusing your intention on the archetype that you feel needs the most love. On the last exhale, sound out from the part of yourself that needs the love.

Let that part make any sound it needs in order to feel deeply and thoroughly heard by the rest of you.  Create a phrase or lyric, complete with flourishes that resound exactly what the archetype needs for authentic expression. Use your tongues language. Let the beast sound naturally. When you settle on a phrase, repeat it again and again, exploring flourishes or pauses that give the phrase more and more authenticity and vulnerability. Imagine you are sounding to a sentient lightning storm that will strike when you sound most authentically.

Write your phrase down. You can use the english alphabet or your own alphabet. Use the characters you created to articulate the flourishes. Continue sounding the phrase as you write. Write the phrase again, but this time, cut out all characters that feel excessive, leaving only the shapes that feel most true to the expression. Repeat again and again, refining your shapes.

Finally, write the shapes and characters on top of one another, making sure to give each line the space it needs to communicate your conviction as you sound. Simplify or embellish as needed. 

When you feel you've created a sigil that fully expresses your Archetype's most authentic expression, hold it to your heart and breath. Your sigil will act as satellite for all the love you may recieve. 

Becoming the storm

Place your sigil in the center of the room. Take nine electric fire breaths. The electricity is building into a thunderstorm in your heart. Your voice is the phoenix, thunderbird, building energy as you focus on the reverence and gratitude you keep for everything you may love and grieve. When you make your next sound, sound with all the love you have to give. Join hands. Gaze at the sigils in the center of the circle. Sound again, with all the love you keep.

Return to your spot in front of your candle. Take a bow to honor yourself and the courageous work you've done. Take a bow to honor your fellow tribe members. Take a bow to honor the universe's natural tendency to support your compassionate magic. Blow out the candle.