Austin — A rainy morning run ends with singing. What is the world singing to you right now?

Austin — Try this tomorrow morning, still in bed, just as you wake into the day. Before the stories of who you are have a chance to coalesce out of the primordial soup of night, stretch. Sensate, animal, you.

Right here, skin, cotton, gravity, breath don’t have their names just yet. Enjoy the freedom of this inconclusive space.

Allow sounds to arise from this morning swim, effortless discovery, vibration. Mmms turning to low purrs, ahhs and the sounds that come before consonants and vowels. Open to them and follow them into your uncomposed morning song.

Repeat daily.

©2011 Will Hewett

Austin – I’m playing with the word vibrancy as a holder for the experience possible through a daily, engaged practice. In the apparent complexity of our lives, when the most frequent answer to the question, “How are you?” is “busy,” how do we cultivate a sense of lightness, verve, release, aliveness?

How do we remind ourselves of the primacy of the world beneath words and of the miraculous experience of being inside a body in this moment?

©2012 Will Hewett

In my year of singing, I was reminded of this daily. There is something about this singing practice that allows us to not only enter silence and observe what emerges, as in traditional meditation, but also to engage in a process of creation and play. This combination of simultaneous activity and of letting go of control has magic to it. In my experience, vibrancy is born here.

So what is, or what might be a vibrancy practice that you could take on daily?

Singing Yourself Alive: Vocalist and improviser Will Hewett explores the language of sound beneath words. After singing 15 minutes every day for a year, Will Hewett describes — and sings — what he learned about commitment and the ability of a simple creative practice to open us to vibrancy, and to a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us.

Contact Will

©2012 Susan Potter Photography

Will joins Rhiannon and other special guests to guide you on a week-long singing journey. Details are coming. Subscribe to our e-newsletter and be the first to know.

Wednesday, August 15 to Thursday, August 23, 2012
Hollyhock Learning Center on Cortes Island, British Columbia

Will speaks at this regional TED conference about the rich world accessible through a simple daily singing practice.

Saturday, November 12, 2011
Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle
Additional information at http://tedxrainier.com

Watch Will’s presentation

©2011 Will Hewett

Austin — Today a full circle is complete. 365 times around the sun. 365 emergent 15-minute singing sessions, from all over the world and all manner of mood. 365 two-minute sound clips. 365 photos.

I tear up as I start my singing today and am filled with what this practice has given me. A through-line through the imagined drama of my life. An immersion into vibration. A falling away of interpretation and story. A structure for remembering who “I” am. A daily window to dance in being. Intimacy.

I sing loudly around my house, lighting it up with the fullness of this practice, doors wide open to the neighborhood. In Love.

I sing to me and to you, who have ridden along with me, in your own way, on this journey.

365 sounds like this

©2011 Will Hewett

Austin — Under bridges is where it’s at.

Those engineers spend so much time making these beautiful structures to hold cars and trucks and to not gallop in the wind. But I wonder if one singing bridge designer many years ago put an additional spec into the DNA of bridge design … one that makes them sound amazing to sing under.

Walk in the open air and sing, and your voice is quickly absorbed by an atmosphere thirsty for the concentrated love.

Then walk under a nice concrete bridge and experience the amplification and generous return of your sound waves. Fill up the sonic bath with your voice and then luxuriate in the swirl.

Trolling sounds like this

©2011 Will Hewett

Austin — The world is constantly asking us to dance. Feel that air on your skin, the weight of your clothes and where they are touching. Hear the sounds close by and further away. See the colors around you that are jumping out right now.

There is a subtle way to say yes to all these invitations, to stay on your general trajectory while also welcoming them in. How does the blue on that cereal box feel in your heart? How do your ears respond to the intermittent rumble of the fridge? Can you feel the temperature of your shoes or the floor, rising up into your calf.

It’s a dance where we are constantly changing partners, acknowledging that we are part of things.

Today I’m singing away and see the word blackbird on a page on my desk. Like a little gust of wind it gently pushes me over into a very abstract dance with the Beatles song by the same name and I love being influenced this way.

Influenced sounds like this

Austin — What is it I’m looking for when I start a sing 15 session? I’m looking for a way in that day. And where is in? This gets harder to describe.

In is like underwater swimming. All sensation. It’s the stillness in athletic flow. It’s surfing, surging, dropping into silence.

In is out of time. It’s body as bellows. Buzzing. Pre-logic. It’s allowing.

©2011 Will Hewett

The crazy paradox is that we are never not in, except for thoughts that say different.

For me, the way in is different every day. Today it comes by getting rhythmically persistent, slapping my thigh in an up-tempo beat.

At one point, it’s like I rise from the runway and I’m catching thermals, love aloft, swimming through air.

Inning sounds like this