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Chapter 5:

The Five Elements Framework Overview

The Five Elements Framework we are about to explore will give you a sonic map for accessing a wide variety of colors and sounds in your voice.  We’ll explore where each sound is sourced in the body and the gifts or qualities that are evoked by each one.  As you build more flexibility, awareness, and choice in your voice, you’ll be more adept at choosing the right voice for the situation.  I’ll share stories about how my clients have put these vocal qualities to work in their lives and what happened as a result.  Within each chapter, you’ll be directed to a website with practice videos for each voice.  I’ll demonstrate how each one sounds and guide you through some simple vocal exercises for accessing that quality in your own voice. Each chapter will close with reflection questions and a list of famous people (or creatures) who exemplify that element.

Almost immediately you’ll start noticing these colors in your own voice: which sounds are dominant in your everyday way of speaking and which ones seem unfamiliar.  You’ll become more aware of the subtle ways your voice adjusts to specific situations, audiences, and individuals.  Your ears will also become more attuned to the cues on other people’s voices at work, at home, on television, and on your iPod.  I guarantee you will begin to hear the world with new ears and to explore it with powerful new questions.

When I lived in Paris in the mid-1980s I had four music cassettes to my name.  (For you younger readers, cassettes were a quaint and antiquated method for playing recorded music back in the last century.)  Bobby McFerrin’s first recording, The Voice, was one of them.  During that year of reflection and exploration, I rode the Metro and walked the boulevards “marinating” in McFerrin’s amazing voice.  If you aren’t familiar with his work, he expresses a seemingly impossible range of vocal sound and color as he interprets music from diverse genres.  His voice opened my ears to new vocal possibilities I had never before considered.

Unless you are an actor or singer, you probably use a narrow range of your voice in everyday speech.  If you sing, that scope may stretch a bit wider.  The range of sound you have available, however, extends far beyond your speaking and singing voice even if you aren’t a Bobby McFerrin.  Now and again you might explore those edges – in moments of extreme joy, anger, or pain.  Most of the time, though, the majority of your sound library sits on a shelf gathering dust.  

The stained glass window in my living room has a prism in it. When the morning sun passes through that prism, it shines a rainbow on my living room wall.  The vivid colors I see there are always present in the sunlight.  I just can’t perceive them until the prism breaks up the light into ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet).

The Five Elements Framework uses a similar principle: it breaks the voice into five distinct colors.  Like the rainbow, there are subtle variations between and among the vocal colors.  Learning how to access and blend these vocal elements help you to choose the right voice for the right purpose.  You learn to “paint” with your voice.  When you need to communicate with firm authority, your voice will be grounded and strong.  When you want to extend compassion, your words will be wrapped in soothing tones.  When you want your visions to spark the curiosity of your listeners, your voice will invite them in. You can be loud when you need to be and soft when the situation requires it.  You’ll also be able to shift vocal habits that interfere with your ability to powerfully and accurately communicate with others.

As we discovered in chapter 2, your voice is much more than the sound you hear coming out of your mouth every day.  It is a broadcast system sending messages to the world about who you think you are, a random assemblage of vocal habits that may or may not serve you well.  The Five Elements Framework gives you the ability to deliberately access all of your vocal resources and put them to work in your life.

Each of the five voices is linked to specific gifts or qualities.  
Earth – Gut instinct, authority, and grounding
Fire – Passion, personal power, and vitality
Water – Caring, compassion, and affirmation
Metal – Clarity and focus
Air – Inspiration, possibility, and spiritual connection

This framework was developed by paying attention to voices, my own and those of my clients.  I noticed frequent correlations between how a person sounded and the gifts they carried. Comfort or discomfort with any voice offered a mirror for who they thought they were – and who they wished they weren’t.  The qualities that were easy for them vocally were usually the same ones they were good at in their life and work.  People who were grounded and solid generally sounded that way.  People who were warm and nurturing carried a strong dose of water in their voices.  I also noticed that as my clients and I changed specific aspects of our voices, we gained greater access to the qualities associated with that voice.  This was by no means a hard and fast rule, but it happened frequently enough to capture my attention.

The Five Elements Framework was also influenced by the chakra system.  According to the Indian yogic tradition, the chakras (or wheels) are seven energy centers that span the length of the body, starting with the first at the base of the spine and rising through the torso to the seventh at the top of the head.  Each chakra is associated with a specific color, area of the body, and quality.  Entire volumes are dedicated to the detailed study of the chakra system.  People spend years exploring its nuances.  For our purposes, I’ll very briefly introduce the seven chakras and their qualities.

The first or root chakra is located at the base of the spine and is associated with basic survival instinct.  

The second chakra is located just above the pubic bone and is associated with passion, sexuality, and creativity.  

The third chakra, centered at the solar plexus, is connected to a person’s sense of self or identity.  

Loving and empathy is centered in the heart chakra, number four.  

The fifth or throat chakra is associated with self-expression while the sixth, located at the forehead, is connected to intuition and insight.  

Finally, the crown or seventh chakra marks the access point to the world of spirit and higher consciousness.  

There is a long tradition of toning or chanting through the chakras as part of a yoga or meditation practice.  As I explored the five distinct vocal qualities – and my own yoga practice - there were significant parallels between the sounds I heard and qualities expressed through the chakras.

Another essential aspect of the Five Element Framework is the use of specific characters for opening specific vocal colors. We all have vocal landscapes we never visit. Some vocal colors emerge naturally from your identity, culture, and physical characteristics.  Some are so far away from who you think you are that the ego fiercely resists them, attacking them like an immune system attacks an invading virus.

Most of us avoid things we’re not good at.  We exercise our strengths over and over again and avoid our clumsy, less developed qualities.  This is a normal response, but it doesn’t help us grow. In fact, using only a narrow part of your vocal range can create a kind of repetitive stress injury for your voice.  Regularly practicing the five distinct voices in the framework helps you balance the familiar and strong parts of your voice and identity with parts of you that are more vulnerable and uncertain.

The characters we use to open the voice are exaggerated and silly on purpose.  Pretending to be an egomaniacal operatic tenor or a blue-haired English lady may prompt you to make sounds that your everyday self would never make.  They help you sneak by the guardian-ego long enough to try on a new way of being, a way that may be drastically different than who you think you are.  Think of them as booster rockets for helping propel you out of the gravitational pull of your current identity, helping you bridge the great gap between the voice you use out of habit and your full range of sound and color available to you.

The characters also give you a chance to notice and recall how each of the five sounds feel in your body in its most extreme form.  As you become familiar with those sensations, you’ll be able to access each sound quickly and easily whenever you need a subtler version for a specific situation. Your voice will become more limber and coordinated.  Put another way, you’ll travel to other characters’ voices for a visit and bring back souvenirs to your own way of communicating.

I used to think deep learning required a measure of seriousness and a forehead wrinkled in concentration.  What a surprise to discover that learning essential things about life, work, relationships, and myself could be such raucous good fun.  The Five Elements Framework offers that kind of learning.  This approach invites you to inhabit more of yourself: the full gamut of physical sensation, emotional connection, imagination, play, and meaning.  Connecting your learning to so many different aspects of your life helps you remember it better.  So does feeling like a bit of a fool.  This work is a bit like a ropes course: you feel like you’re in mortal danger, but you’re really not.  The perceived danger helps the learning go in deeper and results last longer.