The Relationship Between Mental Wellness and Voice Work: An Interview with Lydia Flock
I am elated to share my interview with Lydia Flock on the intersection between mental health, well-being and voice work. Lydia Flock is a very special interviewee because we met in 2013 at a summer program called the Performing Arts Project. Since then, Lydia has accomplished a lot. She studied at one of the top BFA Musical Theatre programs in the US, Ithaca College, and conducted research at the esteemed Royal Central School of Speech and Drama on the interactions between the mind-body connection and the freedom of the singing voice. Her research is not only in the process of publication (under peer-review in the Voice and Speech Review), but it is also the foundation of her ground-breaking method to training the voice called “The Flock Flow”. Flock is Lydia’s surname, but in the land of The Flock Flow, it stands for Formatting a life you’ll love, Loving thoughts, Open heart, Confident action, Killer results. Lydia’s mission at Flockstars is to, “use the speaking and singing voice as a vehicle for healing, confidence building, and personal growth”.
As a psychotherapist who primarily treats creative young adults, you can imagine why I wanted to interview her! Lydia’s work further helps us understand the intersection of creativity and mental health. There is a gap in the psychological literature investigating the effectiveness of holistic vocal practices on improving mental wellness. Her evidence-based strategies derive from Fitzmaurice Voicework®, Organic Intelligence®, and Ziva Meditation. This puts her at the forefront of the investigative process in this field and yields a unique opportunity for further research. As a future thought leader in this growing industry, I was keen to get further understanding of the foundations of her work, the techniques she uses in lessons, and the results she has seen with her students.
I had a Skype call with Lydia before this interview, where she took me through some of the fundamentals of the Flock Flow. I learned so much from her in just a quick call, and so I am thrilled to be sharing some of her work with you – she taught a few of her nuggets of wisdom that you don’t want to miss out on, so please do check out the full interview on Instagram (IGTV) @realtalkpractice.
Without further ado, please enjoy the *abridged* transcribed version of my interview with the promising and remarkable, Lydia Flock.
D: How are you? Can you tell me a little bit about your journey?
L: I am so excited! Well, I guess it first started when we met at the Performing Arts Project. For me, Broadway was the goal. I went to Ithaca College in their musical theatre program, but in the audition process, I ended up getting a vocal injury. That moment was a really forming for me. I became really anxious about losing my voice from then on. I ended up leaving Ithaca College after 2.5 years because I wanted to figure out why I was so anxious about losing my voice all the time and why I felt blocked with my voice.
My plan was to study speech-language pathology at UVA, however I ended up majoring in Drama because I surrounded myself with people that were just doing theatre for fun. I thought, how do I get back to that? I had been in “fight or fight” for so long, but I wanted to figure out how can I get back into “stay and play”, the feelings where the love began.
I read a lot of books, went to therapy, did a lot of yoga, and went on a journey for myself that culminated with me getting my masters and doing research on the interactions between voicework and wellbeing.
D: I see. The “I need to feel good about this” married itself with the techniques you were studying. Did the damage go away for you?
L: I healed from the physical vocal injury, but the emotional weight took a long time to go away. I was still shedding a lot of those thoughts when I was doing research. It was a big unlearning process.
D: I want to know more! Can you tell me about what that process was like? How did you do that?
L: A big worry was if I would lose my voice before performances. It was like life had to stop in order for me to feel okay about my vocal health. When I started meditating, I stopped needing to check and control so much. That was really transformative for me.
D: Can you tell me a little bit more about how you brought this work into what you are doing with Flockstars?
L: I am not a meditation teacher, but I do apply a lot of the meditation principles to voice practice. The kind of meditation I practice is called “Ziva Meditation” and it has three parts to the practice. The first part is mindfulness, the second is the meditation, and the third is manifesting. I use the first and third parts with students. For example, with manifesting, a great exercise is closing your eyes and imagining yourself winning, whatever that means for you. If you’re in a show, it’s the best it can possibly go. What does that look like? Feel like? Can you recreate those feelings in your body? If you put yourself in that place at the beginning of a practice, you can actually enjoy what you’re doing. And that’s really the point!
D: Are you meditating before any voice practice or performance then?
L: I meditate twice a day every day, so naturally it will always be a part of my preparation for any warm-up or practice.
D: Mindfulness is one of those buzzwords in psychology. Can you tell me how mindfulness is separate from that meditation part?
L: Most people think mindfulness and meditation are the same thing, but in Ziva Meditation, what I was trained in, they are quite different. Meditation is the repetition of a mantra to heal past stress. Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment to heal present stress. In terms of mindfulness, I really like to use a method called Organic Intelligence®, which has some specific exercises that incorporate mindfulness in them.
D: How does Organic Intelligence® work?
L: A lot of ways! One thing I love to use is they have something called the ISOMA channels of awareness. I is imagination, S is sensation, O is orientation, M is meaning (thoughts), and A is affect, the resulting feelings in the body. I like to spend time in the Orienting channel. It’s like you have a remote control to flip through these channels. Within the orientation channel, we have sub-channels (the 5 senses), and we can flip through each channel to get present and reallocate our attention on what feels good.
D: Wow. When we first met to discuss this, you took me through orientation. We went through that, and you talked me through the channels. I felt so relaxed afterwards! We also did the manifesting exercise, and it took me into a mindset that really got me going. I felt ready and energised. I could really see how this would help singers because it made me feel confident and ready to practice.
…
D: How would you teach someone totally new to singing?
L: I like to start with speech-based exercises that would feel safe for someone who has had very little singing experience. I like to teach something called a “professional yawn”, which I learned from Knight-Thompson Speechwork (a speech and accents training). I’ll teach it now because it is really easy to learn and really effective at reducing tongue and laryngeal tension.
D: That would be great!
L: Let’s start by doing a regular yawn.
[We both yawn]
L: I don’t know if you noticed what your tongue was doing, normally I would do this a few times, but when we yawn without thinking, we usually pull the tongue back. When we do this, although it feels really good, because the tongue is directly connected to the larynx, when we pull it back, we are putting excess pressure on the larynx. The tongue is bunching up to create some tension there that we don’t need. We call this an “amateur yawn”.
What we do in a professional yawn is we get rid of that tongue tension by sticking out the tongue, letting the root of the tongue come forward. So instead of having the tongue pull back and depress on the larynx, we are letting it stretch out [stretches] so you are getting the best benefits of a yawn.
D: [yawns] Like that?
L: Exactly!
…
D: There’s another thing that you brought up – the “what can I have more of”, “what do I want less of” idea, which is part of this therapy concept called “acceptance and commitment therapy”. The acceptance part uses a lot of mindfulness principles. We do a lot of body scans, which is similar to what you are doing, bringing awareness to what the body is doing and awareness of breath. Then the commitment part is getting clear about your values and outlining that for yourself. For example, asking yourself, “Who do you want to be as a person?” Then you look at past behaviour, asking yourself, “Okay, does that align with what I want? How can I commit to a way of being that gives me more of what I value and less of what I don’t?” It is so interesting how much your method overlaps with mine. Although therapy and voice are totally different fields, I think the way you are teaching voice is really ground-breaking because you are drawing those two worlds together. I think this really makes your method stand out! I know that your work must be really helping people with their mental health as well.
For the full interview, check out on Instagram (IGTV) @realtalkpractice! I really believe Lydia has the potential to be a major leader in the field of voice, and I cannot wait to watch Flockstars grow. Follow what Lydia is doing at Flockstars on Instagram and Facebook (also for free tips and resources!) @flockstarscoaching or check out the website www.flockstars.com. If you would like to get in touch with Lydia, please email lydia@flockstars.com.
