Clarity, Trust, and Practice

A reflection on the ripening of the voice and the spirit.

Jul 17, 2025

I was standing in my home office in Denver, Colorado, taking a remote lesson with Maestro Michael Trimble. He was more than a thousand miles away in Washington state, but his expertise could be felt thick in the room.

At one point, he gave me the instruction:

“Breathe into your lower back and lean the breath in the chest. Breathe behind you, sing in front of you.”

I began the mental gymnastics of coordinating this maneuver. I closed my eyes, took in a bit of breath, stopped, muttered internally “that’s not right” and tried again with a slightly different approach.

Should I expand the ribs first? Do I loosen my abdomen? Was I doing it “right”?

After a while, he interrupted my inner musing:

“Why are you taking so long? Breathe and sing!”

I recall him saying something like:

“You don’t have time to feel and think every single instruction we give the body. Just give the instruction and trust the body’s attempt to follow it.”

Clarity, Not Control

That thought changed the way I approached both singing and teaching. I had spent so much time trying to figure out the perfect the setup. How to get everything in the “right” place before making a sound. But what I learned that day was that singing isn’t about mentally constructing the perfect execution of a task. It’s about giving the body a clear direction persistently, until the body gets it. The repetition—the practice—not the analysis, brings alignment.

The voice does not respond to micromanagement, but to clarity, repetition, and trust.

This is the mysticism and magic of the voice: When every system involved in singing is doing its part, the voice is revealed. It emerges not from rigid control, but from simple, patient instructions, given over time, allowing the body to integrate and respond organically.

The body already knows how to sing. It understands more than we often give it credit for. The real question is: Do we understand ourselves enough to know what to ask? Are we complicating the relatively simple?

Lamperti's Wisdom

In reflection, I realized that the lesson Maestro Trimble taught me had been seeded in something I read some 14 years earlier. Giovanni Battista Lamperti spoke to this idea in my “vocal bible”:

“Examining your own thoughts and feelings while singing until you know what is taking place in the brain and body is only the procedure. To acquire this conscious knowledge of mental and physical phenomena of song demands the utmost searching introspection. Do not listen to yourself sing—feel yourself sing! When internal conditions are right and ready, the singing voice appears—not before.”

The aim of the singer is to establish coordinated action among several systems that results in beauty and efficiency. The voice cannot be found by trying to sound like someone else, but by replicating the physical and mental actions that create authentic sound—breath, posture, muscle use, and state of mind. Good singing results from clear instructions given to the body directed by the intuition and acquired knowledge of the singer.

Through careful observation of singers we admire, through studying their accounts and processes, and through passionate, fearless implementation and experimentation, we begin to discover the full capability of the voice.

Sing with the Whole Self

Vocal cultivation requires ongoing clear instruction to the body and conscious collaboration of the whole Self. According to yogic traditions and spiritual lineages that teach the multidimensional nature of the human being, this coordination must involve all layers of being: the physical, mental, emotional, and causal bodies.

Most of these elements—physical, mental, and emotional—are commonly acknowledged, though the causal or karmic body may be less familiar. In simplified terms, it is the subtle blueprint or program from which our emotional and physical patterns emerge. You can think of it as a storage space that holds the deeper patterns that contribute to shaping our life.

To transmit the highest frequencies through the voice, these layers must be integrated and refined.

we begin to discover the full capability of the voice.

Discipline and Incremental Mastery

Yoga teaches that this process begins with stillness and inward focus. Yoga Sutra I.2 states:

“Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah” — Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.

Lamperti’s directive to “feel yourself sing” reflects the same principle. In my experience, singing evokes a flow state not unlike meditation. Like Yoga Asana, the repeated return to specific physical postures creates a moving meditation. The strength developed in the voice is not one of brute force or rigidity, but of expansion, ease, refinement and flexibility—the same strength cultivated through asana.

In this way, singing becomes a form of embodied yoga.

Even in traditional strength training, progress doesn’t come solely from pushing but from grace, control, and adherence to form. We might liken our vocal training to progressive overload in resistance training—a principle where small, incremental increases in effort lead to growth. This might look like sustaining tone on one breath for 15 seconds, then gradually increasing to 20, 30, 40 or more over time.

Ripening and Surrender

Lamperti writes:

“The voice’s ripening depends on the activity of all parts of the body and all functions of the brain. The physiological singing tone takes its own time to ripen. When fully grown it is both dark and light, filling the head, throat, and sometimes the chest.”

Yoga Sutra II.1 outlines the components of Kriya yoga:

“Tapah svadhyaya Ishvarapranidhanani kriya-yogah”
Discipline, self-study, and surrender to the Divine constitute the practice of yoga.

This sutra perfectly reflects Lamperti’s model of vocal development.
Tapah is the discipline and rigor of daily practice.
Svadhyaya is the introspection required to become aware of what is really happening in the body, mind, and breath.
Ishvarapranidhana is the surrender to timing, readiness, and grace. The trust that the voice will emerge in its fullness when all aspects of the voice are in alignment.

We don’t make the voice appear, we create and become the conditions to allow it to do so.

To realize the fullness of our humanity, we must integrate both light and shadow—chiaroscuro. Spiritual and vocal liberation doesn’t come from disowning the shadow but from meeting it, allowing it, and ultimately transmuting it through integration.

As Lamperti reminds us:

“When internal conditions are right and ready, the singing voice appears—not before.”

That hour in my cozy (small) Denver home office with Maestro Trimble 1000 miles away taught me what the rest of my practice continues to reveal: the voice, like the Self, doesn’t respond to force, but to clarity, consistency, simplicity, and trust.

Daniel’s Substack

Discussion about this post