…continued….The main gift for me in this experience, was being able to objectively review his skills as a trainer and to be able to choose to NEVER teach a student with such an amazing lack of clarity and insulting ego-laden detachment.

Not every trainer can be a “warm and fuzzy” type of person, and I don’t think that teachers should be required to be! I also think that “warm and fuzzy” can be a possible hiding place when you are not entirely sure about how something you cannot see, works. My rule is that the Client deserves correct information—-not just what the accepted, usual slogans are.

This guy looked right through me and not at me with any recognition of the fact that I was just another human being on the planet trying to figure it all out. He was a teacher who was patently unclear in his instructions, so I was at a loss to grow the entire time I worked with him. What he had going in his favor was the fact that I was a willing student!

His big moment came at the end of our last lesson together. As though he was bestowing the keys to the kingdom upon me, he threw up his right arm and hand, pointed them towards the ceiling and continued to hold that pose while walking out of the room looking like a moving version of the famous statue of the first emperor of Rome, Augustus.

As he strode out of the room he loudly declared:

Do you have any idea what that means?? Well, I certainly don’t. Unfortunately, I have discovered over decades of helping literally hundreds of people improve their ability to sing and speak, a lot of voice training is exactly like this! Generations of people have tried to “breathe from the diaphragm,” “lift the soft palate”, and “direct their breath down into the pelvic floor!” These are all statements which have been passed down for generations without investigation and with blind trust!

There IS a positive end to this story…and besides, you can cut and paste this image of Augustus Caesar on to a blank piece of paper and color it for free!

continued….