Three and a half days of intense explorations of voice and movement for body-mind balance and creative, vibrant well-being.
Scroll down for the Mandarin version
中文見下方
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Voice Yoga Winter Solstice Retreat 2022. Photo: Jackal Mei
WHAT IS THIS VOICE YOGA?
WHAT IS THIS RETREAT ABOUT?
In Voice Yoga’s dynamic group process, you go beyond your habits and expectations. Something larger than yourself emerges: a flow of hidden creative potential.
Grounded in physical exercise such as yoga or contact improvisation, we work with all kinds of sounds without meaning and without emphasizing a beautiful singing voice. Pure, direct expressions and sensations of physical resonance and vibration through mouth, limbs, hips, feet, skin and inner organs.
We go beyond common subject-object and mind-body dualities, and bring our unconscious selves and sometimes irrational emotions to the surface. The group process becomes a mirror for the self and allows us to ‘see’ ourselves more clearly, to hear what’s living deep inside. The result is often of a surprising clarity and immediacy.
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PROGRAM OUTLINE
We start Thursday Dec 21st at 9 AM and suggest you arrive the evening before.
We finish after lunch on Sunday 24th, around 1:30 PM.
Day 1
9:00-12:30 introduction to the program. Light exercising, breathing exercises, start moving, toning, improvising. Deep sleep session is usually included!
12:30-14:30 lunch & siësta
14:30-16:30 Guided movement and sound practices, walking meditations, improvisations
16:30-17:00 Tea time
17:00-18:00 Guided movement and sound practices, walking meditations, improvisations
Day 2, 3, 4 (half day)
9:00-12:00 Slow meditative warm up, mild to vigorous exercising, toning, noise making. Once again: restorative (half-)sleep/dream.
12:30-14:30 lunch & siësta
14:30-16:30 Guided movement and sound practices, walking meditations, improvisations
16:30-17:00 Tea time
17:00-18:00 Guided movement and sound practices, walking meditations, improvisations
18:00-19:00 dinner
On Day 3, our last evening, after the Solstice and before Christmas Eve, we will jointly celebrate the change from darkness to light. Participants can contribute a memory or reflection, a song, a dance, individually, en groupe, as a duo, whatever comes up. Consider to bring an instrument you play, candles to lighten up the atmosphere, a special garment or hat to wear.
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PLACE
We hold our sessions in Shufang’s Energy Healing, a gorgeous yoga studio with a big garden in Dulan, Taidong. The studio has all utilities we need and is fully air-conditioned of course. We can use the big lawn outside for musical workouts in fresh air, giant rocks to repose, and shady places to rest.
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FOR WHOM?
The workshop attracts young, curious artists; established musicians and performers facing creative obstacles or blockades; yoga and other body-mind workers not very familiar with sound; people familiar with sound but needing a fuller understanding and experience of it; people youna and old looking for physical and spiritual development; practitioners of Buddhism and other contemplative traditions needing deeper breathing and chanting practice; busy people needing a break from work in a relaxed atmosphere. Despite the name, Voice Yoga is not a harsh or demanding yoga camp, quite the contrary: it lets you grow at your own peace and rest and sleep or observe when you want to.
There are no specific requirements to join. Ages frange from early 20s to around 75. Yoga, music or other skills are not required. We strive for a group between 8 and 12 people.
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HOW TO PREPARE?
Bring a yoga mat to exercise and lie down. There are sitting cushions and also chairs if you cannot sit on the floor for long. Bring something to cover yourself when we repose or meditate. Bringing an instrument is a good idea (no need to play it well; a percussive instrument is always good).
Voice Yoga Winter Solstice Retreat 2022. Photo: Jackal Mei
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LANGUAGES
English + Chinese
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YOUR TEACHER
Mark van Tongeren is a Dutch sound explorer with a deep interest in the synergy of arts, sciences and contemplative traditions. Mark has 30 years of experience in theatre, music and dance productions and holds a PhD from Leiden University’s Academy of Creative of Performing Arts. He practices yoga for some twenty-five years and all kinds of voice/music/performance practices for 35 years. His enterprise Fusica was established in 1998 to explore intersections of sound and the arts (music) on the one hand, and science and academica (fusikè, physics) on the other, with .
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MEET THE TEAM & CONTACT
This workshop is brought to you by organiser Jackal Mei, translator Sunny Chen and hosted by Shufang Wang.
Administrative assistance by Hsi-Yin Chang.
Jackal, Sunny, Mark
For any questions about the contents in English, ask Mark.
mark@fusica.nl
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Paraphony
Phone 0910382749
For any questions about the contents in Mandarin, and for lodging, travel and food details, ask Jackal.
– online application form: https://forms.gle/WoCuHwKaMbzp7LZm6
– After transferring, please SMS, Line, or email to inform Hsi-Yin with your name, and the last 5 numbers of your bank account
– After receiving your fee, we will send a confirmation email in 5 days, and invite you joining our line group for more event detail.
PAYMENT
Bank code: 822.
Name of bank: China Trust
Beneficiary: Mark Christiaan van Tongeren
Account number: 163540306745
Make sure to send an email to Hsi-Yin after your payment. We will confirm reception as soon as possible.
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DISCLAIMER
We try to keep prices reasonable. If you cannot make it for some reason, we will return 80% of deposit fees up to 2 weeks before the event, 50% in the second week before starting date, and no refund in the last week leading to the event. In case of proven COVID-19-related problems we can give a refund (minus admin charge) or save the registration and fees for a next workshop.
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DISCLAIMER
By signing up you automatically acknowledge your understanding that this retreat sometimes involves strenuous physical exercise, potentially disrupting body-work and emotionally charged sessions with a deep impact on your well-being. It is understood that you yourself best know of any risks (physical, emotional, psychological) and that there is no pressure or obligation to do each and every exercise. By joining this retreat you accept the consequences and state your intention to complete it till the end. You waive all rights to seek or receive compensation in case of injury, loss or damage.
We reserve the right to cancel the retreat in the case we do not reach the minimum number of participants, between 4 and 2 weeks before starting date; in this case all paid workshop fees will be promptly returned. We are not responsible for expenses for the BnB or transport.
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KNOW MORE?
Mark’s Voice Yoga runs for over 10 years and brings together decades of creative, vocal expression, yogic discipline and contemplative traditions.
Voice Yoga is neither yoga as you see all around you, or music as you hear it every day. It is a personal, artistic synthesis of a wide range of musical, resonant, theatrical, contemplative and physical arts. What binds them together is Mark’s unique synthesis and his vision to create a strong sense of flow, no matter what the activity is. Serious workouts smoothly blend with unforgettable (and unrepeatable!) musical creations, deep breath work morphs into contact improv and vocal exercises into absurdistic theatre.
This retreat will give you a big boost, whether you are a musician, dancer, yoga teacher, actor, or just interested in working on your personal growth through the connections between sound, body and mind. No problem if you’ve never done yoga before!
“I felt many sounds inside me first time and I felt there is an inner space inside my body. That was an very powerful experience for me. The body wasn’t what I knew before. I felt peace when you sang… I do have a lot of fun when you want us imitate your voice… Every time when we make sounds together I feel I am decomposing and putting every part of me in one again. “
– Judith
” Your class shows me the magic of breath and voice. This makes my inner child very happy. “
– Nancy
” I enjoyed the class very much today. You had everyone engaged and creatively expressed as well as discharging and recharging well. “
– Tina
” More than ever, it brings back my childhood so I can play again. “
– Kovida
” Your class shows me the magic of breath and voice. This makes my inner child very happy. “
– Nancy
” Voice Yoga helps me feel lighter. “
– Jennifer
” I enjoy a lot and feel relaxed, this is a special course for me. “
or how to combine the art of writing meaningful non-sense texts with hypnosis methods
Next week I am teaching a group of hypnosis students in Taipei. They are the students of a man who goes by the nickname of La Mian (ramen, or Japanese thick noodles) who is specialized in hypnosis and teaches and applies it in a wide range of methods. He came to my workshop Ocean of Voicesrecently, a 3-day exploration of the richness of musical traditions around the world (focusing on the voice). We had several amazing sessions where everyone went through his or her own transformations while singing, chanting, drumming, playing, or just listening to everyone else. Paths to change the body, change the mind and empower your creative imagination through the voice: a dynamic key or bridge that sits in between the body and mind, working its logical and illogical ways in both directions.
Photos taken during the Oceaen of Voices of workshop in Nantou, Taiwan. Above, La Mian with the Bunun people from XinYi. Below, session during the workshop.
You could call the logical part the verbal: the voice as speech, as reason and gossip.
You could call the illogical part transverbal: the voice as sound and music, as noise and non-sense.
Transverbal is a term Michael Vetter coined to group together, and give purpose to, his vast corpus of creative work, in music, in visual arts, in writing. It led, among other things, to his writing of okyo’s, which is Japanese for sutras. His sutras were not Buddhist texts, but used the sounds of the Japanese language as a template from which he created ‘texts’ without meaning. It was not merely a capricious thing, a joke, or an anti-religious sentiment. Vetter was serious about it. He had practised chanting and reciting actual sutras for year after year during his 13 year stay in Japan, going about the streets begging for alms or performing ceremonial. But, in a true Zen vein, he would not eschew the occasional humorous twist in his own okyos either.
I got to know Michael Vetter’s okyos in the mid 1990s and was impressed with their form and sound and Vetter’s precise reasoning for why he created them. Later I began to write my own occasional okyos. Last year I decided to write an okyo every day for one year, to commemorate Michael’s birth (in 1943) and passing (in 2013), now eighty and ten years ago. I shape these okyos, naturally, but they also shape me, and invite me or teach me to push for new ideas about sound, language and symbol. Here is one example which I will take to the Hypnokyo workshop:
Here is another one
And here is one that you can listen to in the video, below:
So next week my okyos are going to be tested by students of hypnosis. They learn a range of sounding techniques that could enhance or expand their hypnosis practise. I am really looking forward to see what they will do with it, and hope I can be their guinea pig to test the efficacy of the okyos. Not long ago, hypnosis was regarded as somewhat occult, esoteric and strange. In recent years it has become more widely accepted and it began to loose its strangeness in public opinion. The approach now seems to be more practical: it is yet another way for us – complicated, sensitive and often limited and hyperrational human beings – to understand the mysteries of life and self, and to make sense of the world around us in new, more attuned ways.
You can enjoy listening to one of my okyos in this video (thanks to Sky for editing).
And I will read this week’s episode of one of my favorite newsletters, which happens to be devoted to clinical hypnosis.
A few days ago, Overtone Singing – Hidden Dimensions of the Human Voice has arrived at its distribution centers in the US (NY), Europe (Haarlem) and Taiwan (Longtan). Publisher David Rothenberg produced a beautiful midway solution between paperback and hardcover book, called ‘flexibound.’
That was the signal to also let the Anthology of Overtone Singing go public. First of all on Bandcamp, where the audio is now available for streaming or purchasing. I also submitted all tracks to Apple Music, Spotify etc. etc. 25 Artists that are not featured on Apple Music and Spotify yet now will be represented there. It took me about a year of preparations and it meant not a small thing to press that ‘SUBMIT’ button to me.
So book and music are available now from Terra Nova Press, from me and next week also from a European address. We are still working out the best solution to offer the music and the book in one go. For the moment, the book is available through Terra Nova Press and by writing to me directly, while the Anthology is available in Bandcamp. Possibly we offer both in one package very soon.
There is a limited number of books available with a CD that is nearly identical with the streaming version from Bandcamp: just two tracks have been shortened a bit to fit onto the CD format. Details will soon be published on Bandcamp; you can also write to me if that is what you need.
The major platforms will start selling and shipping the book in December or January.
After three years of editing (text), drawing, scanning (illustrations), mastering (audio) and revising under the guidance of very capable editors, Overtone Singing – Hidden Dimensions of the Human Voice is now getting ready for printing and distributing. It was nearly 20 years ago when I first met the new publisher, David Rothenberg, in his upstate New York village, after attending the Small Publisher’s Fair in New York City. We became friends, met here and there every once in a while and kept up a correspondence about many issues, such as the music of birds and other creatures, which is his special theme. Some years ago he launched his own press and so we came to talk about my book Overtone Singing, which needed a thorough update and revision.
Pre-order Overtone Singing on Book Depository – free world-wide delivery
Many things have been changed compared to the original book, so much so that I think this is the definitive version. Why? Because the contents became more and more integrated, my views more balanced, I dared to speak out criticisms more clearly, I updated myself about aspects that I thought were poorly represented (such as the healing and therapeutic aspects of overtones). Not to mention the development of the field itself in these 20 years: female overtone singers are once again well-established instead of marginal, the khöömei ‘traditions’ have developed in many directions and become modern in many ways, and they have popped up in new places where we did not really expect them (such as China, to mention one controversial case I discuss).
I also had the great fortune to do research about the ‘multi-part’ (that is, choral) traditions of overtone singing (Tibet, South Africa, Sardinia) and to make recordings there. I am quite proud about the accompanying audio guide, which is now called The Anthology of Overtone Singing and will be available in many places soon. I have been to nearly every place with an overtone singing tradition and keep on investigating these fascinating traditions in person, wherever I can. I think my new Physics chapter sets a good standard for what is possible technically, with updated drawings by own hand. The lessons learnt from several projects for which I have created new works for overtone singers have been really important for that: the Paraphony Laboratory and the Parafonia group, the Superstringtrio, and now IUooUI in Taiwan. In another way this book finally got the form I had always wanted it to be. Despite the help of several capable readers and editors in previous versions, there were still quite some mistakes in terms of English usage. Thanks to a thorough review process, there is no more engrish now!
What we are hoping for now, is to get enough backers for the crowdfunding campaign. OK, let me explain, for those who get confused. Crowdfunding is when you buy and pay for something that does not yet exist, but which you hope and wish will go into production: a book or music project, or a new model electric toothbrush – it can be anything, really. A backer is internet lingo for a supporter, which is simply a client who buys something, or someone who pays more to support a project and receives something extra on top. So without further ado, please check out the campaign for the Overtone Singing book on indiegogo.com, and order a book by clicking on the link below.
You will be among the first to receive the book and I will be eternally grateful to you! If you have any questions or problems with Indiegogo, you can always write to me directly.
You will find all the details about the book on this page.
Pictured from top to bottom: Sainkho Namtchylak with guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi; singers from Castelsardo, Sardinia; Musicians from Nqoko, South Africa; Khöömei Day in Tuva, 2018;Andreï Öpei and Valeriy Mongush from Tuva; the author with Trân Quang Hai, renowned overtone singing researcher, onstage in Kyzyl, Tuva, 1995.
A new group called IUooUI is going to give its first series of full performances. Most of us know each other for many years now and share a deep passion for overtone singing, throat singing and improvising with voices and instruments, as well as work on the body-mind relationship. We decided to take it a step further and create surprising performances based on all those amazing sessions we had during workshops throughout the years. We all have dreams and desires to bring the music in our heads alive, for others to hear. This is a challenge. We leave the intimate comfort zone of a workshop space. We are ready to confront an audience of curious listeners in unusual settings, and to envelop them with our resonances, overtones, mantras, syllables, shrieks, assisted by drums, Jew’s Harps, shruti boxes and more.
The name UIooUI stands for the mantra-and sutra-like phrases that we often use, inspired by the okyo of Michael Vetter (1943-2013). Michael transformed these traditional Japanese sutras to expand his own musical language, and this has become part of my own language now. IuooUI also stands for:
Of course, the syllables i-u-o-o-u-i make a small overtone piece in themselves.
The name was proposed by our in-house poet, Amang, whose Chinese name is Yü, which is the last part of IUooUI when it is pronounced as a three-character Mandarin syllabe, yiwoyu.
Our in-house designer JiJi Liu created the logo for us.
The name TWEAKS refers to the process of tweaking, adjusting, making things better by smaller or sometimes bigger changes. It is my hope that next week we can really tweak all the musical elements so that they keep on growing, changing and move towards a more refined shape. This week, at least, some of us were still busy tweaking, like JiJi and Sky, who came up with this after the dress rehearsal:
It has been inspiring to see how busy all members got in recent months to prepare for this first complete performance. They have been working diligently on their sounds and pieces, of which more than half is composed by themselves in smaller units. They took care of sound and light, finding equipment and personnel to handle it, costumes …
Earlier this year we have done some smaller performance, to warm up, and as teasers for our bigger program.
DATES and TIMES
Sunday August 21 – 19:30
Wednesday August 24 – 19:30
Friday August 26 – 15:00 and 19:30
Sunday August 28 – 19:30
The performances will be held at VENUE, on its 5F space, No. 10, Lane 107, Linsen North Road. This is a bustling area and if you have the time, you can have diner before at a nice Japanese restaurant, Umeko, right next door to VENUE (no. 8)!
On 12/12/2021 we started the founding of the TOSA, or Taiwan Overtone Singing Association. It was an old dream of mine to have a more solid vehicle for my work and that of others in the field of overtone singing. But lacking reading and writing skills in Chinese I was unable to give that wish a concrete form. But then my close collaborators Sunny Chen and Jackal Mei began to question me about this and make suggestions about how to let this community grow and organise some bigger events. By now there are quite some people who have studied overtone singing with me or with other local practitioners, or with foreign teachers (often from Inner Mongolia or Tuva). There are several skilled performers and others who are improving their skills rapidly. I tend to be a bit of a loner in my work in overtone singing, but I think the time has come to really help others flower if they wish to become good overtone singers. And to show more people the beauty of this technique in all its forms, whether artistic or therapeutic, traditional or modern.
TOSA members performing on January 1 at Mei Garden Restaurant, Taipei
In the end it was Sunny Chen who has done endless amounts of paperwork to have the first small meeting of founders last December. My heartfelt thanks to her and all those who signed up as founders. The next step is to go public, and this will happen right after Chinese New Year, on February 19. On that day our chairman Sky Tseng will tell more about bigger and smaller events we are going to host every year; about a practising group to brush up your overtone singing and chanting; about concerts we will jointly attend or important books and pieces or CDs we will discuss. Professor Chung Minder, or taimu as he is known to many, will look back to twenty years of overtone singing in Taiwan, and perhaps look forward too. My old friends, and long-time overtone singing lovers (and love-couple in the first place) Wei-Lin and Qi-Chung will do a presentation, and so do I: this serves as the upbeat to a full concert we are preparing for later this year.
To make all of this happen, we need to reach a minimum of 45 members by January 28 (and not by February 19, as we thought before). We hope you will consider to sign up this month and give our association a flying start. A little extra support at this point is much needed since only a small inner circle of people knows about this initiative. Once we get started in February we can reach out to more people.
At the end of 2019, in fact around the Winter Solstice on December 21, we did the first Voice Yoga Retreat here in Taiwan. A wonderful recollection of the best stuff I have done during my 7 seven years of weekly Voice Yoga classes. It was beyond expectation: fantastic weather, great location, wonderful students, and a great three-person-strong core team (Sunny Chen, Jackal Mei, me) to take care of everything.
Most of all, we all experienced a nice flow between yogic and other exercises, sound and body improvisations, eating cakes and drinking Jackal’s homebrewn coffee, meditating, listening, chanting, learning about my methods and ‘vision.’ People came from all over the place and all walks of life, and most were new to Voice Yoga.
One student, Guang Guang, wrote an excellent report in Chinese about everything we did, in Chinese. I reproduce it here, with an autotranslation at the bottom of this page. Jackal Mei made some great photos, and there’s a couple of myself too. Many thanks to Guang Guang and Jackal for the words and images, and to Sunny !
We’ll do another Voice Yoga Retreat later this year on the beautiful, relaxed East Coast of Taiwan, where the pace is slow, weather seems to be nearly always good, birds sing loudly and the ocean is never far away. Get on the maillinglist for updates.
Because there are always many good friends around me, then put into a path. at the beginning, the leaves share the voice with me, and let me plant seeds in my heart…
So recently, I went to experience a sound yoga,
The teacher who taught is the mark of the pan-Yin.
I love his selfless and loving sharing
And take care and feel every one of us
When the first class said
The voices made here are all about the moment.
There is no bad right or wrong, every voice is right…
Let me feel free to feel at ease
First night
Mark is very natural to mix everyone’s voices together in space, let each other’s strange partner, quickly flowing, just two hours, my whole body is dancing.
/ breathing practice
A lot of things to feel in this practice,
I am also practicing to practice the feeling
Where to breathe, where to go, expand or shrink…
Never thought about what happened so naturally,
But these two recent courses are reminding this thing, that is the moment.
/ vowel triangle
Love to play with the vowel triangle
But I will find myself very short in this,
Will also want to work with other people
Make your own rhythm between perfection and coordination
Oh ~ suck ~
Oh ~ Ah ~ one
/ the ocean of sound
With the imitation of a natural voice,
Let your voice be thrown into the ocean
The Forest, the pond, the water, the swamp, the swamp, the sky, everything, the sound of the earth.
Who likes to share quietly, she feels like she’s shiny, so let the voice come out on her own…
So conscious body, I’m still on my way to practice
/ deep listening
Voice together in the outdoors,
Listen to the sound of the space and follow
Listen to the sound of not, create
In the way.
Made a contemporary music
I love this fusion melody.
/ surprise
Surround a circle and make a few voices with Mark,
Close your eyes and close your eyes
A few sounds without rules
Then slowly,
Mark puts the nissan into the circle
Close your eyes in the circle and enjoy the melody
Mark is singing faster and faster
Getting more and more specific
Starting to find something wrong
Open your eyes and look at mark
He smiled at me
She has already learned it early.
Yes, it’s really what I thought
The students laugh at one after one.
Mulberry finally realized the chú le of this party
I am in tears to accept everyone’s singing
This moment is so touching
So beautiful ~ so beautiful ~
/ Winter Solstice Lights out
Surround the candles with a peaceful night, close your eyes with the feeling of stars, the sound of nature that surround us, like the stars that have fallen in the grass, the sound of everything.
/ sana ceremony
Classmate Blues on the night for you all the night
First experience ceremony, the sana drum burst out my whole body current, under the protection of the guardian spirit, I felt the process, the jungle, the speed, the dark spin, then the snake that came out, finally let myself slowly pull away, see one Deer stop
Lithuania was called by the drum of the drum to run
It also dance, the whole field, sitting or moving.
Every world, fantasy world ~
/ vowel
I am deeply aware of my voice.
Where did the sound go in the resonance body?
Mark said
Where the body and the sound will be resonance
But but
Ideas can also let the voice go where you want him to go
At the end everyone’s voice shakes,
All have different discoveries
This makes me think the voice is so funny
Everyone’s body feels so unique
/ breathing rhythm
The difference in the length of breathing,
Can also be a beautiful song
I’m enjoying this chapter too
The sum of each instrument
It’s a movement of life.
/ Pan-voice solo
One afternoon mark singing for everyone
Sitting and lying free
It was a cloudy afternoon.
While a pan-Tone Melody keeps on the these
All I hear is the voice of an angel
Right now
The Golden sunshine outside the window goes through the pink curtains
Angel Light gentle on mark
I didn’t have time to take pictures of that one
But in my mind
My whole body is dancing
/ eight sound
Everyone’s voice is so unique and nice
There is the singing of the old soul in the voice of the old soul
Thinking of her guardian spirit grandma and love
It’s my turn to kick the card.
Is the flower God singing!!!
Clear and beautiful, so touching
When it was my turn, my head wanted to work
Later I told myself to forget it
What makes the voice is what is
Even though I know my voice is not even where I’m going
My Voice God is helping me find the level
Went for a couple of semitone
I just went to the place where I should go.
I can say too
That’s my precision in control of my semitone (allocated ~
After three days of playing
Very Loose, slow and amazing body all kinds of sour
I didn’t expect it. It was just a voice.
The body has all kinds of pull
But remember that Xin Xin said very well
(but I forgot what she said XD)
But after she said, I just had a moment.
Lala also shared mark in mechanical noise
Find out the rhythm of its regular rhythm
Make noise not just noise
Harvest a lot in three days,
Maybe I’m still in the aftershocks and feel slowly
The only part that knows what I know most
Probably I’m not that relaxing myself yet
The voice is too strange to me after all
But after these process
It’s better to lose the established impression of the voice in my childhood
The Color of the voice is so wide and infinite
Tell yourself, it’s just to play, go play!
Sound Yoga is yoga and impromptu
He is more than a voice,
Is the one that makes the heart, spirit and body
Thank you Yu Chih Lin for taking me on the pool
Thank you Xiaoying Ye for the link
Thank you Jackal Mei for the invitation XD
Thanks Mark Van Tongeren
Leading the experience of my experience
Had me so much fun on this sound tour…
Due to all the uncertainties in Hong Kong, the Soundtherapy Hong Kong team decided it is not a good time to run my regular Hong Kong workshop Outer Voice – Inner Voice. So we cancel the workshop. Here is the original post with announcement and some photos from the workshops 2014-2018.
If you want to learn overtone singing with me but do not need a Chinese translation, then the workshops in Hong Kong may be something for you. Most workshops in Taiwan are with translation, which means we lose some time for interpretation. This November workshop in Hong Kong is the next opportunity to do an English-only workshop, other opportunities in Winter and Spring 2020 will be announced here soon.
I have had such fantastic experiences during the Hong Kong workshops over the past six years and would like to look back through some photos. The first workshop I did was during the Umbrella Revolution in 2014 – though the umbrellas you see in the first photo were not related to the protest. The previous visit (late 2018) was just days after a violent typhoon struck Hong Kong, locking people in their homes with the wind bashing on their windows and rains creeping in through the windowposts. On the beach (last photo) we found the remains of shops that were completely destroyed. In between you will find mostly happier moments shared with students and Jennifer and Jasmine. And at the bottom my ‘Courage!’ statement for the many friends in Hong Kong.
With Jasmine Hui of Soundtherapy Hong Kong at the workshop location, a comix and animation center.
The fantastic Soundtherapy Hong Kong team and me have revamped the annual Outer Voice ~ Inner Voice workshop to make it a bit more accessible and diverse. At the same time old students will find some new themes to progress further in their exploration of overtone singing and the endless possibilities of the colours of the human voice.
The general idea is for starters to come to Part One ~ Outer Voice (day one) and from there to continue with Part Two ~ Inner Voice (day two and three). Old students can directly come to Part Two ~ Inner Voice, if they wish. Within these two blocks there are still six themes to chose from – or you can do them all.
PART I ~ OUTER VOICE
THE RESONATING BODY
DAY 1. SOUND IS MOVEMENT
Session 1. Breath, Prana & Movement
Breath is one process in the totality of prana / life force, and the one that drives our vocal sound too. We slowly build up our vocal practise from the breath and from movements. From relaxation we start a journey to learn new ways of sounding and moving. Familiar, everyday patterns become tools for transformation. Plenty of group chanting and toning, too.
Session 2. Sounds and music to lose and find yourself
We continue our exploration by shaking up things a bit more. Going wild and extreme one moment, contemplating sound and self another. Focus and un-focus. By doing less than we normally do, we notice more. We return to a primary knowledge that sits at the centre of the body-mind-division: sonic phenomenology. Musical games/meditations/dances. Serious fun. Anything is possible, and nothing too!
Projecting vowels into the body
PART II. INNER VOICE
INTO THE HEART OF SOUND
DAY 2. THE HARMONIC UNIVERSE
Session 3. Cosmic Listening
After some energising Voice Yoga we dive into the subtler realms of vowels, resonance and overtones. You take your first steps in The Art of Listening 2.0. Break through your habitual patterns of sounding and hearing. Expand your awareness of voice physiology. Cosmic listening to overtone singing with the sruti box and hear your own harmonics. Getting back to the more vigorous shake-ups of the day before whenever needed.
Session 4. Your Voice, Your Resonance, Your life
Overtone singing is not easy and pursuing mere technique in itself can be a burden. Armed with new understandings and experiences of the hidden dimensions of the human voice, we ask ourselves where we want to go with it. How do you resonate? What makes your voice unique? Love it or hate it? Every voice and every path is different. Pushing our vocal limits, we collectively embrace failure. And return to soothing vibrant sonic meditations.
Holland Street
DAY 3. CREATIVE IMAGINATION as a SOURCE OF LIFE
Session 5. Mantras, Chants and Sound poems
In an age of media technologies we have silenced ourselves and forgotten our ancestors’ songs. Mantras are among the most ancient sound tools around and we can still learn from them. The repetitive vibrations of chants also awake slumbering resonances in our body-mind. Add to that 21st century Sound Poems flavored with overtones and we have a complete palette of tools to revive the lost sonic core of our selves.
Session 6. Paraphony
Paraphony means: there is no such thing as objective sounds. Sound is shaped by your ears, your awareness, your mood … always in flux. In our last session, we throw ourselves into the creative process of making music by and for ourselves and each other. The more we live by our creative impulses—be they noisy and chaotic or contemplative and balanced—the deeper we get to know ourselves and the world around is. Resonating together, we attune ourselves to ever subtler sounds of tones, overtones and elusive acoustic realms. Grasping these phenomena, we manifest our own voice, bring it out in its own unique glory.
PART II ~ Session 3 /4 and 5/6: 23-24 Nov 2019 (Sat – Sun), Time: 10am – 5:30pm
To register Session 3-6 (Part II), you’re required to register for either Session 1 or 2 first. Past students can directly register for Part II without taking Session 1 or 2.
Venue (All Sessions): Sound Therapy Hong Kong
For registration go to the Soundtherapy Hong Kong website here and on Facebook.
Awaken your potential:
– > to listen better
– > to hear and sing the natural overtones in your voice
– > to understand your inner drives better
– > to diversify your voice
After this 3 days workshop, you will go home with a renewed sense of self through a fresh look and ‘a fresh ear’ at your voice. You will have a fuller understanding of its complex vibratory mechanisms, and get many new ideas how these operate at the point where body and mind are merged in a greater whole. You learn techniques to better hear the world around you and inside you. These tools help you to gradually increase your musical/sound awareness, to know what needs to be healed and how to do that.
For whom?
No previous musical or vocal experience is required. Just bring a healthy dosage of curiosity and willingness to explore. The starting point is your own path as a speaker, as a communicator, as a person who enjoys music. Or simply as a human being. This workshop is beneficial for musicians and artists, for healers and therapists, and for anyone looking for more direction, meaning and depth in their lives.
Improvising theatre director Ho Ying Fung and Wu Wentsui brought me to this fantastic streetperformance in January 2018
Courage, Hong Kong!
It is my sincere wish that Hong Kong remains as much as possible as it isnow:
a relatively free space within the larger Chinese boundaries
a place where Cantonese people with a democratic inclination determine the political, economic, cultural course of their unique region
a peaceful and culturally diverse hotspot where people from around the world live and work together without an over-active state apparatus encroaching upon their lives
My prayers go out to my Hong Kong friends and everyone else suffering from the human violence and psychological pressure. I pray too for the perpretators because it is, in my point of view, them who need to find peace of mind more than anyone else.
Here is another one
