Finding and Releasing Your Voice (Self-Expression)

[00:00:02] Matt Landsiedel: Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast series by the Gay Men’s Brotherhood where we talk about personal development, mental health and sexuality. I am your host, Matt Landsiedel. I’m a counselor and facilitator specializing in healing and empowerment. My areas of expertise are teaching people how to heal toxic shame and attachment trauma and embody their authentic self so they can have more meaningful connections in their lives. I specialize in working with highly sensitive people, empaths and gay men to develop a stronger sense of self-worth. So today’s topic is “Finding and Releasing Your Voice”. We’re going to be talking about self-expression, and we are joined by Javier Wallis.

[00:00:38] Javier Wallis: Hey.

[00:00:39] Matt Landsiedel: Howdy.

[00:00:42] Javier Wallis: Very nice to be here.

[00:00:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, glad to have you here.

So, Javier is a vocal coach, producer and artist interested in the intersection of vocal technique with neuroscience, somatic, fitness, mindfulness and meditation.

He has trained with CVT and IVA certified voice teachers and coaches across pop, folk, rock, jazz and classical over the last 17 years, and has been writing, producing and performing music for twelve years. He strives to offer his students a nonjudgmental space for exploration and collapse, divisions between high culture and low culture in pursuit of empowering students to make their own choices, self-actualize, and take their practice and artistry to a new level.

That’s great. Yeah, you’re bringing some good stuff. Good stuff here.

For those of you who are avid listeners, they know that I’ve. For the last year, I’ve been doing vocal coaching myself. So you reached out and I was like, this is a perfect fit.

There’s a lot of intersection between the work that we do, and I’m looking forward to unpacking this.

[00:01:51] Matt Landsiedel: So, yeah.

[00:01:53] Matt Landsiedel: Is there anything I missed in there that you want to share with the audience?

[00:01:57] Javier Wallis: It’s. It’s just funny. As a. As a practitioner, also someone with ADHD, sometimes we, I’m so focused on the next thing that sometimes I need a reminder of all the stuff I’ve done. So I always really need to be like, oh, yeah, I am competent.

[00:02:11] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:13] Matt Landsiedel: You bring neurodivergence to this as well, right? So I have sensory processing sensitivity and you’re bringing.

What would you classify ADHD for you? How does it show up for you? Just curious.

[00:02:23] Javier Wallis: Um, how it shows up for me is also sensory processing. Um, so it’s, uh, it’s tied in a little bit with cPTSD, uh, symptoms. But for me, a thing that I always say to people is like, I’m. I’ve been a musician for a very long time. And, um, how our cortical processing works, the. How we map our brains onto sensory information is always going to be, um, super wrapped up in sound for me. So that means that, yeah, I’m very sensitive to sound.

Otherwise, with ADHD, it’s about that sense of time and balancing priorities. But I think I’m doing okay at the moment.

[00:03:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Good, good.

[00:03:03] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, it’s challenging, too, and even doing these episodes, too. Like, I can hear birds chirping, I can hear the traffic. I can hear you. Like, there’s. It’s funny. Like, I. That’s my main domain for sensitivity is auditory. So it’s interesting. We can even bleed this into today’s conversation because we bring a different perspective into this. So.

[00:03:20] Javier Wallis: For sure.

[00:03:21] Matt Landsiedel: But for the audience, basically what we’re going to be unpacking today, we got five concepts we’re going to be exploring. So how vocal expression supports self-expression, how to find and release your voice, the blocks to self-expression, the benefits of vocal expression, and then the benefits of vocal coaching. So we’ve got a lot of cool stuff to unpack. So let’s hop right in. So, yeah, let’s maybe start with the first one. So how vocal expressions support self-expression. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say that.

[00:03:55] Javier Wallis: A lot of people that I’ve worked with are shy people or the people who would describe themselves as shy. And I see a direct, seen a direct correlation in people who are shy and having limitations with the voice.

This has also been me as well.

[00:04:11] Matt Landsiedel: So, yeah, ditto. Ditto.

[00:04:14] Javier Wallis: Yeah. So if we.

If we hold our voice back, if we’re. If we’re. If we’re afraid of being heard or we don’t want to rock the boat or we. We don’t want to put ourselves out there too much, we can constrict the voice and basically efficient vocal technique. I don’t really like to talk in terms of good or bad because a lot of it is choice and stylistic choices, but I think what it will always come down to is efficiency, like, how much energy is it costing you?

[00:04:41] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:04:42] Javier Wallis: And there are surprising impacts from one. If we believe that we’re capable, if we believe we’re a good singer, if we can sing, well, that’s going to have a major impact. But we’re holding the voice back. We’re introducing tension already into a system that doesn’t need any more tension, so that constriction really can really affect the voice. And I just. I see this correlation of people who have this in their personality and people who have this as a performer or a singer.

[00:05:08] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah.

[00:05:10] Matt Landsiedel: Interesting. I love that. And for myself, I’ve always been, like, a singer but a closeted singer for most of my life. Way too shy to sing in front of people and, like, terrified. I get stage fright, these sorts of things. So I’ve really been overcoming this. But one of the areas that I’ve noticed that, for me, vocal expression has helped my self-expression is through, like, emotional toning. So, like, I’m a firm believer that all emotions carry sound or vibration. Right. So whenever I, my journey towards reconnecting back to my emotional self was through using my voice. And it was amazing. When I first started working with my vocal coach, I realized I had so much stuff, primarily fear and shame, literally trapped in my vocal cords. So as I was, like, singing, I was feeling, like, heat in my face, and I would feel, like, shame responses while I was, like, letting go of some of this stuff from my body. Body. And I’ve always been the kind of person that I’ve always had stuff with throat. So I grew up having strep throat when I was younger. Like, all the time, like, every three months, I’d get strep throat, like, always clearing my throat or always trying to swallow. So there’s a lot of stuff that gets kind of put into this region. So I’m curious for you. Do you see this within your clients and people? Like, there’s a lot of release that can happen when you start to connect with your voice?

[00:06:36] Javier Wallis: Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure about the stuff to do with, like, getting localized infections and things like that. Although one of my students did knock me out for a week a couple of weeks ago and had to be like, guys, can you, if you’re sick, please stay home? Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, you’re familiar with Bessel van der Kolk? The body keeps the score, I guess.

[00:06:59] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:06:59] Javier Wallis: Yeah. So, basically, how I look at it is like, any, any stress, any trauma, any, anything that stores itself in a part of the body, all it takes is for that to be in a place like the stomach, the diaphragm, the chest cavity, the neck, the face, all of these are places that can affect the voice because it’s one big system that is basically starts with a bellows, which is a diaphragm in the lungs. And everything from there to the outside world can impact and then feedback on the chain itself. So it doesn’t even have to be anything wrong with our vocal folds per se, but any stress or trauma, like you’re saying you had a lot with the throat and a lot kind of like, a lot of tension holding you here. That’s definitely going to have an impact. And I’m very curious about where that crosses over with ideas of energy centers, because a funny thing about my work is that my bachelor’s degree is a biology and a master of music.

So I came from this space that’s very kind of empirical.

I’ve done a lot of meditation, and I have this wonderful group of friends who will meditate together here in Utrecht in the Netherlands, where I’m based.

Experiencing energy centers as a phenomenon in your own body when you don’t believe in them is quite the thing to experience. So I’m very interested in this idea of, like, ideas that we correlate with the chakra system and the throat chakra. And maybe if these things are, like, withheld ideas about expression, not speaking your truth, not advocating for yourself, being shy. I’m really interested to delve more into that, and that basically feeds into my work as well.

[00:08:43] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I hear that a lot from people that have strong science backgrounds, but I always say that there’s an intersection between spirituality and science. And that, for me, would be like quantum physics. Quantum physics is the intersection. It’s talking about things or metaphysics, right. These sorts of intersections. So I think they’re really. They’re really cool to explore. So I’m glad that you’re. That you understand that. And for me, that I’ve speak in that language a lot, even though I do have a scientific background as well in the social sciences.

But I’m a firm believer that I had a blockage in my throat chakra. And I grew up where my voice wasn’t encouraged to be. To be. I was encouraged to be seen or heard. It was more so, you know, like, repressed. And then growing up gay again, there was this element of feeling like I needed to hide and I needed to actually. And this is another interesting thing I think a lot of. A lot of our listeners will relate to this is feeling like, as gay men, we have to change our voices and the gay voice, right? Like, if we have a lisp or we sound like, you know, when we first start realizing that we are gay and we haven’t gone through puberty yet, and our voice sounds really high. Right. And then we might be trying to tone it down, like, bring our voice down, and that can affect and start to repress the authenticity of our voice. And so it’s just something. And I think a lot of gay men, and I’ll speak for myself, actually, I carried a lot of shame around my voice and always being like, do I have a lisp, or do I talk like I’m gay? Or is this going to be the thing that outs me? So I think I made a conscious effort to try and make sure that I never sounded gay. Right. Which. Which is a lot. It’s putting a lot of unnecessary tension on the voice.

[00:10:29] Javier Wallis: Yeah, I have a lot to say about this, so we can jump straight into this one if you want.

[00:10:33] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, let’s go. Let’s. Yeah, we’ll just. We’re gonna ping pong. I think we’ll play with our ADHD minds. We’ll just let it ping pong around, basically.

[00:10:42] Javier Wallis: I really relate to what you’re saying 100%. And it’s partly that sense of, like, that hyper vigilance, that kind of. We’re afraid of being othered. We’re afraid of being seen as LGBT, queer, gay men. So we’re afraid of that kind of being targeted. Right. But this doesn’t just affect gay men, this affects straight women, even who I’ve worked with, who artificially. I worked with someone who realized that she was artificially. If you hear what I’m doing with my voice now, I’m artificially opening up the throat and I’m making it sound deeper and more boomy. And this student that I worked with was doing this as well. And, yeah, basically, I also did it. And I have to consciously. It’s so deeply ingrained that I have to kind of pay attention to it because it does put a strain, because you’re pushing the larynx down.

We can create these effects, timbral effects, like that dark sound anyway, as part of performance. But I feel like every one of us has this sort of gravitational center of, like, a homeostasis point, like a balance point, the comfortable space for us to be that has, like, creates, like, the least strain from day to day. And that’s where I try and encourage people to be. I have to remember to put myself there as well. But it is brighter and it is more light, and it sounds like this. It’s more in my nose. And I had that sense of, I think as gay men, we’re sort of not just gay men, but everyone sort of performing masculinity in patriarchy. This female student I mentioned, she was doing that because she noticed that she would be taken more seriously by men.

And this was situations where she was in meeting rooms, boardrooms, pitching for things.

So I really understand that’s why people do it. And, yeah, the short version is its patriarchy. We’re doing it to try and create an impression of competence, of confidence that we know we’re doing. When, of course, you and I know that the depth of your voice or your perceived masculinity has nothing to do with that, but I think it speaks to the subconscious trappings of the environment that we’re living in.

[00:12:53] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I agree. And I think for a lot of us, masculinity is armor. It keeps us safe. The more masculine we are within this patriarchal system, the more likely we are to get ahead, the more likely we have access to resources, less violence, these sorts of things. Right.

[00:13:14] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:13:15] Matt Landsiedel: I’m curious, for people that might not understand what that means, the term patriarchy, do you want to just explain to the audience what that means to you?

[00:13:23] Javier Wallis: So it’s the idea that society is generally primed around men and male dominance. Of course, this is relative and it’s nuanced. It’s not the same in every place. It’s intersectional. For me, class is always, like, the most important intersectional factor. But then I grew up in the UK, and I think I. We have a very kind of strong experience of class that isn’t necessarily present in other countries, like the Netherlands, I think, for Canada, I’m not sure, but in the US definitely as well.

So it’s not a flawless idea, but it’s just this idea that, generally speaking, for the last couple of thousand years, the interests of men have been put generally at the forefront. And of course, we’re having shift now, and that’s a beautiful thing to see. But we’re still talking about the vestiges of that system are still hanging around us.

[00:14:15] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:17] Matt Landsiedel: And when you come to think of it, that was what I was experiencing when I was singing, and there was shame that was coming through and leaving my body. It was shame of. Because I saw and maybe even still see singing as quite a feminine expression. Right. And I’m not sure where that comes from in me, but it’s like, because men and women sing, but for some reason, it’s like anything in the expressive arts I see as is connected to the feminine energy, not necessarily the feminine gender. I’m speaking more so of that energy. And for me, there was a lot of maybe injury around, like expressing that part of myself and showing that part of myself because of growing up in these patriarchal systems where being gay was like the lowest of the. Of the low, like the lowest of the totem pole was that you were a gay man and I bought into that belief. So anything that would let people into that, that knowingness of me, I was like, shame, keep it hidden, don’t express it. And singing for me was a big part of that, which is probably why I was a closeted singer for most of my life. And.

And I fucking love singing. It’s the best feeling ever. Like, singing is one of the best feelings for me and, yeah, so I’m glad I’m working through this, that’s for sure.

[00:15:34] Javier Wallis: Like, this is a thing, is that singing is for everybody. I really believe that. And one of my earlier coaches, she really inspired me with this because she was this really big, sort of, like, buxom, tall, Cambrian woman who you wouldn’t mess around with, you know, and she. She made metal music and I was really into her music. And to have this person who had this very aggressive, masculine energy to have this very nurturing idea of, like, singing is for everybody just really touched me and I’ve never left that behind. Like, I really think it’s. It’s for everyone. And particularly singing together with other people is like a. I think it’s an essential human experience that I wish more people have access to.

[00:16:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, that’s one of my fondest memories of school, actually, is because we would, we had to take music class and we would all sing together and it was like, I would feel and, like, I also get, like, chills when I see, like, marching bands. Like, there’s something about synchronicity and, like, working together and making sound and creating this, like, macro experience of all these micro parts coming together. There’s something really. I don’t know why, but I get really inspired by that.

[00:16:43] Javier Wallis: It’s amazing. But I do really hear what you’re saying. It’s the association you’ve made between something that could threaten you, which is the singing and space you grew up in. I mean, I grew up in a military family, so Catholic Venezuelans, British military on each side. So, yeah, so dancing is also something that I suppressed and that I’m reawakening now, but at least singing was something that I could get away with. But I really understand why you made that connection.

[00:17:16] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:17:18] Matt Landsiedel: I think I carry that with dancing as well, too.

Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting.

How did you get into.

[00:17:28] Javier Wallis: How did I get into singing or teaching?

[00:17:31] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, both, I guess.

[00:17:35] Javier Wallis: I was just a loud kid.

[00:17:37] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:17:39] Javier Wallis: I got sent for singing lessons, which is very lucky. That shows that there’s a certain support on that side of parenting. When I was maybe about nine or ten and when I was a teenager, I got really big into music and it just became an outlet for me. And I did it all through my twenties. I was writing music. It was in a band.

And then I decided later, because of Brexit and a couple of other things, like, oh, I wanted to have a new adventure. And I ended up coming to music school later in lesser, 29 years old. And because I’d always wanted to do that, but I did science instead because of that kind of discouragement away from doing the arts, which also impacted me as a kid, a very sort of strict household and controlling in ways that are very unhealthy, actually. But, yeah. So I came back to do music, and then basically a friend of mine who is a medal singer, he screams in a black metal Bandai den, he asked me to give him a few pointers. And through that, and through some volunteering work I was doing, I realized just how much I knew about it and how much I loved coaching. And so I started.

[00:18:55] Matt Landsiedel: Cool.

[00:18:56] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:18:56] Matt Landsiedel: Amazing. Amazing.

I’m curious, so if we look at how. Well I’m curious. We went back and forth between unlocking the name of this, unlocking the voice, finding the voice, releasing the voice, and we landed on finding and releasing.

Let’s maybe explore these two concepts, like finding and releasing the voice. Why is this important? How do we do this? Let’s unpack this a little further.

[00:19:23] Javier Wallis: I think that there is something about if you have a burning desire, if you have a passion, if you have something you might call a calling, like, not everyone knows they haven’t all found their passion yet, and I think that’s not a big deal, but if you have that burning thing, I think you kind of have to go after it.

I think even if. Definitely not even if there’s no qualifier there, you need to go after it. And because you may end up somewhere different than when you. Where you planned, but I think there’s a lot of fulfillments and a lot of fulfilling life paths to be found just because you went for that thing.

[00:20:01] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:20:02] Javier Wallis: So for me, that was music. And I actually, I was actually a radio producer at the BBC before I came to the Netherlands to do this.

So I was in music, I was in the music industry. I was working at festivals. I was producing. I was helping sort of do the logistics and the facilitation behind music radio and events. But I just. The itch wasn’t being scratched, so I had to go for it. And so this is sort of partly this aspect of my experience. I didn’t plan to become a vocal coach. I was. I wanted to be an artist, and at the second best, I was going to go for. I wanted to write music for films and games because I compose and produce as well, as you mentioned, and it was an accident that I ended up with coaching, but I love it, and it’s something that I didn’t imagine for myself. So that’s why this idea of, like, unlocking and releasing, because I think there’s a lot to do with your drive and things that you want, and the voice is intimately connected to. How integrated are we? How authentically are we expressing ourselves? Are we saying to ourselves, to other people, to the universe, what we want?

Are we saying that out loud? Because if we’re not, then I think that’s the thing that’s being locked up.

So I think there’s this real connection between desire and our authenticity. And verbalizing, expressing and singing is basically just another form of verbalization. Right?

[00:21:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.

[00:21:43] Matt Landsiedel: I’m a firm believer that desire is the compass that points us in the direction of our authenticity, which is why our authenticity is always changing, because our desire is always changing.

[00:21:51] Matt Landsiedel: Right.

[00:21:52] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, it’s juicy stuff.

Okay, so I want to get to know a little bit more about how you do this. Like, how you take people on this journey to finding and releasing their voice. Like, do you have certain strategies do you use or do you have.

Yeah, I would just be curious to know a little bit more about that.

[00:22:11] Javier Wallis: So it’s tricky because I’m not a therapist. Right. And I make clear to all my students I’m not a therapist. Like, a lot of my experience comes from that. I’ve been involved in therapy for a long time, and I’ve seen things happen in myself and in other people that connect these dots. So it’s sort of. It’s understanding that I have. I don’t take it as, like, as read, but I’ve just seen a lot of these patterns emerge over and over in different people. So I basically try to be like a big brother who’s on someone’s team, and I introduce them to these ideas and see what’s resonating. What’s resonating with you, really? How I start is I start how any vocal coach starts.

I have a meeting initially with people, and then when we decide we’re going to get into a coaching relationship, then I get them to bring material. They sing it. I kind of hear what’s going on in the voice. And the classic vocal coaching technique thing is you introduce them to exercises, for example, they might do unfinished sounds. There’s the classic baby sound, like wang. To get people to access twang, which is about the position of your epiglottis and a few other factors, you introduce them to these things to try and get them to sort of see what other things can sound and feel like. Because often when people, like, when people are punks, and I teach a lot of people who are doing it themselves, so they’re, they’re punks, they get into a habit of doing things a certain way.

So it’s trying to introduce them to hear and feel what it sounds like when you’re doing things another way because the body gets locked in. So. So basically what I do is I try and introduce them to the body as these things are happening, because a lot of the time we get in our heads and singing is not an intellectual exercise.

[00:24:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:24:03] Javier Wallis: And it can be really uncomfortable. It’s a really somatic activity because changing anything is an uncomfortable process, and you have to be in that uncomfortable space to then have the body kind of adapt to what it feels like. So my process is pretty intuitive. I see what’s coming up for the student. I ask people questions. I find out about, like, hey, what’s your thinking behind why you do this thing?

And oftentimes that just sort of brings things up, unravels. Like, if they have, we talked about stage fright, if they have that fear of being stakes, because basically a hyperactive inner critic is a real contender, a real challenger in developing. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

And that’s really what’s behind a lot of stage fright. It’s the fear that we’re going to be in danger if we are not perfect.

[00:25:04] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:25:04] Javier Wallis: So, yeah, these things are really, really, they present themselves, and I think it’s basically just that my experience and my intuition allows me to tap into these things. And like I said, I’m not a therapist. I always make my students aware that that’s not a thing that I do and that if there is any, I don’t touch anything in a place that’s too deep to come back from.

[00:25:27] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:25:28] Javier Wallis: I also encourage students to go and work with the appropriate professional if they need extra support. Also, I’ve had trans students that I’m simply not a speech and language therapist. So there are some aspects of language therapy that I can’t work with. So I do my best to support those students how I can and then refer them on and encourage them to get support from a speech therapist as well, if they need it.

[00:25:53] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Cool, cool.

Yeah.

[00:25:56] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. Lots of stuff there maybe we talk a bit about some of these blocks that you. That, well, we all meet as human beings when it comes to self-expression. So we made a list of them here.

[00:26:09] Javier Wallis: I was really curious to hear more about your journey with it. So I wonder if maybe your could be like an architecture here.

[00:26:16] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:26:17] Matt Landsiedel: What are you curious to know? Let’s lead from your curiosity. What do you want to know?

[00:26:21] Javier Wallis: We’ve never met before, Matt Lance, at all. We met one time. So give me the roundup of what it was like when. What led you to start vocal coaching and then what did you encounter first with your vocal coach?

[00:26:36] Matt Landsiedel: So, November 6, two years ago, basically, I started, and I’ve always had this desire to want to do this, and I was just too scared, too scared.

So finally, I made a deal. This was last year’s. I always kind of have a new year’s thing, and this one was to face, like, the year of courage to face fears. And I’m still in that carried it on into year two because there was just a lot of stuff to meet.

So, yeah, I hired this woman who I had saved one of her posts on Facebook, like, five years ago. I went scrolling, finding it. I ended up hiring her. And it wasn’t. To be honest, it wasn’t the best fit.

I didn’t know different, though, but in retrospect, it wasn’t the best fit. She is very much, I would say I don’t know enough about this, but I think maybe she’s more classically trained. She has a lot of perfectionism in the way that she teaches. And she wants, you know, and I need somebody that’s more flowy because I don’t want to learn to be perfect. I want to learn to find my voice, be authentic. And, you know, the type of singing I do is just, like, tons of different things. Like, I don’t have a style that I like to, you know, I like to play around with different things, and I’m always just making sounds and things like that. I’m just a very expressive person, and.

But I kind of. I got. I got caught in that trap of, like, this perfectionism, and I tried to with it with that style that she was putting forward. And that’s, I think, why I was meeting a lot of shame and a lot of these things that were coming up for me. Um, and I ended up doing two open mics, and they were terrifying. So terrifying.

But again, it’s like I didn’t feel like I had the support that I needed. I felt like there was a lot of this energy around, like, perfectionism and stuff, which was my own stuff. It was playing on my own stuff for sure. Like, I’ve got a major inner critic that tells me that if I’m not perfect, I’m not going to be loved or accepted or I’m going to be criticized or whatever. Blah, blah.

[00:28:39] Javier Wallis: God.

[00:28:41] Matt Landsiedel: Right? So, and that’s where my, for sure, where my stage fright comes from. Um, but, you know, it’s, I’ve done a lot of work within the authentic, relating spaces and things like that, and I’ve learned how to just let myself break free and, and, but it still shows up. Like, it’s even showing up in today’s session. Like, it’s like, oh, what if I forget what, what I’m talking about? Or what if I don’t have the right retort when, you know, you’re finished talking? It’s like it always, it’s always there. It’s like this stuff, but it’s like I’ve learned to almost befriend it, right? As opposed to let it, like, run the show. It’s like, okay, I’m going to befriend this part of myself and it’s a very wounded part.

[00:29:18] Javier Wallis: Yeah, it’s a very wounded part. And like, have you done internal family systems?

[00:29:23] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:29:23] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I have some training in that as well, too, so I understand it.

And it’s a very young part. Right. And it comes from parenting. Usually. Like, highly critical parenting leads to what I called, like, the parent ego. We have a parent ego inside of us, which is, it’s our own voice, but it’s the dialogue that our parents used with us. We internalize that and we start to communicate with ourselves in that way. So having highly critical parenting leads to perfectionism and having a highly critical inner voice, or inner bully, for sure. And that was definitely within my family systems.

[00:30:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:30:03] Matt Landsiedel: So that’s been a lot of my work, believe it or not. It’s not so much the technical sides of it, and that’s not why I actually hired a coach. Like, I think I’m a pretty good singer, just like naturally. And I’ve got lots to learn, for sure. But for me, the reason why I signed up was I wanted to learn how to unlock my voice and unlock my fears and find myself. And it’s believed it or nothing since I’ve started. In the last two years, like, my boundaries have improved, my conviction in using my voice to get my needs met, expressing my emotions like it’s been a game changer. So I can see how you meet that. And for you to say you’re not a therapist, I get there’s that piece to it, but at the end of the day, doing vocal coaching for a year probably gave me more than doing therapy for a year, I’ll just be honest. So don’t underestimate what you’re doing for people.

[00:31:01] Javier Wallis: Is that after finding someone who is a better fit for you or.

[00:31:05] Matt Landsiedel: No, that, still doing that work? Because I have enough wisdom and inner knowing that it’s like I used what I needed from that relationship with that first vocal coach. And I did a lot of great work still, because I was still transforming. And then I did hire a new one who is actually trained in, in somatic experiencing. And she has a psychology background and stuff, so she was a perfect fit for me. Um, so, yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been an interesting, interesting go. But it’s, yeah, like, I think there’s so many different ways that we can heal and grow as human beings. And I think, you know, oftentimes people put, like, therapists on a pedestal, and I just, it’s, it’s something we have to be a little bit careful with because there’s so many modalities within, within coaching and within different sorts of personal development that, you know, like, a therapist is good for a certain set of things. Right. It’s very much for recovery, bringing somebody through a healing journey. But there’s other modalities that can help people. So I’m always hesitant to not put counseling and therapy on a pedestal because there’s so many modalities that people can use to grow.

[00:32:16] Javier Wallis: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it’s just, I have this sense of, I mean, maybe it’s my overpowering inner critic, but I think qualifications are not everything, but I think experience matters. And I’m just very cautious with people. I’m very careful with people because I don’t want to send someone on a spiral, you know, if they’re not ready to touch a really deep wound or something, I ain’t going there, because they’re not. Yeah, I let them lead because they know if they’re ready or not. Really.

[00:32:48] Matt Landsiedel: I agree. Yeah.

[00:32:49] Matt Landsiedel: It’s good to understand, like, somebody’s scope and to try and stay within it. But I try and practice humanistically, even in my counseling practice. It’s like, like, what I find helps people is authenticity. Being real, being humanistic and coming together, and, like, hearts heal other hearts. That’s the way I look at it. Like, so I don’t know, I practice a little differently than, say, a traditional, like, psychotherapist or somebody like that, but, yeah, I think we’re all here to walk each other home. Like Rumi says, like, it’s. It’s really.

Yeah, we’re all, we’re all bringing pieces to the puzzle, in my opinion.

[00:33:24] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:26] Javier Wallis: And it’s like, you know, I’m here on this podcast talking about vocal coaching and my expertise, but, like, the inner critic is still very alive for me in a sense of, like, you know, how I’m presenting myself as I’m going along. And, you know, earlier on, I was like, am I using too much scientific jargon here? Am I. Whatever. That stuff comes up. And I kind of just let it, let it come up. And like you said, that if you go to the heart, and I think people can always tell, if you mean what you say, as long as you mean what you say and you’re. You’re authentic, then I don’t think it really matters if we’re to this or to that, really.

[00:34:03] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:34:03] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I agree. And I’m a firm believer that presence is the thing that heals. And, like, when we embody the transformation, that’s when we, we are able to really do really good work with people. So it’s like, for example, having somebody like, let’s say you hire a therapist and they’re not living the path, right? They’re just, like, saying the right things, but they’re not actually embodying the energy of the transformation that you’re wanting to make. You’re not going to get a lot of value from working with that person. Like, you have to be working with people who are right. It’s a good saying, is, like, you can only take somebody to the places you’ve gone. Right? Like, I truly believe that because once you’ve gone to those places, your consciousness shifts, your awareness, your energy, everything shifts and it becomes open, and then people get attracted to that open energy. And so, yeah, I think it’s huge practice.

[00:34:55] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:34:55] Javier Wallis: And also finding a coach that has the right fit and resonance for you. Because the person you mentioned who was rigid, that is a very kind of classical standpoint. There is a lot of this rigidity in that space. And this is why I kind of consider myself a punk who went to the ivory tower of the conservatory and then came out the other side. Because I was someone that didn’t have all those skills when I was a teenager.

I had the raw talent, but I didn’t know shit about music theory, so I couldn’t then go ahead and study that at that time. But it doesn’t.

I’m just such a firm believer that there are so many people who are talented, who have value and worth that just because they don’t fit in the narrow educational lane of a classical music track.

[00:35:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:35:41] Javier Wallis: It’s just a tremendous loss to humanity, I think, if they don’t pursue their passion and express themselves. So, for me, I’m really, really passionate about that because now people say to me, oh, my God, you’re so talented. Your voice is so this, your music is so that, and I’m like, I have had to fight every freaking year of my life for this. I’ve developed, and. Yeah, so that’s why I’m so passionate about find mentors who are a good fit for you, who are. Outside of that, I have the best shout out to my vocal coach because I think all coaches should also be coached.

Her name’s Renee Moranon. You can find her on Instagram. She is my hero.

She’s the best vocal coach I’ve ever had, and I’ve been trained by seven or eight different people.

[00:36:24] Matt Landsiedel: Cool.

[00:36:25] Javier Wallis: So, yeah, that’s awesome.

[00:36:27] Matt Landsiedel: Which is good to know about you, because if you’re being coached by the best, then that means you’re going to be able to implement things into your coaching style that is going to.

[00:36:34] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:35] Matt Landsiedel: So that’s what I hope for.

[00:36:36] Javier Wallis: Yeah.

[00:36:37] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:38] Javier Wallis: Should we go to unlocking things?

[00:36:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, sure.

[00:36:41] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:42] Matt Landsiedel: Let’s. Let’s move into whatever direction you’re feeling like you want to dance in. Let’s go there.

[00:36:47] Javier Wallis: Because we were talking about these specific blocks, I think.

[00:36:50] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:50] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:51] Matt Landsiedel: So what are some things that you help people. How do you help people unlock their voice so.

[00:36:59] Javier Wallis: Well, let’s touch back on. On that. Changing oneself, because we know. Because what you and I do and also the journeys that we’ve been on in our own lives. Right. There is. There’s a desire to change, but the trouble is, the nasty paradox of the desire to change is it can immediately just be another version of the wound that you’re not enough.

[00:37:25] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:37:26] Javier Wallis: So wanting to change yourself, forcing your voice, contorting your voice into positions that it doesn’t naturally live in, it’s one thing that can really block you up because if you’re kind of. Yeah, let’s use that example of the artificial deepening of the voice, and you can hear. I’m doing it again.

[00:37:44] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:37:45] Javier Wallis: Expansion, that dropping of the larynx, and you can just. It can get locked.

All these small muscles and tendons can just get locked in that position.

We know that humans are meant to move, and that includes all of these bits as well. Even, like, all the bits of your face. You would not believe how much the cheek muscles can interfere with singing.

So there’s that. There’s that fear of, like, as I am, my voice is not appealing, so I need to force it into another form.

So that’s one block.

[00:38:20] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:38:21] Matt Landsiedel: And I agree. And I think what comes through is, like, who am I singing for?

Asking myself, who am I singing for? Am I singing for the audience, or am I singing for the joy of singing? Right. And I think for me, it’s like I’m always trying to just, like, sing for the joy. Sing so I can feel that feeling. As soon as I start to sing for other people or I worry about how I’m sounding, then it’s. The joy’s completely zapped out of my experience, and it becomes performative, and that’s when my inner critic comes in. So it’s like I’m. And that’s for me, I got to be really careful to not go into too much vocal coaching. Like, that woman was taking me on that journey because it zapped the joy out of singing for me. It was like, oh, you have to sound like this. You have to get this right, that right, and there’s too many moving parts. I I’m like a hobby singer. I don’t want to be, like, a performer. I don’t want to have an album. That’s not what I’m doing it for. Like, I do it because I. It gives me joy. And I think as soon as I make something into a career or vocation, I’m like, it starts to feel like it’s work. Right. So that was a big reframe for me. Like, who am I singing for? I’m singing for me. I’m singing for the joy of singing.

[00:39:27] Javier Wallis: Yeah, yeah, that’s beautiful. And, yeah, it’s funny because I get really technical because I’m just a nerd. Like, at some point, I just became this passionate nerd for listening to the specifics of people’s voices. Like, I get really. I will talk about, like, specific singers all day long. Like Christina Aguilera’s belt, Ariana Grande’s lack of enunciation. I’m just really into it. And there is, yeah, there are some people that you have to push to get them to just try the thing, but it’s not that you want them to stay in the thing.

[00:40:00] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:40:01] Javier Wallis: So that is a difficult balance between getting people to just be who they are naturally. But I do believe with the voice, we sometimes need to break people out of patterns and habits and force them into something temporarily. But I’m really careful about how I do that, and I explain to people why we’re doing it.

[00:40:17] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:40:18] Javier Wallis: So I’m like, hey, we’re trying to do this thing so we can hear more of this and do more of this. We’re just doing it temporarily. Stick with me here.

[00:40:25] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:28] Matt Landsiedel: I’m curious for you, the percentage of people that come to you because they want to grow in singing, like, the technical parts of singing versus people that want to grow in, like, they want to open up their voice or they want to become more authentic or, like, for maybe more therapeutic reasons. What would you say your percentages of if you had to give it, like, a ratio?

[00:40:47] Javier Wallis: I think mostly the former. The latter, it comes in kind of by accident, or people realize that from talking to me in our first session that we can go there.

It’s not at the pointed end of my marketing, shall we say. It’s like people tend to associate. A vocal coach is someone who helps me sing.

[00:41:06] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:41:07] Javier Wallis: I think that I would love to work with more people who want that more that releasing themselves or that more kind of authenticity or spiritual basis.

The student I mentioned before, the lady who was deepening her voice, actually worked with me on that level.

[00:41:22] Matt Landsiedel: Okay. Yeah.

[00:41:23] Javier Wallis: That was a beautiful experience, and we both got a lot out of that.

Yeah. I think the next sort of blockage that this connects into is that fear of. We talked a bit already about the fear of being seen, about the stage. Frighten.

[00:41:37] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:41:38] Javier Wallis: So it’s that terror of that very visceral danger. Right.

[00:41:44] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:41:47] Javier Wallis: Fun story. I’ve been performing for a while. You already did my bio at the top of the session. But I have a new product. It’s called hierarchy.

[00:41:55] Matt Landsiedel: I missed that.

[00:41:56] Javier Wallis: I have a new product that’s called Hierapa. And I performed for the first time in February with this new project, and I was used to having a band. I was used to having a keyboard in front of me in this performance. It was just me in the audience, the dry mouth, the kind of, like, butterflies in my guts. These things still affect professionals.

[00:42:19] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:20] Javier Wallis: And I think the thing I want to share here is just, like, your work is never really done.

[00:42:25] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:42:26] Javier Wallis: And I think the sooner you can let go of that perfectionism and go more to the joy you’re talking about and the humanness, the sooner you can go to that, the better you’re going to be.

[00:42:37] Matt Landsiedel: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

[00:42:40] Matt Landsiedel: That’s what authentic relating has taught me. And believe it or not, that’s actually helped with my dry mouth, because I think dry mouth is the most intense fight or flight symptom for me. My mouth gets really dry. And since I’ve done a lot of work with authentic relating, and I did, I did a whole year course of somatic therapy as well, like somatic experiencing work. And I learned how to work with my nervous system. I would upregulate, down, regulate. I did a lot of titration work, and it helped me learn how when these sorts of things come up, how I can downregulate my system. So my dry mouth has almost gone away. Like, I would even get it on these podcasts and stuff. So working with the nervous system is such a huge piece of moving through a lot of these blocks that we’re talking about. Trauma, fear, tension, inner criticism. Like these, all the blocks are either.

[00:43:30] Javier Wallis: Trauma or experience in nature.

Everything that blocks singing, everything that introduces tension into the musculature, that’s all stuff you can work with in your frame of work or in a therapeutic practice. It’s all from that stuff. So we can work with the voice. It’s almost like bottom up, top-down idea.

I think bottom up is best, but we can treat some of these things through singing.

But then also our singing is going to improve through treating some of these things through. Maybe EMDR I really rate for, if anyone who’s watching, who’s maybe got CPTSD or has had a particularly experience, EMDR I find, I found really powerful.

So these things are interrelated. And as you say, like all of these blocks, there are multiple modalities we can use to work with them.

[00:44:21] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:44:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:23] Javier Wallis: So I think that singing is almost like the bellwether. It’s. It’s almost a representation of like, how free you are and how free you feel to sort of touch on something we mentioned earlier as well, that constriction. You want to have clear airflow; you want to have clear projection trouble. Trouble is, a lot of us are afraid of our neighbors hearing us.

[00:44:45] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, my, the neighbor below me, so I live in a building. The neighbor below me is an opera singer. The guy above me loves to. To sing as well. And then I sing. So, like, all three of us, like, it’s so funny, like we’re belting it out all the time.

[00:44:56] Javier Wallis: Yeah, I love that. That’s great. I’m really lucky because in the Netherlands, a lot of housing is really, like, not like this, but we live in a really isolated, like, apartment. So next door can hear it faintly, but I don’t have to worry about so much. But you do have to kind of enter. You have to get into this psychological thing of, like, fuck it.

That it’s for you. You’re doing it for you. Particularly, like, when you do some of the drills that I do and some of the things I force my students to do. Unfinished. Sounds like the baby or some of it sounds stupid.

[00:45:29] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:33] Javier Wallis: It’s a good thing to try and, like, it’s a kind of humbling thing in a way, but also just sort of surrender to, like, in the pursuit of the thing that I want to develop. I am gonna have to look silly.

[00:45:44] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:45] Matt Landsiedel: If we want to heal perfectionism, we have to learn to tolerate being imperfect. That’s what singing taught me. It gave me ample, ample opportunities to be imperfect and eat a lot of humble pie. That’s what I kept consuming, humble pie. And I was like, okay. Like, you know, and it can really feel like you’re going, like, backwards at first until you start to realize, oh, okay. What I’m doing is I’m expanding my window of tolerance for imperfection. And as you. We do that, it gives us more. More window of tolerance means more space to land into when we are imperfect. Right. And it’s just part of it. We’re all imperfect. We’re all fallible as human beings, and, you know, learning. And that’s a big one that still shows up for me, though, and I’m wondering if you have a tip on it. Is this imposter syndrome of, like, when I did my open mic, I just remember being like, oh, my God, like, who am I to sing? Like, taking up space in something new is a really big thing for me. It makes me feel, like, super insecure. I don’t want to be seen and heard in, like, not being good at something. So the imposter syndrome really, really takes a toll on me. What would you say as, like, a coach helping somebody coach through imposter syndrome?

[00:46:54] Javier Wallis: Well, the first thing I say is I have it, too.

[00:46:57] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, it’s normal. Exactly.

[00:46:59] Javier Wallis: And my coach has imposter syndrome as well, in different ways. And I think the most important thing we can do, maybe, is share this with each other. And like you said, the roomy poem you quoted about leading each other home can be heart to heart about it. Imposter syndrome really sucks. And that’s the thing that, as a musician, if you learn lots of instruments, you kind of have to do that a bunch of different times.

[00:47:25] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:26] Javier Wallis: But that shows up for us also as business owners. Like, every time you have to do something new, like maybe digital marketing or something like that. So I don’t know if that’s the most helpful answer I have. I like it, but it’s a really hard one. And I think the thing that I remind myself is that everybody started somewhere.

Everybody. All your faves, they started somewhere. And it helps to also look back on what you’ve achieved, what you have done.

Another thing that if. Because comparison can be a real nightmare. Right?

[00:48:07] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:48:08] Javier Wallis: I always make the distinction with my students. I don’t really talk about; I say there’s good vocalists and then there’s good singers.

And for me, the most important thing is being a good vocalist, like a good storyteller. And one of my favorite singers, Karen Dreier from the knife and fever Ray, is someone with a very strange voice. But the portrayal of the character and the emotion is, like, nailed. Think of also someone like Bjork or Tom Waits.

People with strange voices, they may not be. Some of them are gifted technical singers and some of them are not. But you feel it.

[00:48:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. Feel it.

[00:48:46] Matt Landsiedel: That’s the biggest thing for me. That’s what gives me the standing hair on my arms. Like, somebody could be the best technical vocalist, and I don’t feel anything, but somebody could be. Make little inflections in their voice that someone that’s technical would think would be like, your voice failed. But really, that’s what gives me the chills. Vulnerability and authenticity in a voice. And the ability to emote, I think, are, like, the most powerful abilities.

[00:49:10] Javier Wallis: What’s it doing in the story of the lyrics of the music? What’s it doing there?

That, for me, is always going to trump perfect technicality.

Then people have both, and then I love them forever. Like Caroline Polachek. I’m a super fan.

Things there.

[00:49:30] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, cool. Um, okay, so I want to. Before we wrap up, we got about, I know, 1015 minutes. Um, let’s explore the benefits of vocal expression. So we’ve talked about some of the. The barriers, some of the things that get in our way. Um, what’s the benefits? Like, you know, and I’m a big believer that how we face fear is we keep our, our sight set on the thing that’s on the other side of facing the fear.

So for me, learning how to sing and doing that, it was like, I’m going to face this fear so I don’t have to be shackled to being terrified of this. And I can start to share my gift with people and use it as another tool that can help inspire people by sharing my message with people. So singing is one of those things that I can put in my toolbox now.

So what are some of the things that you think are benefits to vocal expression?

[00:50:26] Javier Wallis: I think that it.

Going back to what I said earlier about asking for what you want, I think if you can put yourself in this position where, where you’re working with fear, like, that’s one of the things. As you’ve just said, fear is really hard, and I experience a lot of fear. Where I am in my therapeutic journey to just be super transparent is like, I’m doing EMDR right now still, and I am experiencing a lot of fear, and it’s very challenging and just sort of trying to work with all parts and not leave any part left behind. Just being practicing this warmth and compassion, acceptance to anything that comes up in my experience.

Yeah, that’s what’s going on for it. So with fear, I. I think also we’re all different, and we all have our different values and our different drivers.

So I think understanding how to beat fear and how to unlock the voice and to express yourself, I think you do need to get as deep and clear on meeting your values as you can.

Because I’m just trying to think what mine are because I almost, like in this conversation, I find I can’t access it just quickly. This. What’s the thing that motivates me still. And I think it’s. I think it’s just the joy of the flexibility of expression, of knowing that I can have this. It’s like a combination thought and emotion that I want to express. And then being able to do that run or that acrobatic thing is just something I get a big kick out of. And it’s fun.

[00:52:06] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Right.

[00:52:08] Javier Wallis: So, of course, it benefits me in a technical sense as a professional. But, yeah. Figure out, like, what’s the thing that you really want? Is it, as you said, it’s the joy for you?

[00:52:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:52:23] Javier Wallis: Is it that you want to do a great show that first time that you’re performing your new. Your new performance or new piece or whatever, that’s also a decent motivator.

So, yeah, the benefits of vocal expression, I really just think it comes back to stacking layers, because at first, when you do it, you’ll meet that layer of getting better, getting better, expressing yourself. You’re meeting those fears about how you’re being perceived, maybe making mistakes, and then you meet that layer and you go past it and that’s when I think it sort of expands to self-advocacy, asking for what you want, being authentic, self-actualizing. I think for me, pursuing vocal expression has been part of my journey of self-actualizing.

[00:53:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I would agree. Yeah.

[00:53:24] Javier Wallis: Because like I said before, I had a plan. I went for the plan. It’s great that I went for the plan. I ended up somewhere that I didn’t expect.

That’s the self-actualization at play, and that’s when you build the confidence to know, I can handle it. I can handle the unexpected. I can fail and handle it.

There are so many lessons we learn through vocal expression or through musicality or doing things. I think we learn a lot about communicating with other people.

[00:53:59] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:54:01] Javier Wallis: Singing can be a very solitary practice for us now, but if you sing with other people, there’s a very deep resonance. Like, if you’re. If you’re blending, if you learn about blending, you learn about how do we gently guide our voices to collaborate on a pure sound?

But also, like, if you’re a songwriter, I’m still breaking new layers. Like, there’s a song I’m working on now that’s going to be coming out in my new project that is basically the most upfront. I’ve been about expressing my sexuality in music in a poetic form. And getting to kind of put those experiences and dignify. It’s dignifying lust in a lot of ways, but also emotional devastation. Right. Being able to put these things there and it together as a queer person, as a gay man, for me, singing those things to people is helping me be braver in the future.

It’s helping me, like, thicken my skin. It’s helping me heal something because I show people the thing I’m afraid to show. I grew up catholic, right? So talking about sex in any capacity can be really hardcore. But me literally singing a song about physicality with other men and the visceral experience of that is, yeah, it’s transformative for me. And so all of these things, like, whether it’s you’re writing the songs or you’re singing other people’s songs, you’re going and doing open mics, they all count towards your growth as a person.

[00:55:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, I like that.

[00:55:45] Matt Landsiedel: Good answers. I wanted to add. I want to piggyback on what you’re saying.

For me, in my experience, unlocking my voice was really unlocking my power. Like another chamber, another layer of my power I was connected to. And there’s something really powerful about being witnessed in being vulnerable by somebody that doesn’t view the thing that I’m feeling vulnerable in as vulnerable, like a vocal coach. It’s just like, oh, yeah, I can listen to people singing all day long. It’s no different than me. I do therapeutic work, so hearing people’s stories of pain. Right. It doesn’t feel vulnerable to me.

So it’s normalizing it.

[00:56:26] Javier Wallis: The sutures out of the wound for some people.

[00:56:29] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly.

[00:56:29] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:56:30] Matt Landsiedel: So just being witnessed, for me was a really big piece of it, because, again, I’m singing, and I am expressing, and I’m using my voice, but I’m not doing it with somebody’s eyes watching me. That was the biggest growth for me. So.

And then being able to share this part of myself, it unlocked all these things that you’re talking about, like authenticity, self-actualization, actualization. It allowed me to get better at speaking up for myself and what I want and what I need. So there’s. Yeah, there’s a lot of these pieces here. And then we also have, like, somatic awareness. Right. I think this is something that really was powerful for me because I didn’t realize that I was harboring a lot of stuff down this channel. Right. So my power center, my solar plexus chakra, and my throat chakra weren’t actually working in harmony together, so I had blockages. There wasn’t this nice flow here. So starting to connect with that again, my voice being dry and this correlation between my voice and my nervous system. So the somatic awareness is really what brought these pieces in alignment so I could start working with them consciously.

So that’s. That’s a huge piece of this.

[00:57:38] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:39] Javier Wallis: Wonderful. I think. I think somatic experiencing is actually the most fundamental challenge for a lot of singers. A lot of people, if they have trauma, they’re disconnected.

[00:57:50] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly.

[00:57:52] Javier Wallis: Because you want to be able to feel, and you’re in. And I’m in the position now where I feel a lot of these, like, micro movements, like, you don’t have to do every warm up every day. When you get that. That perception, then you can, oh, I’ve got tongue tension or, oh, I’ve got jaw tension, or let me work out this little kink today in my void, I had to get connected to my body through yoga.

I’ve been doing yoga for years now, and that’s a major sort of component of this. But basically, I try and persuade a lot of my students to have a physical practice as well.

It’s not for everybody. I respect that, but it can just give you a lot more access to the body that when you’re traumatized, you get dissociated or disconnected from your interoception. And that’s just the major challenge, because if you can’t feel it, then your coach is sort of navigating you through exercises, and you might not really experience the difference.

[00:58:51] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:58:54] Matt Landsiedel: Good points.

All right, we got to start landing the plane here, but I’m curious, benefits of vocal coaching and maybe share a little bit about what you do with the audience where they can find you, like your little sales pitch.

[00:59:10] Javier Wallis: Sure. So you can find me on Instagram. I built a website I should, in my head of. I should have done that by now, but I get a lot of clients through Instagram, and really, that’s the best way to place to find me. I put a lot of my advice up on. I make a lot of reels. I’m also on TikTok, so you can find me on Instagram as @javierwallis with a. Javier with a j. I’m on TikTok as @jarvis, so it’ll be.

[00:59:36] Matt Landsiedel: In the show notes as well. Put them. I’ll link them in. Yeah, perfect.

[00:59:40] Javier Wallis: Yeah. And basically, the benefits of vocal coaching for me, I mean, it depends. You have to get someone who you resonate with that really matters a lot, and someone who helps guide you along and explain why you’re doing certain things, someone who will meet you, where your goals are at and who will listen to you, because the student is the central point for me, the benefits of vocal coaching are having that person in your corner to help you understand what you’re working with, but also to support you, to, like, to mention your wins, to acknowledge those things. It’s really important for me, I always do a lot of, like, acknowledging, like, when students have made progress.

[01:00:21] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:00:22] Javier Wallis: Sometimes we don’t see it for ourselves, and sometimes we need someone to reflect us back at us.

[01:00:27] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:00:28] Javier Wallis: Like, for me, I think that I find the most rewarding about teaching is I can see someone’s potential.

Like, I love voices so much and I can hear, like, if someone has a unique timbre and where the little blockage is, that’s if we just. If we just dissolve that, that’s going to take them to the next stage. I love that stuff so much. So getting someone who’s really enthusiastic and helps you see your talent and potential, maybe if you are uncertain or doubtful or some people are really down on themselves.

Yeah.

That’s the benefit of getting the right vocal coach, but make sure you pick the right vocal coach.

[01:01:06] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. It’s nice to have somebody in your corner, I think that’s the biggest peace. Just any type of coaching, counseling, therapy, doesn’t matter. Like, having that person that you can turn to and, you know, bounce ideas off of and just have somebody. For me, it’s just nice to have somebody to hold your hand when you’re practicing the hard things of life. You know, it’s like, really is this beautiful feeling of feeling supported and cared for.

[01:01:32] Javier Wallis: So, yeah, yeah, we don’t know everything either. So, like, it’s great for me as a coach to be, like, hitting this. Like, I haven’t managed to because cues in singing are all subjective. Singing is really psychedelic when you think about it. We use our imagination to get a lot of the results. Totally. But that having that person I can go to to help me bust down, like, finding another cue for a student to help them get where I’m trying to get them.

So, yeah, awesome.

[01:02:01] Matt Landsiedel: Good.

[01:02:02] Matt Landsiedel: Well, I’m really.

Yeah, I’m really happy with this episode. I think it’s gonna inspire some people to go on the journey of vocal coaching because I think, yeah, there’s a ton of juicy and yummy things that can happen in that type of connection, so.

[01:02:19] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[01:02:20] Matt Landsiedel: And thanks for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I always appreciate that.

[01:02:22] Javier Wallis: And thank you. Love this conversation. Thanks for having me.

[01:02:25] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, you bet.

For those of you that are listening on podcast, subscribe, do the things, you know, all the things to do on YouTube.

Drop a comment, let us know what your relationship is like to your voice. I’ll make sure Javier and myself review those, and if there’s any questions in there, we’ll be sure to answer them for you guys. And, yeah, until next time, take care, everybody.