Cheeks - First movement

when we added the cheeks  We begin from a place of stillness, or no tension and we add one movement at a time.  That way, if tension creeps in, we’ll be able to detect it immediately.

Go to Optimum Tempo and smooth the movements.

So, let’s stay in home position, look in the mirror, soft eyes and begin to bring your lips up in a smile using your cheek muscles.

Initiate the smile from your cheeks, if you can, and notice any entanglements between the head and the eyes.

If you have to start with your lips, you may.

But, once you get into a big smile, soften your lips and take a look at your home position and see if you have any entanglements. And, one by one, work through your list.

Sustain your smile and soften your head, your eyes, head, jaw tongue.

All points remain in home position while you lift your cheeks in a smile.

Make sure that you're not initiating the smile from you lips. Your lips are along for the ride.

Why are you doing this?
 
You are doing this because the sound waves move up into your head and face to amplify.

Your cheeks need to be open and disentangled from your eyes so the sound waves and get in there and reverberate.

Have you ever looked at the muscles around your eyes? They pull in all sorts of directions and there is this round eyeball and they all reverberate with the sound waves.

If you’re holding on to the muscles around your eyes, your gaze, trust me, as your voice gets bigger (well, actually your voice won’t get bigger, there won’t be any room for it to get bigger.)

If you have soft eyes, the sound waves can move up into the sinuses, head and face.

Notice, as you pull up into a smile if you are subtly moving your head out of position as you do sometimes when you laugh or smile.

You can keep those old habits, but we have to disentangle in order to accommodate the sound waves and air pressure you’ll be feeling up there.  

You have to stay in alignment.

How’s your head?

Keep it soft. Keep the tongue on the floor of your mouth.

And, there’s slight space between your teeth. Notice how your upper body fills and empties air.

Don’t do anything about it right now, we will do that in the next lesson.

Just observe your vocal core.

Dis-entangle and learn how to pull the cheeks up without using your head or eyes.

And, just inflate and deflate in this position.

This will cause a cascade of subtle. release movements throughout your body. So this time is well-spent.

Very soon you will be able to drop into this position instantaneously.  But it will be because you did these first exercises so slowly with mindful attention.

You will have sensation of free and easy in your vocal core so that when you do breathe and make sound it won’t disturb this free core.

Good work!