2-day workshop (there is an option of 1-day-only booking) in the lovely Calder Valley location under the tuition of experienced song leader Olga Lidia Kozlowska, hosted by Tove Vrbnakova at @CounsellingforchangeUK. The workshop is limited to 25 participants.
22nd April – traditional Slavic songs (Ukrainian & Polish)
23rd April – traditional Georgian songs
Connect to your Authentic Voice, tune your nervous system (using polyvagal theory practices) and learn some Slavic & Georgian polyphonic songs.
The workshop will be lead in English throughout (and together we will learn the song lyrics in the various languages).
Authentic Voice practice is for connecting through voice. The Authentic Voice approach has been developed by Olga Lidia Kozłowska since 2011.
During the sessions we will learn and explore traditional Slavic and Georgian polyphonic songs, using expressive improvisation to further develop our experience. The practice has three components: personal voice, group singing and somatic voice experience.
Aesthetics is a side effect, not the goal. Techniques help us, not stop us.
Did you know that singing makes you happier?
The vagus nerve is connected to your vocal cords and the muscles at the back of your throat. Singing, humming, chanting and gargling can activate these muscles and stimulate your vagus nerve. And, singing in a safe group has an even stronger positive effect on your health and wellbeing.
INVITATION
All you need is your desire to come and willingness to take one more step on the way of the voice. You don’t have to read music or “know how to sing”. We will sit, stand, move, be barefoot and sometimes lay down. Maybe we will go out to sing outside too!
Authentic Voice is a practice designed to:
- ground in the body: through breath, movement, contact
- bring safety for opening the voice
- explore healthy ways of singing
- play with rhythms and melodies, repetition and surprise
- find pleasure in vibration, physical embodiment
- rest and expand in singing
- resonate with people in the circle
- holding space for others and ourselves
- sing traditional old songs in polyphony
- learn practical tools for breath release and voice regeneration.
Voice improvisation reveals our human creativity and is a gate to the state of flow in the singing tribe. Traditional songs are musical patterns that we can enter and join the landscape of the harmonies born in nature and human hearts. Polyphonic harmonies and disharmonies are an invitation for us to meet in deep listening. They are vehicles of emotions and universal stories. We connect to these stories through our own bodies in singing. This is a research space and a playground, dedicated to us, as we are resonant creatures and soundgivers.
When singing we are singing presence allowing the pulse of life available to current tone with our hearts, ears, skin, feet, lips. We are bigger than we think; the deeper we trust the more we are already tuned
hearing every sound in the world, we root into vibrant reality. Every song is an invitation for you to live.
OLGA LIDIA KOZŁOWSKA (Poland)
A psychologist, body psychotherapist, singer, voice practice researcher and group facilitator. Expression through voice is her lifelong passion. She looks at voicework in a holistic way, not only as just a tool. Olga has been leading regular vocal workshops since 2011 in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Germany and UK, and leading a Georgian polyphony Nana Choir for 3 years. She has experience in traditional Slavic and Georgian singing, choral singing, as well as improvisation. She is a certified Core Energetics body psychotherapist and Brainspotting practitioner as well as a teacher and psychologist at universities in Wrocław. She has done Processwork training (A.&A. Mindell) and is inspired by Alexander Technique and Polyvagal Theory in the context of the intricate relation of nervous system and voice.
Olga’s masters are: Frank Kane, Natalia Polovynka, Emma Bonnici, Amit Carmeli, Kristin Linklater, Lane Arye. She has also done 9 years of Contact Improvisation.
See more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UECkgnoOJpQ * Bulgarian traditional song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBysGNQOKI&t=3s * Ukrainian traditional song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Loi-jezz3x8 * Olga learning Georgian lullaby in Svaneti
Looking forward to meeting you there!
Olga & Tove
