David Delaney is a Certified Rolfer in Longmont
Welcome!
To learn more about Rolfing® Structural Integration, click this link: https://thesingerscenter.com/rolfing/
Although I am passionate about and love working with everyone and have done so since 1985 when I was certified as a Rolfer, I also specialize in working with singers as well as other performing artists, who use their voice in their work. I have worked with professional singers and actors from the Broadway stage, the opera, pop & rock worlds, etc., most of that time in NYC. My work comes out of my own personal experience as an actor/ singer whose voice was dramatically freed and uncovered by the Rolfing® process in 1979-80. I am trained in the physiological side of the Bel Canto school of singing voice and studied, apprenticed & collaborated with the Broadway singing voice teacher Margaret Laughlin Riddleberger from 1979 to 2002, who sang at the Metropolitan Opera herself.
Our body is our instrument. Singing demands full intrinsic body unification and elasticity. I have spent 38 years working with singers, helping them accelerate their development in achieving and maintaining vocal mastery; minimum use of breath, minimum tension in the throat and producing maximum power and resonance.
This drawing above is by the famous artist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770). It shows the intrinsic layer of musculature, called the emotional muscles, also called survival muscles; what I now call the singer's muscles.
The term intrinsic here specifically relates to the emotional musculature, also called core muscles today; what I call the singer's muscles. Skilled Rolfing® is unsurpassed in its ability to bring the singer's body toward a significantly improved vertical posture, where a threshold of freedom in this intrinsic muscle layer is achieved as a naturally outcome. Adaptability and elasticity in this intrinsic muscle layer is primary for both the ability to listen well (a key skill for the virtuoso singer), as well as for innovative singing where you will never have a vocal problem, no matter how much you sing.
Rolfing helps a singer discover and achieve what is known as the listening posture, also called the singer's posture; really one and the same. Without this postural verticality that is initiated from a relaxed and adaptable core, a singer has no choice but to sing with a degree of force, tension and constraint. And the hallmark of authentic singing is body flexibility, elasticity and relaxation.
We all carry tension/fear in our bodies that are the result of unresolved experiences from our infancy and childhood, that manifest as body tension. This held tension accumulates year after year, often the degree to which it is unbeknownst to us. It eventually effects our body structure and posture by an overall body shortening that will eventually manifest as a twisting in the joints, affecting our mobility and overall resilience.
When a singer is under the intense pressure of having to sing in public with all the attendant fear and anxiety day after day, this accumulated unresolved fear/tension will show up in the form of limited vocal emission and constrained vocal resonance. Discovering and developing the somatic sensory-motor skills that are the same for speaking and singing are key to vocal longevity. And this level of skill cannot even be discovered without a minimum of body freedom and good listening posture, what I call the "Singer's Posture" in my upcoming book, "Intrinsic SingingSM".
David Delaney, Advanced Certified Rolfer®
Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology
Licensed Professional Counselor (Colorado)
303-815-3160
david@daviddelaney-rolfing.com
https://thesingerscenter.com/bodywork-for-singers/
www.daviddelaney-rolfing.com
www.thesingercenter.com
