Reprint from Feature article in
The Whole Person Calendar
Los Angeles ~ January 2011
Letting the Sound Out:
Transformation through Speech and Song
by Linda Harmon
Dr. Carole Moskovitz finds the message in the medium. Moskovitz, a voice coach and spiritual counselor, uses the study of voice as a vehicle for transformation. She teaches her clients to look at their delivery to transform their persona: mind, body, and soul.
“An individual’s voice directly reflects their relationship with themselves,” said Moskovitz, founder of Singing FromThe Heart. Moskovitz guides her clients towards the un-impinged use of their bodies to produce a stronger, clearer message. After speaking with several of them, it is clear that they indeed have transformed their voices and their lives in a meaningful way.
According to Moskovitz, a strong performance or speech is more than an accurate delivery of a script or a presentation at a business meeting. Moskovitz, a professional singer herself, learned through years of performance and study that being comfortable in one’s skin is just as important. The three students I spoke with agree.
“Carole brings out the heart in people,” said Carol Pilkington, who went to Moskovitz after leaving a corporate job and is now a transformational relationship trainer. “Working with Carole definitely changed what I was doing, not just the work that we did together but on a personal and professional level… It was at a time when I needed to be recognized and listened to. Being able to accept oneself is the first step in accepting others…She literally met me with open arms. I use that same acceptance with my clients.”
Moskovitz is familiar with the professional stresses that face many of her clients in everyday life. With her background as a performer, she went through her own challenges. After a divorce, health problems, and job loss, she developed her practical attitude, accepting challenges as a constant condition of life. Moskovitz began developing the techniques she now teaches to transform new problems into opportunities.
Moskovitz actually established Singing From The Heart in 1986. “It was after a serious health challenge that fortunately proved not to be fatal, but I didn’t know it at the time,” said Moskovitz, who was performing and working as a trained growth facilitator. “It was a very difficult time in my life … I broke into tears and just asked for some kind of guidance in what I needed to do next."
Her answers came later in dreams. In one she saw her current logo, an eighth note surrounded by a heart. She decided to open a new direction in her life. She registered her trademark, Singing From The Heart, and put an ad in a local spiritual magazine.
“I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing at first,” said Moskovitz, who received her first client within days, “but it wasn’t as if I was thrown into an area I knew nothing about."
Moskovitz said she already knew that it took an openness and a degree of self-knowledge to add that “something special” and truly transform into an effective performer, speaker, and person. According to Moskovitz, it took opening herself to spirit and intuition in a very big way to turn that into a business. Moskovitz now has a Masters and Doctorate in spiritual science, a Masters in Psychology, along with a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Fine Arts.
“Intuition and trust is a really big part of what I do,” said Moskovitz, “hearing the truth of one’s heart.”
She uses a mix of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual techniques which focus on the impact of the clients’ own minds and spirits on their voices. She finds these are “frequently unconscious and negative.”
“Often just being aware of them is enough,” said Moskovitz. She directs them to think about what others have told them about their voice and what they perceive others may think about their sound and presentation style. Moskovitz also wants her clients to think about “their own experience of their voice, sound and presentation style,” what they feel are their strengths and where they need to improve.
She asks them to tell her why they have come to her and where they want to go. Being in “harmony” is one of Moskovitz’s goals, but she wants her students to establish their own. “Simply having a change in perspective often changes their life,” said Moskovitz, “whether they make any other changes immediately or not.” Another of Moskovitz’s clients is a professional singer and songwriter, Michelle Krell.
“When I moved down from San Francisco after getting married I didn’t know a soul,” said Krell. “I had worked in New York, Connecticut, and the Bay Area for years and I wanted to get myself aligned with the L.A. area. When I saw Carole’s ad I called her… This is a very difficult business and there are always people trying to bring you down, going to Carole was the absolute opposite.
“Over the years as an entertainer Krell has worked with several voice coaches but, she explained, “Carole was different.” “She immediately believed in me,” said Krell, who has since released a CD and “found new doors opening I didn’t even know existed.”
According to Moskovitz, she always asks her clients: “What do you want? What goals and experiences are you seeking, inner and outer? What, if anything, has stood in your way in achieving these goals? What specific steps do you perceive necessary to take to achieve these goals? Are you willing to take these steps?” “She directed me to goals that I didn’t think I could even attempt,” said Krell. “She believed in me when I didn’t.” Krell said it took her years before she could put together “the vision,” and without Moskovitz she doesn’t think she could have attempted it.
“The whole thing with the voice is feeling self-assured and Carole’s technique was wonderful,” said Krell. “She knows the business of singing, but the element of feeling assured was what sets her apart.”
Moskovitz uses an assortment of techniques: goal identification, affirmations, mirror work, scanning (mentally reviewing the day), toning, and traditional vocal and breathing exercises with a special emphasis on anxiety control.
“The first interview helps guide me to what is right for each client,” said Moskovitz, adding every technique may not be appropriate for everyone and some individuals need an even more individual, spontaneous approach.
“I had an artist who couldn’t put the color into her voice, she was monotone,” said Moskovitz. “So I gave her some of my son’s finger paints, set her at the kitchen table and had her relax and work with color on paper… Soon, I asked her to sing or sound the colors and she started creating music, no words, but a melody with a lot of range. Then at one point I asked to her to put more black in her voice, then more red… It was a real epiphany for her.”
Moskovitz delights in helping her clients break things down into daily, action steps and according to client Mark Samuel she is “incredibly good” at it.
Samuel came to Moskovitz from a different direction as a writer, consultant, and speaker on culture change and accountability. “I worked with Carole on two levels, personal growth and singing,” Samuel said. “I remember one exercise so clearly and it was so helpful in understanding my own personal vision. She had me imagine that my ‘vision’ was outside of a window, and asked me to walk towards that window, and as I was approaching the vision she asked me what was happening.
I said, ‘Wow, it was getting bigger and more detailed.’ And she said, ‘Yes, that’s what is going to happen. Now remember not to get so stuck on whatever vision you’ve created and written down that you lose site of the real vision as it is getting bigger and more detailed.” According to Samuel, this exercise gave him a chance to experience the concept for himself, and taught him to apply it in a way he will never forget. Samuel said he is using that exercise in his own talks today.
Moskovitz says she helps her clients “sing the message that is inside of them.” I learned from her clients how truly transformational finding a stronger voice can be.
“I’ve been a back-up musician and part of bands all of my life,” said Krell, who related the giant steps it took to actually getting out on stage, front and center, to perform her own music from her new CD, “but this is the first time I’ve had to be ‘the person’." According to Krell, she invited Moskovitz to lunch recently. “I gave her my CD and told her that it was the result of her setting me in this direction,” said Krell. “I don’t think she realized.”
I think she did.
Catch-up with Mark Samuel at www.marksamuel.com,
Carol Pilkington at carolpilkington.com
or Listen to Krell’s new CD at www.michellekrell.com
