Featured teacher for Vocal Health Education and co-host of the Thinking Voice podcast, Robert Sussuma joins Alexa this week on Singing Teachers Talk. He’s here to discuss how you can develop a singer’s self-awareness and clarify intention. Robert will also be presenting at BAST’s Focus On: The Body and the Singer event on the 27th of June.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Feldenkrais lessons are designed to work at the level where your system runs the system. They update you from within at this deep core nervous system level so that when you go to do things in a more conscious way, then the system is already there to support you.
- In the Feldenkrais method, there are two modalities for doing this, functional integration which is hands-on and none verbal, and the other version is awareness through movement or ATMs, which are verbally led.
- Teaching someone to become self-aware involves a lot of novelty, telling them to do something strange or something they know how to do but in a totally new way. It’s tricking the nervous system into paying attention through novelty.
- These awareness lessons are like experiments outside of life that get deep into the system. When you come back to life, if the system has truly changed, there is a change in the self-image, in the nervous system, in the foundation of how you act. The lesson will automatically have an effect on that action when you do that action again.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I have a student who calls it updating the motherboard’
‘Working with novelty is really effective but strange compared to what most people do’
‘The lesson isn’t what we do, it’s what we’re learning having done it’
‘We can all do the same lesson and learn something different’
EPISODE RESOURCES
Guest Website:
- @robert_sussuma
Relevant Links & Mentions:
- BAST Focus On The Body & The Singer Event: basttraining.com/event/focus-on-the-body-and-the-singer
- Vocal Health Education: vocalhealth.co.uk
- The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education
- Thinking Voice Podcast – The Endings Conversation: open.spotify.com/episode/4WPhNUEgbRulnsf6OBd313?si=6e04fa1041bb4d38
- Vocology in Practice: vocologyinpractice.org
- Singing Teachers Talk Podcast – Ep. 32 – The Bio-Psycho-Social Model with Stephen King: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4R13bvilWjwQnd9WOfTiVc?si=1ffb4c437bdd4f34
- The Joys of Singing and Sex?!? – A Somatic Approach (Blog): thesingingself.com/joys-of-singing-and-sex-somatic-approach
- Sense and Sensuality Event: thesingingself.com/voice-incorporated-2022-sense-and-sensuality
ABOUT THE GUEST
Robert Sussuma, a native New Yorker, is an explorer, a life-long learner and a connoisseur of connections: movement, speaking and singing, voice science, emotions, music history, motor learning, existentialism, neurology-in-action, consciousness and deep personal development – to name a few. His formal education is in vocal performance (Bachelors of Music in Voice Performance and Masters of Music in Early Music Voice Performance). Early in that training, he discovered the Feldenkrais® Method of Somatic Education and has seen the two fields as inseparable ever since. He is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner.
Robert has taught Private Voice Lessons and Voice and Movement Classes at Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado), Haverford College (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and PACE University (New York, New York), and has maintained an active private studio for over 20 years, working with well-known and successful actors and singers in NYC. Robert has also been a guest teacher at Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Barcelona University.
Robert now teaches mostly online working with singers of all kinds and training voice teachers to work somatically. He has created two extensive online courses THE SINGING SELF PROGRAM and THE SINGING SELF PROGRAM: TEACHER TRACK at thesingingself.com
Link to podcast presenter’s bios
