Hey loves,
How do you allow your voice to be a conduit for something greater to come through?
This theme has been on my mind this week because I am co-hosting a new in-person offering on May 23rd called the Goddess Voice Intuitive Singing Circle (more on this later!)
I share a story in my book about my first ecstatic experience of being swept up in the flow through collective singing. Experiencing the power of something greater (which I call divinity) moving through me was a watershed moment. I was never the same after that night. Here is the story:
“Back in my early 20s, I was on a tambourine-shaking, bus-busting, yogi song tour through Mexico. When I wasn’t complaining about food or lateness or whatnot, I got to sing alongside a seasoned New Zealander singer named Jyoshna. Through the overflowing love she embodied as she sang, she taught me to sing with a depth I had rarely witnessed before.
Our band gave concerts to audiences large and small, and no matter the turnout, she gave her all with transcendence and grace. I, the vocal performance major, could point out plenty of mistakes in her technique. Yet her music and way of showing up were not about flawlessness. How could she go so deep, be so vulnerable, and create enough space for that potency of higher love to come through?
And how could I become more like her, opening myself as a humble instrument for divine inspiration to be brought into form?
At first, I simply observed and wondered at her devotional practice of becoming a creative conduit. Then, not through effort but through grace, I experienced the expansiveness of being an instrument for the first time. To conclude our five-week concert tour, we did an amazing all-night recording session. We set up our folding chairs in a circle in a white-walled art gallery turned temporary recording studio. Seven female singers and a tabla drum player from India joined Jyoshna and her guitar.
By the time we had the equipment set up, the clock neared midnight. Insects buzzed outside the window screen as the humid night air wafted in gently. We recorded the whole album of kiirtan (mantra music) straight through, without stopping. Jyoshna led us through highs and lows, sweetness and pain as we let a string of melodies flow through us.
I experienced such a high that I knew there was no turning back from that point. I was grinning from ear to ear, enraptured with the moment, sending the song from my heart out into the ever-expanding Universe.”
-Sara Giita Flores, from Unleash Your Goddess Voice
From Left to Right: Giita Tandero, Jyoshna LaTrobe, and Sara Giita Flores
In the years since, I have lived in the question of how to become a clearer channel for the light of divinity to be expressed through my voice.
I have experimented, tried too hard, and spontaneously experienced those blessed moments of flow and expansiveness. While writing songs and prose, while speaking and singing on stage in front of thousands, I have always begun with a prayer asking that every breath, every word, and every sound belong to the divine.
With time and practice, I have developed ways to open myself up as a conduit and experience (and facilitate for others) divine flow more reliably and deeply. And yet it is always grace, not effort that allows me to be a creative conduit.
Recently, the divine flow called me back into song. I am excited to announce an in-person event next week that will allow you to experience the practice of opening your voice as a conduit for something greater to flow through (and you get to define what “something greater” means to you.)
It’s an intuitive singing circle that I am co-hosting with the fabulous Maggie Pearson, which will allow us to reawaken our ancestral legacy of singing collectively as an act of divine connection.
Blessings,
Sara Giita Flores