Unlocking Your True Voice with MB Bolin

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. It's Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. I created The Human Beauty Movement to help inspire radical self love, radical self acceptance, and radical self expression to other. We have open conversations about diverse aspects of the human experience to discover the soul beauty that connects us all. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad that you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
So if you have ever felt like you've been silenced or afraid to speak your truth, then this episode is for you. Maybe you've been silenced to fit into polite society or to avoid shame or to hide something that has happened. Maybe you've been silenced by a family member, someone at work, or even a partner. Today we're going to talk about raising our voices in empowerment and integrity with who we are.

Jennifer Norman:
My guest today is MB Bolin. MB Is a singer songwriter with preferred pronouns they, them. MB has a passion for sharing the unfiltered sound of their heart and helping others to do the same. They grew up with the experience of being chronically silenced, but embarked on a profound journey through somatics, mindfulness, and spiritual practices that led to a unique discovery that singing is the sound of the inside of your body. When you use your voice to liberate what's inside of you, then your whole world will change. Welcome to the show, MB.

MB Bolin:
Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
It's so great to have you here. So I know that you and I want to ask the listeners, it's very common for us to have these inner voices. And how many of us have heard any of the following voices inside our heads? No one wants to hear from me. No one cares what I have to say. I'll get in trouble if I speak up. Nobody wants to listen to me anyway. This is our inner critic that keeps us quiet. Now, you have lived with this kind of thinking, this kind of experience, where you've felt chronically silenced.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you tell us about that?

MB Bolin:
Sure. Yeah. And I can say that this experience really came home for me in a strong way recently because I was talking to my dad, and he was telling me about my brother, and he was telling me that my brother has gotten really angry about transgender people, and he's decided to write, like, a 30 page long manifesto against trans experience. He doesn't know that I've been exploring my gender. So we're in different states. We haven't been in communication, but he's been experiencing this anger against people having this experience that's not his own. And that brought up the memory, like, the visceral memory for me, of what it was like in my childhood growing up with this particular person in my family who is basically playing out similar patterns now to what he had then. So there's this pattern of somebody being deeply threatened by another person, just being themselves.

MB Bolin:
And even though back then, the fights weren't about gender, it was this sense of somebody being deeply threatened by me, just being myself. And so after I heard that story, I noticed that I just didn't even want to sing for a few days. And this is recently. This is after having come to all of my epiphanies and everything, but still that story had that effect on my physique of just being like, boom, we need to close down. And so I know a lot of people can have this experience where it's not even necessarily somebody saying the words shut up or somebody saying, your voice isn't valuable, but just having an experience of that sense that people might be threatened by you, that sense that it's not okay to feel whatever you're feeling in this scenario, that it might create too big of an explosion if you feel it even. And so we have this experience of physically holding ourselves in. And if you're listening right now, I'm using my hands to bring in around my chest, right around my lungs, and there is this somatic experience of closing down the throat, closing down the lungs that we have around all sorts of different kinds of traumas.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And it's interesting because you bring up that even in the present day, you kind of go back to these early childhood feelings. And it's true that a lot of the experiences that happen in our earlier years have such a dramatic impact on the way that they shape our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions, and how they get into the body. It feels like pain and constriction to some, it feels like a closing of the throat. To others, it feels like headaches and migraines. To some others, it feels like tingling and itching to others. There are different ways that it might manifest into a feeling in the body, and your body doesn't know the difference between today and yesterday. It feels almost the same as if it was happening again and again.

MB Bolin:
Yeah, that's very true. So, at the same time, as I had this kind of habitual closing down of my throat and closing of my emotions as the wanted to express through my voice. And I think it's very common for trauma to show up in some way, in the voice, because our voices, like I said in my bio, our voices are the sound of the inside of our body. We can't hide our emotions very well when we speak. We can, if we work really hard at that sense of other people can't know. How I feel right now has a huge effect on our voice, because our voices are here to actually help us express our emotions to other people. That's like, our mammalian instinct to make sound is so that we can bond with each other. And if we're afraid of how other people are going to respond to us, that happens inside the voice.

MB Bolin:
So at the same time, as I was dealing with that particular form of somatic disconnection from my body, that particular form of trauma response, I was also very much craving to sing. And I don't think that's an accident at all. I think that at a deep level, my soul knew that what I needed to do was to sing in order to overcome what I was experiencing. But the ways, the avenues that I found for singing were very traditional. I was in at the Los Angeles Children's Choir, which is actually an amazing children's choir that's traveled the world. But even before I joined that choir, I had some very strong messaging about what a pretty voice was for a kid to sing with and what was a not pretty voice for a kid to sing with. So I stepped into this craving to sing in order to release, and I stepped into a space where I had to sing in an extremely controlled way. And so even though I craved singing, I wasn't experiencing the release that it could have brought me, because I was just learning more and more ways to control my voice to try to make it acceptable.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, there's, like, these different layers where I think what you needed was more of a primal release, something that would get it out versus one that would be more traditionally trained. And certainly, there's a time and a place for all of that in choirs. And when singing, perhaps in theater, or if you're wanting to go into showbiz and things like that, I mean, there are certain elements of technicalities that are adopted when you get to that level of professionalism. But, yeah, it's almost like if you want to just somatically release and use the energy and use that ability to heal, then it might have been a different kind of resonance that you were seeking.

MB Bolin:
Right. I think the problem that happens is that I was not a successful singer in that world as long as I was trying, as I had this kind of body memory of holding back that was in me. When I tried to audition for solos, for example, my voice sounded very afraid and very confused. There were other kids who showed up, and they seemed just fine, and they sang pretty solos, and everybody loved them. And I was already, at the time, I know now, holding that trauma in my body. And that's why I couldn't show up in the same way as the other kids were showing up to audition for the solos. But I didn't know that I had a fixed idea of my voice, that, oh, they have a pretty voice, and I don't have a pretty voice. And therefore, if I don't have a pretty voice, why am I wanting to sing so badly? I should push that side of me away.

MB Bolin:
So there's this value judgment that goes on around all of the arts, and the idea that the people who deserve to have the experience of singing are the ones with the pretty voices. And actually, when it comes to, you, brought up the word primal. I've done some research into the evolution of music, and we have been singing since before we created language. Okay? So the urge to sing is a very primal urge. When I first launched my first class, I was having conversations with people, and two of the women that I spoke to within the first few weeks that I was talking to people, one of them grew up in New York City, and another grew up, like, on a farm in the midwest. They both snuck out of their house when they were teenagers in the middle of the night to go someplace where they could sing loudly without anyone hearing. One was out there in a field somewhere singing to the cows. The other was out, like, a deserted parking lot in new york.

MB Bolin:
Just trying to let this out, because I think that we actually created music and singing in order to deal with our trauma. Like, trauma is not new. Trauma is not new. But all of these controls and these value judgments about who has a pretty voice and who doesn't, that is new. That came with all sorts of things.

Jennifer Norman:
Including, I am in LA, so I go into my car so no one can hear me. I can sing as loudly as I want.

MB Bolin:
Right! And something that our bodies know that we need. And I think that what's really unfortunate that happens is that we flip the idea of, like, my voice is created to draw me closer to other people, and yet I've decided that actually my voice is going to drive other people away. And so it's like this flip of what we think our voice can do. I've held that so deep, and I think a lot of people hold that specifically around singing that idea that if other people hear me sing, they will be driven away, when really it is the opposite. And simply taking care of our inner experience actually comes out as beautiful when we sing. If that makes sense, it does.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, being able to know that you using your voice is not for the people's judgment is the first step. If you use your voice for expressing and healing, and in order to be able to get some cathartic release, that is for you, that's really all about. If it brings you a sense of liberation and freedom, if it brings you a sense of joy, then that is just for you. The technicality comes in when you wish to be in service for others. If you're singing for other people's enjoyment and other people's pleasure, and that has an absolute place in this world, no question about it. And so if you wish to be an instrument, to channel and be a source of pleasure and enjoyment and tonality and resonance for other people, then that's a different kind of usage of your voice. But to know. Yeah, go ahead.

MB Bolin:
I would like to interrupt you there.

Jennifer Norman:
Sure.

MB Bolin:
This is the unique discovery that I made, okay. Because I had worked very hard at having a voice that would bring pleasure to other people. Okay. And I had learned the techniques. I had been in choir for years. I'd taken voice lessons, but the techniques were masking a certain level of fear and insecurity that we understand why it was there. And so I could learn this technique. It was masking that fear and insecurity, and there was still an element in my voice, the energy of my voice.

MB Bolin:
I couldn't completely get rid of that fear and insecurity, so it would still come through even with the technique that I had. And what I discovered when I asked myself, what is this doing for me? And what if I just give myself my voice first? And I started going inward using the somatic awareness that I'd learned to simply ask myself, what am I doing for my body when I sing? I discovered that my own vibrations were extremely pleasureful. I was like, wow. Nobody said that singing is actually physically pleasureful inside your body, but it is. When I actually paid attention to that. And what happened is, now I'm a soprano. So I grew up, like, being the one who needed to reach the high notes and who needed to do it freely. So the choir was always like, okay, come on, everybody, pray up.

MB Bolin:
Well, please don't tighten up when you get to those high notes, right? So the high notes are the scary ones. But when I just started exploring those notes with this sensation for myself was like, oh, where does that vibration? Where does that vibration go? Where does that vibration go? I noticed with the high notes, oh, my gosh, I hit some spot, the underside of my brain that have pleasure receptors, and I can't touch those pleasure receptors unless I'm singing that one high note. And I actually discovered that I'm touching myself when I sing in a very pleasurable way. And if I sing with that question of, like, ooh, how can I find that vibration? That feels really nice. Guess what? I sing those high notes beautifully every time. No voice teacher who was trying to teach me to sing beautifully ever was able to give me a tool that helped me sing those notes beautifully every time the way I can now. So now I can write a song with some high notes, and I can take it to an open mic, and the anticipation of the high notes that I have now, isn't that like, oh, no, am I going to get it right? Oh, no. Is it going to be tight or free or.

MB Bolin:
This is the hard note. Here it comes. It's like, oh, this is where I get to touch that really cool spot underneath my brain. And I don't know what it is, but it feels amazing. Here it comes. And afterwards, I get people coming up to me and being like, that high note that was like nirvana. And I'm like, I know. Felt to me.

MB Bolin:
So the whole sense that our voice is the sound of the inside of our body, it actually flips my understanding of beauty and how people perceive beauty, because I think that people perceive voices with their mirrored neurons. Like, they imagine what it would feel like for that sound to be coming from their body. And that's why it feels pleasureful, and because it feels pleasureful to them. The call it beautiful. And so actually focusing on my own pleasure when I sing is the best way to sing beautifully, consistently. And so there's no dichotomy there. Actually, the better I get at taking care of my body, the better of a performer I am. And that's simply how it is, which is why singing is such a wonderful microcosm for learning how to love ourselves and take care of ourselves, because we can listen back to that recording, and I've done it numerous times with myself and be like, oh, that was the high note, where I forgot to ask myself what was going to feel good.

MB Bolin:
And then, oh, there's the high note, where I remembered to ask myself what was going to feel good. And I can hear it. I can hear the shift, and it's right there. It's proof. And so I start to have so much more confidence to show up and to share my voice because I know that taking care of me is taking care of other people. There's no dividing line anywhere.

Jennifer Norman:
Absolutely. I want to go back a bit because you were talking about some traditional training, and what I think is a key message within that context is that there are going to be teachers or there's going to be coaches that are trying to give you some cookie cutter methods in order to show you how they perceive is the right way to do things.

MB Bolin:
Right.

Jennifer Norman:
And it may not necessarily be your voice or it may not be your life, and it may not be what is right and true for you. And so maintaining that pain, maintaining that vulnerability, maintaining that insecurity in your voice can sometimes be so authentic. And it's probably what creates the most beautifully unique sounds that we've heard in life, that we all are like, oh, yeah, I get it. I get that feeling. It's that emotion in me that I really feel something. Yeah. And then to the point of also doing things that bring you joy, doing things that bring you pleasure, doing things that feel good for you is the way forward in your life at all times, no matter what you're doing.

MB Bolin:
Exactly.

Jennifer Norman:
All times, whether it's singing and hitting a note that makes you feel good rather than, oh, my God, you got to hit that note because people are judging me or because bad grade if I don't hit it this way. And so rather than coming at it from a place of fearfulness and you're frightened and that's going to constrict you and you feel that in your body, rather than opening yourself up and being enthusiastic and loving what you're doing and just doing it anyway, you go for it in a different kind of more relaxed way.

MB Bolin:
Yeah, absolutely. And no matter when it comes down to it, it's the intention behind what you're doing that comes through. And this is where the experience of being chronically silenced comes in. I think the idea that if you have this concept that you have to shape your voice a certain way in order to be acceptable, then no matter how good my voice teachers were, I was always just trying to please them because I was going to be rejected.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

MB Bolin:
So I had that really deep fear. And so even though I had some really good voice teachers who were like, let it out. It's okay. You got this. I was still like, do you like it if I sing it this way? Do you like it if I sing it this way? And so the experience of giving myself my voice first without anybody else listening to it and giving it fully to myself before I started singing for other people really helped me step outside of the whole game of trying to please other people and flip the story of, like, I don't have to do something to my voice in order to make it acceptable. Because when I am so completely true to myself that it shines through my voice, that actually draws people in. And that's the healing experience of like, oh, wow, watch me draw people in using my voice. I can do this when I'm being authentic, when I'm being completely neat physically with just the actual vibration of the tone of my voice.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for sharing that. It's an interesting point because I recently was listening to an interview. Billie Eilish just wrote this incredible song for the Barbie...

MB Bolin:
Billie Eilish was in the same children's choir as me. Did you know that? Years later, she and I were both in the same children's choir? Evidence that my experience coming out of children's choir, of being very closed down is not what kids were experiencing. She went off to become amazing very young.

Jennifer Norman:
And the beautiful thing is that it's staying true to you. Like, no one would say, oh, Billie Eilish is a classically trained voice, or she's definitely got skill and you can tell that she has been working her talent, but the creative process by which she and her brother operate is we're going to go into a closed room and we're not going to have a lot of people around, what, judging us and criticizing us, because that completely waters down and a lot of different opinions are going to not bring the creation, the art that is highest integrity with who they are and what they want to deliver.

MB Bolin:
Yeah. And they have fun together. I saw interview, they're going in there and that's how it all started. It all started with them having fun in the studio. And you can tell that. And I think for me, I ended up, because of having different family dynamics and all of this, I ended up taking music so seriously, feeling like I had to get everything so perfect. And that just held me back for so long. And the way that Billie Eilish has always been having fun with it is just proof of the pudding.

MB Bolin:
That's what happens when you're really having fun.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. When you can be authentically yourself and in highest integrity to who you are and how you want to express, then it's okay to be polarizing. It's okay. And actually, it's better if a lot of people don't like you because you will find your tribe, you will connect with the people that connect with you, and you will be attracting the right people to you, you'll be attracting the ones that see you and love you and really want to be with you for who you are and what you have to offer, rather than your semblance or your shell of what you're trying to be. And that's where a lot of weakness and dissonance comes in for a lot of people.

MB Bolin:
Yeah. The value of taking as much time as it needs to really feel who you are before you step out and start sharing it with the world so that you know exactly why you're doing what you're doing. And that, I think, has so much value over the experience of not knowing who you are and looking to other people to show you. Looking like, oh, if I audition for this thing and I get in, that tells me I'm a good singer. If I don't get in, that tells me I'm not a good singer. If I don't know inside myself whether my voice has value or not, then people's critique of my voice is my idea of my voice. But if I really take that time, and that's what I did, is really take that time to know my voice all on my own, in my own room, just playing with it, enjoying it, having fun with it, and letting it grow to a point where I don't care if somebody doesn't like my voice because I know there are other people who do, and I'm not actually asking them, is my voice beautiful? I don't care. Like, if somebody thinks my voice is beautiful, the I know that they're on a similar resonance to me, and if they don't think it's beautiful, the I know that they're on a different resonance than me, and that's all it says.

MB Bolin:
And I like singing and drawing in the people who are on a similar resonance to me because I wouldn't even know they were there if I didn't sing first to draw.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And along the path comes the awareness of what feels right for you and then the growth, because we are people of constant improvement and constantly looking for, how can I be better today than I was yesterday? How can I be better tomorrow than I was today? And so practice and skill is something that comes with your ability to continue on this path of joy, not on, I need to get that next ring. I need to get that next prize, because that starts to feel more like work. Now. Work has its place, too. There are times where we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and do things that we don't like, and that's different. That's not necessarily the healing aspect of what we're talking about here. The healing aspect is to start from a place of love and integrity with something that's right for you and building upon that, growing that and maintaining that enthusiasm and that joy and that love and that desire and that hope all the way through the fulfillment of how you want to express yourself and creating.

MB Bolin:
Your own rules, creating your own challenges that you think will be fun, because there's this value that can be set on somebody working really hard, getting it right. And that's the kind of, I was a rule follower growing up, so I was very good at following rules. And I like challenges. I love challenges. I come alive when there's something that I want to be better at tomorrow than I am today. If I didn't have a challenge, I would get really bored and really depressed. But what I've discovered now is instead of having the challenge of trying to live up to somebody else's expectations, or the challenge of trying to get somebody else to perceive me in a way that I actually have no control over how they perceive me, the challenges I'm creating for myself now are how much of my energy is present in every single note I sing, and how clearly can I let the energy of my heart into my voice? How much can I clear the cobwebs away and make that every day more clear and more me? And so I have new challenges for myself as I sang every morning, as I record myself, as I share my voice with the world. It's not a question of, like, oh, can I get this perfectly in tune? Or can I sing this note without any hitches? It's a question of, can I feel more and more and more of this worldless, like, this energy that I can't express with language, that I can only express with tone? Can I make that bring my mind into a completely different state? Can I sing in a way that brings other people's mind in a completely different state? Just experimenting with what I can do with my voice that nobody ever told me I could do.

MB Bolin:
But I still want to improve every day. Just, I'm improving in a different direction than what I was supposed to improve at. I'm improving in the direction of simply wanting to open people's hearts, wanting to change the brainwaves, wanting to be able to heal their energy through my voice.

Jennifer Norman:
It's so powerful, and it's so powerful to be able to recognize, building in that self awareness. And sometimes it really does take sitting with yourself in a quiet space and contemplating it what really brings you joy, what really makes you happy of all of the things that you do. And so I want our listeners to do an exercise right now. If you could list three things that you are planning to do, let's say tomorrow, three things. It could be walking the dog, it could be going to work, it could be figuring out what to have for dinner. How do you feel when you think about those things? How do you feel? Like, what does it really do inside your body? When you say, I'm going to walk the dog, to some people it might be like, oh, I have to walk the dog again. And other people are like, oh, I get to walk the dog. I get to be.

Jennifer Norman:
And so there's a difference in how your body feels with that thought, with that action that you're planning to do, going to work. Some people might be really excited to go to work and they feel liberated and they feel open about the possibilities. Other people to go another work day, the same thing with making dinner. It's like, oh, I get to think about what I can have to eat. Oh, yum. Other just hot. Do we have to do this again? What am I going to have for dinner? Like all of those things. Like, what really does light you up inside? And it's true, there are situations where life gets in the way and maybe we don't feel that spark for anything, or we feel like we've lost that spark, then that needs to be paid attention to as well.

Jennifer Norman:
Is there something going on that has caused you to lose enthusiasm for life, for losing enthusiasm for who you are? And can we dive into that a little bit deeper? Do you feel okay with yourself? Do you feel that you've been able to express yourself? Do you think that you've been living a life that's not necessarily your own? Do you feel like you are yearning for something to light you up inside? Have you not discovered that yet? Thinking about this conversation and how MB has been able to unlock this secret and understanding that she's been chronically silenced. She's had loved ones who are supposed to accept you and love you for who you are, but unfortunately have not loved and accepted her for who she really was and instead felt threatened. How has something like that experience carried through her life? And have you had a similar experience in your life where maybe these other voices are telling you how you should have been living your life, the kind of job that you should have, the kind of spouse that you should have, kind of car that you should drive, and have you really adopted that and inculcated into yourself? And do you feel like you're living a life that's not your own? Are you singing a song that isn't really yours? And can you get that back? So, mb, I know that now you're starting to work with other people. You're so passionate about working with people who have experienced this sense of being silenced or disconnected with their voice. How do you help them?

MB Bolin:
Well, I am starting a program that is going to include basically group coaching, but also a whole set of guided meditations and ways to explore and have fun with your voice all on your own, in your own room, in your car. No need to be afraid of what will come out of you, but every invitation to become very intimate with your voice and with the pleasure that your voice can bring you. And so it will basically be a way for people to give themselves their voice and give it to them so deeply that they can really reconnect with that part of their soul that needs to have a voice. The part of our soul that needs to be able to be vocal, because that's who we are as human. Bring that part of our soul back into us with these practices where we are becoming very intimate with the inside of our body and our emotions and just feeling the somatic sensations as they flow through us and feeling the shifts as we come and sing. Play with vowels, play with different notes. And as the different practices build on each other, you'll basically come to a place where you can express yourself through song. And it doesn't matter if that's something that you feel is presentable outside of your car or not.

MB Bolin:
What matters is that you will feel that sense of self expression through your voice, and you'll know that it's yours. You have that. So that's a project I'm working on.

Jennifer Norman:
Right now that sounds like an amazing program. One thing that I want to invite our listeners to do is to try out the power of the tone. Ah, it's one of those things where people are like, oh, this feels so relieving, is like all of a sudden you're just taking a big deep breath and saying and letting it out for as long as you can, taking a few deep breaths and continuing that. I had learned that there is power in that sound ah. It is actually found in a lot of spiritual texts. If you think about alpha, omega, God, Allah, buddha, Jehovah, that sound of ah is found in a lot of spiritual contexts, and there's a reason for it. It's even an ow. The proper way to do om is not just om, it's "ow-oo-mmm" and getting to that alpha omega.

Jennifer Norman:
So try that and feel how that feels. If it feels relaxing and resonant in your body, and you can do it with other people, too. That's why in yoga class, there's always that at the beginning or at the end. It might be helpful to maybe even start your day with a couple of those. End your day with a couple of those. Even at midday during lunch, if you don't want anybody to hear you, that's fine. Or if you do, that's cool, too. Maybe invite other people to join you and do it and just go, because there is.

Jennifer Norman:
There's a sense of release and relaxation with that tone. So, MB, you also learned about some research on lullabies, which I would love to hear about.

MB Bolin:
Yes. Well, I did a master's degree in singing as a spiritual practice at that very tender point where I was really wanting to find my voice around the time I turned 30. And during that time, I basically got very intimate with my ego and how much my ego was involved in my singing and meeting people. And I wasn't able to step outside of that during my coursework. But when I finished my coursework and before I wrote my thesis, I got pregnant with my son. And I had my son, and I started singing him lullabies, and all of a sudden, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is what I've been looking for this whole time. I've been looking for this experience of singing, and I never had it until I started singing it, singing lullabies to my son. And I had remembered reading in a book called the singing in neanderthals, which is a wonderful exploration of the evolution of music.

MB Bolin:
Lullabies might have actually been the first form of mutuse. And I was like, okay, I need to do some research on this for my thesis. And I discovered there's very little, actually, that's been written about lullabies. They're extremely powerful, but the scholars are just as fascinated by the right way of doing music, and they overlook lullabies. But there have been some really cool studies done. One study by someone named Sandra TreHub was studying the way that babies perceive lullabies and the way we all perceive lullabies, and basically proving through her studies that singing is a biological instinct, it's not a learned instinct. And one of the things that the studies that she did, she recorded mothers singing to their babies, and then she recorded them singing without their baby present, asking them to sing as if their baby was there. And then she played these recordings to listeners who didn't know the difference and asked them if they could detect when the baby was there and when the baby was not there and they could detect it, everybody could tell.

MB Bolin:
Even though the mom was trying to sing in the same way as she had sung to her baby, people could hear that quality in her voice of her baby being there. And this gets back to what I was talking about earlier, about the energy behind the voice and asking myself the question of where is this going to feel good? Changes the quality of my voice. In a similar way, having the presence of their baby in the room changed the quality of their voice in a way that they couldn't control consciously. It just shifted. And we can hear it because of our biological understanding of what's going on inside someone's body. When they sing, we can hear love. And so when my son got older and he stopped wanting me to sing to him as much anymore, I knew that I needed to find that in a different way. Right? I couldn't just find it through singing for my son.

MB Bolin:
And so my discoveries happened when I started actually giving myself the love that I had been giving to my son and that creating that nourishing experience for my own body that we all crave, when we all crave the experience of hearing a lullaby sung to us. It's very, very basic. I could on.

Jennifer Norman:
It's so interesting to hear how primordial it is. Wow.

MB Bolin:
Yeah. Another thing that I learned, I was studying ancient greek lullabies that show up in some of the ancient texts. And this woman was talking about that language, for the ancient Greeks, was performative, meaning that they believed that the words they said had power to come true. And this is something that we're starting to understand again now with energy and manifestation. But we've gone through eons where we've treated language as if it's just luck, right? We can communicate with it, but it doesn't create an energy to make something come true. But in these ancient lullabies, they were singing with the idea that the words that they were saying were spells. They were essentially setting a spell when they sang their lullabies. And so they would always sing, and you'll see this, in all the old lullabies, they don't just sing about going to sleep, they also sing about waking up in the morning, because that was very important.

MB Bolin:
Child mortality was very common in those ancient times. And so there's one ancient lullaby where she's singing fall into this sleep from which one wakes, being very specific about what kind of sleep, not the one.

Jennifer Norman:
Where you do not wake.

MB Bolin:
Exactly. And so this is another thing that I've brought into my songwriting now is I ask myself another challenge that I set for myself. If every single word that I sing comes true, what words am I going to put in my song? That becomes a really beautiful creative practice that is deep. And I feel it. I feel it is happening. The words are coming true that I sing in my song. But also when you feel that much power with your voice, and this is why it's so valuable for people who felt silence, when you feel that much power in your voice, that the words that you're singing could actually come true, start singing for very deep things. You start asking for a deep sense of peace.

MB Bolin:
You're not singing like, oh, I want a million dollars tomorrow. You're singing like, let me feel who I am. Let me, let my soul be free. The honor of knowing that your voice has power, is that inspiration to really wish the best, the utmost, highest goodness that you possibly can through your song?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And it's not only the wishing, and it's not only the hoping. It's the knowing. It's the knowing that your word is your wand and you are casting spells and you are talking. You are speaking your life into existence with your thoughts and your words. And so may your voice always resonate what the true you is wishing and wanting and dreaming of. And it will. And know that it will come true.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that this has been such an amazing discussion. MB, thank you so much for bringing this topic to light. It's so important. It's so important because so many people have felt like they couldn't be themselves or they couldn't speak their own truth, they couldn't live their own lives. And I love how you had this self discovery, this awakening within yourself of recognizing that your voice is your own and that it is an instrument for your own joy first. And from there, everything manifests and blossoms.

MB Bolin:
Yes. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much for being on The Human Beauty Movement Podcast today, MB, it was such a pleasure.

MB Bolin:
Thanks.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.