The Power Of Finding Your Voice (with Michaela Bartoskova)

Christopher: Can you sing?

If not… can you breathe?

Funny question, I know! But we had a recent masterclass which joined up those two questions so beautifully. And as I recorded yesterday’s episode where we were doing “Inside The Book” and looking at the singing chapter, and all of the reasons to sing, all of the benefits of singing for musicians, it made me want to share this particular guest expert interview with you.

It’s with Michaela Bartoskova, who’s a voice, singing and yoga coach, and her masterclass at Musical U was on the topic of “When Breath Becomes Voice”.

Michaela is a specialist in the voice beyond just singing – into breath, into speaking, into movement. She has such a beautiful, holistic perspective and it made her masterclass really special. And kind of provided a new way into singing for a lot of our members.

So why is breathing important for the voice? You’ll hear more from Michaela in just a moment, and in the Masterclass excerpt I’m going to share this week, but the bottom line is that the driving force behind our voice comes from breathing. And so any kind of tension or resistance you might have to the idea of singing, actually just breathing and approaching singing through breathing can provide a new gateway that’s much easier for you to go through.

So in this mini-interview, you’ll learn a bit about Michaela’s background, how she came to focus on the breath, and particularly with singers who came to her and were nervous to even begin singing, or had a lot of resistance when they tried to sing.

She also shares her answer to “what does musicality mean to you?” and it’s a really lovely and unique one that I think you’re going to enjoy.

So without further ado, let’s dive into our mini-interview with Michaela Bartoskova.

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Christopher: Welcome back to the show! Today I’m joined by Michaela Bartoskova, who is a voice, singing and yoga coach with a fascinating range of expertise and a particular focus on your relationship with your voice and the role of breath in speaking, singing, music-making and performance.

When I read Michaela’s bio, I was so excited to dive into about seven different things with her! So I’m going to try and narrow my focus in this conversation. We’re very fortunate to have Michaela with us as our Guest Expert here at Musical U this month, I’ve grabbed her for this quick interview before our monthly masterclass for all members, which will be on the topic “When Breath Becomes Voice”, and then she’ll be in with us this coming week, coaching each of our Next Level members as well.

Michaela, welcome to the show!

Michaela: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited, and I can’t wait.

Christopher: So I’d love to start with my favourite question to ask musicians and music educators, which is “what does musicality mean to you?”

Michaela: You know what I think? Daily life. Just even walking down the street, you hear lots of noises, especially in London, the traffic, sometimes it’s just too much.

And then right now, spring. So birds are singing. So I think that kind of like a daily sound.

Does it make sense? Am I going somewhere with this? I think that’s musicality for me. So it’s not just about making beautiful sound or creating beautiful tune.

It’s about even, like, our heartbeat, it’s like the rhythm itself. So that might be, like, a starting point for me when sometimes I improvise on my own and I don’t have anyone around.

So I think that, like, taking whatever the life and day offers me. A rhythm, a sound.

And I think that’s where I would start with “what is musicality”

Christopher: Wonderful! A very, very human and natural and environmental definition there. That’s lovely.

So, as I mentioned, your bio got me excited in a whole bunch of different directions, because you’re an expert in some things I know about and some things I don’t know about and some things I’ve never heard of!

But, for example, Fitzmaurice voice work. Alexander technique. Linklater Voice. Mind-Body Centering. The Feldenkrais method. Estil voice training. Somatic voice work. The LoVetri method.

Like, I could have an hour-long conversation with you about each of these! But I’d love if you could give us a bit more of a picture of who you are and where you’ve come from and maybe where some of these things have factored into your own musical journey.

Michaela: A great question. I started with singing, and when I moved to London ages ago, I realized that there is a field focused just on voice. And I was just like “oh my god!” So they are like people who dedicate their life to work with people and their voices. And I was just mesmerised with it.

And I love to learn. So I jump into studying the anatomy, studying the singing, studying singing exercises, studying singing songs. And then it was speaking, and then it was public speaking, and it was then working with actors, and then it was, okay, so actually, the body is inside, or the voice is inside of our body. So it would be nice to, like, work with the body. That’s, like, that’s the instrument.

So I look into working with movement. Often when I say that, people get scared, and I’m like, it’s more like, embodied, mindful movement than, like, going to the gym and exercise and work on our abs!

So I look into how the voice is connected to the body, and then it just took me wherever I wanted to.

And I think the reason why I started to teach was to learn more, because I was “okay, I gained this knowledge. Now I’d like to share it with everyone”. And with sharing and teaching, I realised, okay, I think I want a little bit more. So I added always something on top of what I knew.

And this is where we are now. And also now I write research papers because the voice is very abstract, and it’s very difficult to put it in a certain form.

So I thought, let’s look into the science. And, well, I’m still writing papers on the connection between voice and the body because it feels like there’s a huge gap. So I’m focusing on that, and I don’t know what’s next, but I’m very excited.

Christopher: Wonderful. And as you know, our community here at Musical U is made up of all kinds of musicians. Some of them would consider themselves singers, some of them primarily instrumentalists, but we have ingrained in them the importance and power of singing, even if that’s not their primary instrument.

And others who’ve joined us more recently might still be a little bit skeptical about singing and might think the idea of talking about breathing or their breath was irrelevant to playing blues guitar or on stage and that kind of thing.

So I’d love if you could share a little bit about, you know, for the average musician, why would they consider diving into this world of voice and breath training or work or exercises? How could that help them?

Michaela: I don’t want to force anyone. So if you feel like it’s time to look into what your voice can offer you, then it’s time to do that.

Otherwise, the voice is very private thing. And I think that’s why people are not always willing to sing, because it shows how you feel without sometimes wanting to share that. So I think that’s why people get private about their singing.

And the other thing is, there are so many traumas from childhood. What I’ve heard from my students and clients, it’s painful. It’s painful.

And I’m not surprised that people are not willing to go there if it’s just not the right time. But you have no idea how people’s life can change if they start to just make sound. Not even singing.

First of all, they are very beautiful. They turn into a beautiful person. I don’t know what it is, but they start to be very beautiful.

And then lots of different changes regarding speaking up for themselves, taking sometimes certain stand or certain role in the family. It also changes. It can be interesting.

It can be interesting, and it’s also wonderful. I don’t want to scare anyone! It’s also beautiful.

Christopher: Fantastic, yeah. What really came across to me there is the deep, personal significance of our voice, right?

And maybe right now you’re using it for singing, maybe you’re not. Maybe you feel comfortable speaking in front of a group or raising your voice in a discussion or argument, maybe you don’t.

But however you feel about it right now, it’s always personal and it’s always really impactful, right?

And so I love the way you talked about it there for the opportunity to almost change who you are or become more of who you are through getting more in touch with that voice.

Michaela: I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about this, but I feel like right now it’s maybe the right time.

It sometimes feels like the voice is your soul.

Which is like, I am not spiritual, but that’s what kind of coming out of what I see when people start to make any sound and it touches all the, yeah, as I mentioned, it touches all the emotions. And you just show who you are as a person.

And not everyone is willing to see that. So sometimes it’s just like, not like the people around, but it’s just the person herself or himself.

They are not willing to face themselves. So just taking time and going slow.

And also one last thing, because I teach and I always learn something these days I’m noticing when people start to feel safe, it’s incredible how everything opens up.

The voice also, but the life too. When people start to feel safe, they start to trust themselves. They start to go for the stuff they wanted to.

So it’s a lot about safety, too. So if you don’t feel ready, then just take it slow.

Christopher: Wonderful. Well, I can’t wait for the masterclass now to share some of this with our members live and give them a peek into the kinds of things we’ve been talking about just now!

For those who are watching or listening to this interview and want to know more about you and the work you do, where’s the best place for them to go?

Michaela: I have a couple of websites, but the best one, I try to keep everything under control there is my name, Michaela, so Michaela Sound. So michaelasound.com.

Christopher: Fantastic. And we’ll certainly put a link to that alongside this video or in the podcast shownotes. Thank you.

And give people a little taste of what you’ll be covering in the masterclass today. What will we be focused on and what will people experience?

Michaela: It was actually difficult to pick a theme, a topic because we can go all over the place.

But I was thinking, I want the people get out of it, something they can take home and practice if they want to.

And I want them to experience, to have an experience, not just sit down and listen.

So today is going to be about connecting the breath with the sound. So it’s not even speaking or singing, it’s just connecting the breath with the sound.

And I will mention it, I think at the beginning today when we start, it came to me to connect the breath with the sound when I started to teach ages ago, when the people came and they started to share all the horrendous stories and I tried to make them sing and I felt and I saw how everyone is tensing and they are shutting down, often the shoulders, like, we are just closing.

The whole body language is like closing, so we are protecting ourselves.

So I was like, okay, I don’t think this is the way and I don’t want to teach these classes because people just suffer. So I thought, okay, let’s start with a breath.

And people relaxed a lot and then we started to make sounds, just dropping the sound on the out breath, and that kind of unlocks safety, as we mentioned. And people started to believe that they can make sound, sing, speak, and they can do what they want. So that’s what we will do today.

Christopher: Lovely. Fantastic. Well, I can see our premium members filing in, ready and waiting for the masterclass, so we should wrap things up and get ready for that session.

The recording will of course be available for all of our members in due course to enjoy at their leisure. Thank you so much for joining me for this quick pre-masterclass interview, Michaela, and let’s head over there. Thank you, everyone, for watching and we’ll see you back on the show again soon.

Michaela: Bye bye. Thank you.

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Christopher: Wasn’t that cool? I don’t know what I loved more, her deeply natural answer to “what is musicality?” or the way she talked about singing with such sensitivity and appreciation for both the deeply personal nature of singing and how powerful it can be to explore singing as a musician – or indeed just as a person in general!

I love that she mentioned the importance of feeling safe.

That’s been huge for us at Musical U as we’ve tried to encourage people into singing. Just making sure we do it in a way that lets them take simple, gentle, private steps forwards. It makes all the difference.

And it’s kind of the extreme contrast of those painful childhood experiences she alluded to. You know, for a lot of people, it’s that, you know, experience at five when you’re put in front of the whole class and asked to sing back a note on piano and you don’t nail it first time, so you’re told you can’t sing.

We want the polar opposite of that, where you feel relaxed and safe and comfortable and private. And she cultivated that kind of safe space so well during our masterclass and then in her workshop with our Next Level members.

So I’m going to be back tomorrow with our next episode, sharing a little section of that masterclass, which, like I mentioned, was a big hit with our members and just opened up singing in a new way for a lot of them.

Until then, cheers! And go make some music!

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