My road from voiceless opera singer to breathing expert

When I was young, my greatest and only wish was to become a professional opera singer. I sang before I could talk, or so I’ve been told. So, after college, I went on to Oslo Conservatory of Music and studied voice pedagogy to become a voice teacher. That wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to learn more and dreamed of the big stage, and especially about Italy, the home of opera.

The choice was easy: I moved to Rome. After a few detours, I ended up being taught by the legendary opera singer Magda Laszlo, then in her eighties. She became my first important mentor abroad, and she taught me a lot. Not just about singing, but also about humility, authenticity and life itself. Just imagine: she’d had roles composed specially for her by Stravinsky himself, and been asked to step in for Maria Callas, and still – she was one of the humblest people I’ve ever met!

In Rome, I also met someone I thought was my one true love: Guy, a British pianist and conductor. We parted ways when I was accepted into the graduate programme in Voice Performance at Manhattan School of Music in New York. At the time, this was the world’s greatest school for opera – not to mention that I would be studying under the greatest teacher there. I simply had to move.

Far away from my beloved Rome, and far away from my true love. He moved back to England; I moved across the Atlantic Ocean. It’s strange to think back on this period. From the outside, it looked like I was living the dream, and in a way I was. I became friends with Placido Domingo and his family. I got free tickets to performances at the Metropolitan Opera. I rode in limousines AND lived in a small room I shared with a South Korean opera student in Harlem. A life full of contrast that I absolutely loved, but still: I was sick with longing for Guy!

Sheer coincidence led to my teacher moving to Milan, and I followed suit and started commuting between Milan and London.
Life was pure bliss: Guy and I put on our first opera together, in which he was the conductor and I sang the lead. I didn’t think it was possible to be any happier!

That’s when it all came crashing down. I woke up one morning and found him looking me deep in the eyes and saying, “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I was thinking about us.” The euphoria I felt can hardly be described. There was no doubt in my mind: he was proposing! He opened his mouth again and said, “You have to leave immediately!”

This was my first serious shock. The next two years I remember as nothing but great pain. I was deeply depressed, cried every day, slammed my head against the wall in pain, and had no joy for life. In the middle of this depression, I put on a Grieg concert in a church in the middle of London. I cried and sang, cried and sang. It had to end badly.

The concert went incredibly well, but the next day, I woke up voiceless. Not just without my singing voice, but without any voice at all. I couldn’t say a word, and I became – if possible – even more depressed.

Because of this deep grief, and because I lost my voice, I learned my first breathing technique, created by a former opera singer and an ear, nose and throat specialist. With the help of this technique, not only did I get my voice back, but it also contributed to making me more relaxed and more in touch with myself. Before, I had always felt a bit uneasy inside, but now – for the very first time – I could feel a sense of internal peace and calm. Gradually, my grief also became easier to live with.

Later, I studied various breathing techniques both in London and Milan, and really opened my eyes to how important breathing is to both our physical and mental health. Since then, I’ve read and learned everything I can about breathing.

After several years of being a freelance opera singer, I started working in a psychiatric ward. I did this for eight years, and I observed how people with various mental challenges were breathing. I found it fascinating how holding back difficult emotions made some people turn to harming themselves – for example, by cutting themselves. By releasing the breath and using the voice actively through screaming, speaking loudly and singing, I saw that some stopped harming themselves for long periods of time. Today, what I see as perhaps the most interesting thing I learned is how the breath is constrained by trauma and bad childhood experiences if we don’t find a way to express our true emotions. This can manifest as physical pain or mental illness far into adulthood. Every week, I meet people who tell me how they were told to lie still as children, not raise their voice, not get angry or cry, and who are finally learning how to liberate and express these emotions, now that they’ve learned to release their breath. Many also live in the belief that they have an “ugly voice”, and are hesitant to sing, or even speak, around others. That’s why I started the breathing choir more than ten years ago – to prove that everyone can sing if they release their breath and, through doing so, liberate their authentic and true self. I love the breathing choirs and what they have done for everyone in them!

Today, I’m incredibly grateful for my first huge shock, and the grief and pain it brought with it. I’m grateful for the tears I cried those two years in London, and for my voice that disappeared. Because, no matter how painful it was back then, the grief was released and didn’t get stuck as pains or bitterness after the fact. Now, I can help thousands of other people meet their challenges by using their breathing as a tool.