MarisaMichelson.com
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The Vocal De-Armoring Approach is a somatic and holistic approach to working with singing, speaking, and embodiment.
Founded by MARISA MICHELSON - and an official offshoot of the Libero Canto School of Singing - Vo-De applies certain transformative approaches from that school more broadly, not only in service of freer singing, but also in service of healing, self-growth, sexuality, and spiritual inquiry.
SIGN UP FOR Singing Lessons and Embodiment Sessions, VoDe Style
Click the buttons below the images to learn more about and book our founder and the teachers who have have completed their Vocal De-Armoring Level One Diploma.
Not sure who to work with? Contact us! We'll send you our intake form and make a considered suggestion!
Want to compare teacher rates side by side? Click here.
What are sessions like?
We currently offer:
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Singing and Speaking lessons
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Embodiment Sessions
Singing and Speaking Lessons Vocal De-Armoring (VoDe) style, typically begin with you seated comfortably, connecting with your body and the present moment. In-person sessions may involve gentle, skillful and consensual touch. We warm up using specific playful practices that help you release knots and tensions in your body (typically beginning with jaw, neck and tongue tension), and that may help you release emotional and psyche blocks. Because a principle of our work is that the body knows how to sing when we learn to get out of the way, we create the conditions that would invite your body to respond spontaneously and reflexively. Lessons end with musical and performance practice.
Embodiment sessions are similar but more are geared towards coming home to yourself, connecting with your body, and being with the wild profundity of being a psycho-physical-spiritual Human. As with singing and speaking lessons, embodiment sessions include voice-giving expression, help you free your breathing in unprecedented ways, and explore the listening, expressive, less music focused.
All lessons and sessions are gentle, tailored to the individual, and specific.
The Vocal De-Armoring Approach invites you into a freer and more spontaneous relationship with your instincts, encouraging your clearest and most honest expression. VoDe guides a way of Being which infuses the Self-relationship with qualities of presence, courage, playfulness, expressiveness and curiosity.
By noticing and freeing the body, soul, and voice through physical practices that feature specific movements, active imagination, embodied musical practices, and ways of working with the pure energy (not the looping story) of emotions, VoDe invites people into a relationship with themselves that is Alive. VoDe is learning to be with one’s feelings, and to allow the full extent of feelings.
VoDe is also about Agency, De-conditioning, skillfully connecting to Desires, and Human-ing from a place of Truth.
Lessons with Marisa have utterly transformed my relationship to music, and immeasurably enriched my life.
"I spent two decades as an instrumentalist and a singer deeply frustrated by my seeming inability to feel free and truly expressive when making music. “Real” music always felt just out of reach, and it was heartbreaking.
In our work together, Marisa and I have confronted and gradually unwound the perfectionism that was literally constricting me, cutting off the free flow of breath through my body and the flow of musical ideas from my imagination to my voice. Through life-affirming sessions that perfectly blend wildness and discipline and honor every facet of my experience, I’ve learned how to let myself sing without getting in my own way. Now, I sing out in the world with confidence and freedom and pleasure. It's difficult to put into words how infinitely gratifying this is, and how exciting it is to sense the potential to find, through this work, ever more flexibility, presence, and artistry in my singing. I feel more myself than ever before, and I’m so grateful to have this work and this remarkable community at the center of my musical life."
Alysa Ain, Musician & Psychotherapist
Questions? Reach out!
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