Communication, connection, healing. Rachel Hynes

‘Breath-mind-body connection. How life events affect us and how the body tries to mend itself.’ Rachel’s experience of this - both professionally and personal - informs the connectivity and depth of her work. Singing for breath, singing for health, singing for life. More of this, please.

Who are you?

My name is Rachel Hynes.  Who am I?  That’s a really good question. We were talking about this at the start of (the first) lockdown and whether as a result of the pandemic and now the complications caused by Brexit, surrounding freedom to travel and work in Europe, people have the same desire to perform any more. 

I think I went through this journey of grief and indecision quite a few years ago, and on my own – whether I wanted to perform or not anymore – firstly in the aftermath of vocal rehabilitation from a serious allergy, then when my family life imploded. 

The question of ‘why do I do this’ and ‘who do I do this for’ – that’s something I’m still working on both professionally and personally, but I think it has shaped the way I have moved forward in my singing life.

A big life-changing trauma made me reassess things, as I was trying to survive, recover both physically and mentally, and still work – ‘perform’ and earn money.  It was quite a lonely experience.  Faced with ‘do you want to perform any more ‘ and ‘do you have the confidence to perform anymore’…my confidence disappeared completely.

I now know it was intrinsically linked with events in my personal life as I was always having to ‘perform’ – act in a certain way in order to survive in a very toxic environment, putting on an act to the outside, that everything was ‘ok’.

Now that I no longer needed to do this, the need to ‘perform’ in a costume on a stage in order to help me survive was no longer there, but was the desire to still do it as prevalent?

At the same time, there were other interesting and inspiring elements in my work that I needed to explore – my singing for health work.  That inspiration came from working on a brand new opera created collaboratively with the medical world, about a man with dementia. It rekindled that passion for performing that I thought I was losing, whilst also nurturing a feeling that I might make a difference with this work. 

It wasn’t an easy rehearsal process and the music was fiendishly difficult, but it all came together in the performances, and people responded positively to it. But then it finished.  Dementia doesn’t end so neatly, and I was left with a deep desire to explore working in music and medicine further.

At around this time Scottish Opera was setting up their Memory Spinners dementia singing project in association with Alzheimer’s Scotland. I saw some publicity and fired off an email to my colleague I was working with on another small scale community project. I came on board for three seasons of the inaugural project. 

It wasn’t just a dementia choir, it was more like workshopped dramatic presentations – stories and songs co-created with the participants themselves, with ideas and themes from one of the main stage operas of the season.

It was clear that this was where I wanted to be.  After the three years was up I knew I needed to explore this holistic singing/healing work and find some more avenues to train or even if there were these opportunities out there.  Enterprise Music Scotland had a training project in Music and Dementia in care settings and, with a group of musicians from McOpera, the Scottish Opera orchestra co-operative, I signed up.

Part of the course involved practical placements in care homes, and this is where I met a wonderful lady (who has since become a good friend) – Katherine – who ran a mental health charity called Common Wheel.  I asked to join her with her one-to-one work during our shadow visit to the home she ran music sessions in. 

It was the most beautiful session, seeing up close and personal how music can not only transform people, but can be a valid way to communicate with people who are otherwise rather locked inside this awful disease.

Katherine was looking for someone to join the music leader team and offered me a job at the end of the project.  I’ve been working for Common Wheel for about five or six years.  They use music and mending bikes to help people with mental health conditions. 

They have a bike workshop in Maryhill, in Glasgow.  They discovered that making things really helps people in their recovery, helping them to transition meaningfully back into society – people can rebuild and restore bikes to sell or they can buy them themselves.  It’s perfect - to give them focus and value as they reintegrate into the outside world.

The music side of Common Wheel also works with people in the community and people can be referred to this programme.  I work mainly with people with dementia or functioning mental health conditions, in hospital wards and care homes.

Still needing to nurture this desire to help people through my voice, I came across a new initiative with the British Lung Foundation, training singers in Singing For Lung Health.  As I started that course, down in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland, incidentally where my husband worked as an organist, there was a breathing choir which was looking for a new musical director.

It was a bit of a baptism of fire!  When we’re thrown into these situations, we have to exploit and explore our toolkit of knowledge and I quickly realized that I know much more about my craft than I give myself credit for!

It was great to train and work practically with participants at the same time, in reality, as it immediately allowed me to put into practice my new knowledge.  I reconnected with the British Lung Foundation in Scotland and with funding from BLF, I was able to set up a new Breathing for Singing group in a very deprived area of Glasgow. 

Another eye-opener, seeing how deprivation had seriously impaired people’s respiratory health . The average age for death in that area was 55. 45 for women. The project was plagued with problems from the start -    a difficult venue to access and the health area we were covering was too culturally diverse, ironically. 

Then – someone new took over the music organization that had picked up the project and it no longer fitted into their remit. However, my original boss there is now my boss at Common Wheels, so everything came full circle.

Why do you do what you do?

That’s a question I was continually asking myself as I transitioned into more of the community based, music facilitating work. I knew I needed to find something that would restore my confidence in my own musical, vocal and performing abilities again. 

I did dip my toe into what I now call ‘music as therapy’ work when I was at university, but there didn’t seem to be a career path into this work back then.

The knock-backs of the stage performing world were chipping away at my confidence, and ultimately affecting my ability to enjoy my singing. 

I participated in some truly innovative and interesting projects when I was a Company Principal Soprano with Scottish opera, taking music to  small, isolated communities and seeing up close and personal how music and singing touched people’s souls – people from all sorts of backgrounds. 

You don’t get that on the big stage.  You get the applause, but what ultimately does that really mean at the end of the day?  That was becoming a bit formulaic for me, as the pressure to perform ‘perfectly’ night after night, intensified.  With what I was going through personally and privately, the professional mask was becoming too exhausting to put on every day.

I do strongly believe that everybody has a voice.  I think now, looking back, I’d lost mine – my truth! Not my singing voice – I’d lost my voice in society, having literally walked away from so much of my personal identity because it was a toxic environment to be in, but having done so, I now no longer knew who I was, or even who I wanted to be. 

I needed to find ‘me’ again.  I think I was drawn to people who have also lost their voice through their own personal circumstance, perhaps through trauma and health conditions that have changed their lives, and that can’t be magically fixed by medicine.

If you didn’t do this, what would you do?

Pre-pandemic, it might have been different to what it is now.  I don’t know.

For about 13 years, when I came off-contract, I had a part time job in a theatre, as an usher.  A lot of people both in my personal and professional circles looked down on me for doing that. 

It was a job initially for money, to pay the bills, but it became a grounding force in my life, one  that reminded me of the importance of why I was doing it, to feed my true vocation, and also to get me out of my pyjamas every day and stay motivated. 

I worked my way up in this ‘side hustle’ and became a cashier at the end of my time working there – I actually enjoyed the thrill of counting money and I was good at it! Looking back, maybe I stayed in that job too long – it was a sort of comfort blanket.

When I moved house, I gave up the job.  Is it a coincidence that more of the work I’m doing now, has come in as a result of that?  Sometimes you have to break away from that comfort zone to find more of what truly makes you tick?

A lot of your work speaks of connection – individual connection, even though the work is with groups.

Absolutely.  I think that came from a point of self-healing.  With my performing, I was going through difficult, personal times and I just didn’t have that armour.  Performing, I think, metaphorically and physically, took away my voice.

The work that I now mainly do – finding a deep connection, communication with people who are sick, through music – has helped to heal me.  Looking back, I’ve been able to really connect, really be present in the room, even often when my mind and heart were not there.  There’s just something magical about it.

What is the difference between performing on a stage, to a large audience and what you are doing now (perceiving that as another kind of performing)? If you consider that those who do live performance also speak of connecting and response…  Are you not doing the same thing?

I suppose it’s like the process of a rehearsal room.  I always loved that process of growing through creating a production and enjoying exploring how my character developed.  Yes, the end goal is exciting, but it’s more about the process for me.  It is like piecing a puzzle together – finding the connections with the individuals. 

Particularly with people who have lost their speaking voice, immediately with dementia. We all know that when people have lost speech, they can still sing.  Music still ignites something in their soul and when I tap into that through my singing leading, I find new pathways of communication, which I can then share with their carers and families to help them communicate again, too.

We all need to feel part of society.  Just a simple thing like saying ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’ and saying (or singing!) a person’s name, can change a person physically in that moment – their posture, their mood – they feel valued. It’s magical to see.

Particularly with mental health conditions, you can become locked in your own little world, often feeling unable to articulate how you really feel and no longer knowing if or how you fit into society.

Within a group, I get to know people’s personalities, just through movement, singing and music.  Then I hone in on interesting characters that I want to connect with.

Do you think that in helping others find/discover/rediscover their own individual voices, that you have found (or are on the way to finding) yours?

Definitely. Specifically in my breath work.  About three or four years before I discovered this work, I was working at Opera North and on realising my breathing technique was lagging behind the rest of my vocal technique, I sourced a new teacher to work with, I had a series of intense sessions and basically had to strip everything back to the bare bones. Quite scary. 

I think that constant curiosity about my breathing as I rebuilt my technique was an important and enlightening part of my journey.  I became curious about the relationships between breathing and health.

I’m still curious.  Despite the trauma in my life, I breathe well, now, as a singer.  I instruct breathing really well. However I know that outside of my singing, I don’t necessarily breathe well all of the time, as I have learned patterns, especially in fight or flight. 

Trauma and trauma recovery have created breathing patterns in me that are not necessarily healthy; I think that there’s a lot of this about.

Then covid arrives. It’s a curious thing, really, really curious. Originally thought to be a respiratory condition because of the way it can attack the lungs and leave people so breathless, we are now beginning to realise it is a multi-organ attacking virus, that craftily focuses in on the para/sympathetic nervous system that serves so many parts of the body.

I am working very slowly and very cautiously in singing and long covid, to see if it will help people who are terribly breathless, where there is no conclusive organ damage.  This is a very common theme I am seeing in long covid.

It’s that breath-mind-body connection, I think; how life events affect us and how the body tries to mend itself.  It all ties back to (subconsciously) why the performing became more difficult for me as I was facing my own life traumas head on. 

There was definitely a connection and a curiosity for me once I began explore singing for therapy, or singing for health. I want to explore more aspects: singing to help people with cancer, singing for pain, for trauma.

Lots of people use singing as a therapeutic tool.

Absolutely.  We’re hard-wired to sing.  We sing before we learn to speak.  We sing and we move and we breathe. We are social animals and singing is a social activity.  As fulfilling as performing was, when I was at the top of my game, something was missing.  I felt alone up there.  I felt very, very vulnerable, having been told for most of my life, that I was not good enough! I wanted to be in with the community, I think. 

Maybe when I was a chorister, I still had that nagging desire to try to be a soloist.  I achieved this and then felt I was no longer part of an important ‘ensemble’? Maybe I need to be in an ensemble and feel part of it again, both socially and musically.

This, I now realise, ties in exactly with me, having estranged myself from certain people in my personal life, wanting to find ‘my’ people; needing to feel validated again.

A year or two before the pandemic, I did re-explore performing – to see if I still had the confidence and the ability to do what I trained all my life to do, at such a high level.  I did a couple of extra chorus contracts and I really, really loved it.  I realised I could still do it and that I am good at it, and, most importantly, that I do still need to  perform professionally in order to inform my other work.

I don’t describe my groups as choirs because your average person is daunted by the word ‘choir’. I truly believe that everybody can sing, everybody has a voice.  That social connection you get from singing together as a group is so powerful. 

I see the immediacy of the healing effect of that, particularly in my lung groups and especially with men.  You see the change in them from walking in through door, connecting with other men who are struggling to breathe, struggling to do basic activities that they’ve always taken for granted, and then – connect on a social level through learning to breathe better through singing.  It’s just empowering!

What has the ‘magic’ of the pandemic – the enforced stillness – brought to you? You’re so connected with others – what has it brought to you?

About 14 months before the pandemic, I had a bit of burnout.  I became very ill.  We’d moved house.  I’d put all of my energies into a fresh start.  I’d mended myself physically and mentally from a place of abject trauma.  I hadn’t really estimated the emotional enormity of moving house. 

Just before the pandemic, I’d taken on board the need for self-care.  The warning signs were there that this was slipping though  – don’t take on any more work.  A job came in. “I don’t know if I can do it. I’ll try it – it’s only for 12 weeks.”  I was right at that pivotal point…

Initially, it was pure relief.  I could stay home a bit!  It was nice to be with my husband and for us not be ships that continually passed in the night. I also knew, subconsciously, the importance of keeping connected with my groups. 

I think that’s what really drives me - healing others heals me.  Part of the trauma in my life was the realization of not being able to heal others in my life that needed healing.  I think that’s spun out it into my work and I just find it really fulfilling.

Singing and performing as a child was my own therapy, my own escapism.  It’s what saved me.  To now be able to help people through something difficult, with something that saved me – it’s a blessing.  I went into it, not thinking that that’s what I needed, but I now know that it certainly fuels why I do it and probably why I am really good at it too.

By the time the pandemic started, my work was there.  It was easily transferable online.  I became the outsider, looking in on a lot of people going through the loss and trauma that I went through on my own, through life circumstances, years before.  Having empathy for people was actually very difficult because I remember how alone I had felt when it imploded on my career those years before. 

It was interesting observing lots of people and how they reacted in different ways. The old me would have wanted to invest all my time and energies into trying to help them all, but now I knew it wasn’t my battle to fight.

I threw myself into the online work.  And also crochet!  In order to stop myself going back into that black hole, before the pandemic, I started my “Granny Square a Day for a Year” project.  I’ve made three blankets out of the squares and I’m going to auction them for charity.

(Caveat – one has already sold, raising a fabulous amount for my ‘DAYR To Sing’ Lung Health Group. The second for the Singing for Parkinson’s group goes up this week!)  

During the pandemic, it was a perfect grounding activity.  If I did nothing else all day but make my granny square, well…!  #crochetstopsmeunravelling.  And it really does.

At the beginning of lockdown, I was posting my squares on social media daily, I set up an online crochet group and I was teaching others to crochet, creating a learning video a day!  I went in all guns blazing, but then I had to find my realistic pace. 

It’s really interesting watching how people reacted at the start of the pandemic.  Those that fell apart but have maybe grown over that time and found their pace.  I went all in.  Half way through, I had to step back.  I’m beginning to find my sustainable pace now.

I’ve also hit the big five-oh over lockdown.  That’s really given me perspective.  I’ve really tried to find the positives of the pandemic, taking one day at a time, and learning to enjoy a slower pace.  As we come out of it, is there going to be money to fund these groups that have sustained me both artistically and financially? Particularly in singing, as it’s still classed as unsafe to meet up. 

My groups are very vulnerable and I don’t feel happy enough about being inside, singing face to face, without masks, yet.  For some groups, it’s not practical – I can’t run a Parkinson’s group with masks on because I need to see their faces and watch their mouths move. Lung health groups are also so vulnerable to this virus.

Most of those groups work well on Zoom. What’s been interesting about the pandemic and singing is, working online, you take away that facility to hear each other.  You can’t sing very well together on zoom because of the latency, so we remain on mute most of the time, singing along only with me. For some people, it’s made them listen in a different way. 

It’s made them sing in a different way, getting used to hearing only their own voice, but using their other senses to feel like they’re singing together with the others they see on screen.

I’ve been really shocked and pleasantly surprised by some of my long term participants whose voices have really improved via this digital platform.  We went to the house of a founder member of the DAYR To Sing group who’s in end-of-life care – while he was still well enough – and we sang to him in his garden. 

Singing together, everybody was listening.  We were just connected.  We’d had a different, more intense form of connection whilst online. And now, singing together…

Who are you?

I’m a survivor.  This will sound weird – I’m a good person.  For a very long time I was told and I believed, that I wasn’t. I now know in my own heart, that I am!  I do deserve, and have a right to be happy.