Today the journalist and blogger Sara Maria Malacalza published on the account Instagram de i Libri Salvano, her review on the book of Mylena Vocal Coach “The way of the Voice”.

You can read it directly on Instagram (in Italian) or translated at the bottom of this page.

Here is the review of i_libri_salvano, translated in english:

We are seeds full of essence, bearers of a light capable of piercing that veil that prevents us from seeing.

Milena, who has never stopped looking for herself in her life and has refused imposed silences, helps us to find the guru who has always been within us waiting to be brought to light and able to show us the way to the conscious use of voice. Vocal Coach, lives and works in Boston even with blind children, autistic and mute, knows how to transform the student into a musical instrument perfectly tuned through the method INBORN VOICE allows us to find, recognize and educate our voice.

A reading that helps us to understand the true meaning of the word, the value of the energies and vibrations that compose us and bring back to the surface that “inborn voice” originally shaped by time, lies and the “external voice”.
A book that teaches us not to shut down the talent within us, not to silence our essence among the millions that surround us and to reconnect with the primordial sensitivity.
All of this through its evolution through gestation, birth, the growth of the individual and the interaction between the brain and the phonatory apparatus.
Milena also teaches us that “unsuitable resonances” (accents, cadences, faulty pronunciation) can be blunted by training the vocality.

A woman who has found her essence: to connect people to their voices, I am still looking for my … and you?

Milena will soon be in Europe with her workshops in London and Milan!

The human being has been granted the incredible super power of free will, that is, he/she can always choose between a number of possibilities to act. As always, great power carries great responsibilities. 

One of the daily decisions that people make all the time is whether to speak or remain silent. Clearly, when one decides to speak, then one must also decide what to say, when one decides to be silent, then one must also willingly accept all the implications.

This topic is so important that practically all the greatest thinkers have been attributed some aphorism about it. For example, Oscar Wilde was famous for his “Sometimes it’s better to be silent and look stupid than to open your mouth and remove any doubt“, Blaise Pascal for his “In love a silence is worth more than a speech“, but my favorite is Jean Paul Sartre’s “Every word has consequences. Every silence as well.“

In my thirty years of Vocal Coach experience I have helped people who were basically silent give voice to their emotions and people who were a little too chatty to listen to their emotions. In my book The Way of the Voice I frequently mention Silence: if you stop to listen to it properly, it’s anything but lacking in interest or musicality. So true is when Miles Davis used to say “The real music is silence. All the notes just frame it“.

So how do you understand when it’s best to be silent and when it’s necessary to talk, for unpleasant that these two situations can be?

Those who know me are well aware that there can be no “standard” answers, which are good for everyone, but I can reassure you: there is a simple marker that can help you to understand what choice should be made. Since in verbal communication, as in all other human relationships, there is rarely a second opportunity to speak, explain or express oneself. It is therefore essential to learn this subtle “art” a little at a time, also thanks to my support as a Vocal Coach. 

This miraculous marker that can help you in this Hamlet decision is yourself and your Inborn Voice. Saying that seems so simple, but in reality only we can know, instinctively and unconsciously, why we choose whether to speak or not. The motivations provided by our logic may be the most disparate, but I am referring to motivations that respond to a different state of consciousness, namely they come from emotions. Sometimes we speak only to clarify a thought to ourselves, others to fill the silence. Sometimes you are silent because you fear the consequences of the spoken words, others to savor the intensity of a moment.

As I said before, whatever the choice, there will be consequences. And even if our logical side doesn’t care about the consequences, they will happen anyway and will influence the emotional side. 

Most of the people I help have an impairment of their capacity to communicate their thoughts to others because they fear a negative emotion related to a specific type of consequence. Yet if we remain silent or fill the silence with circumstantial phrases or speeches for nothing, other consequences will fall into our lives. There is no way of knowing if the consequences of one choice will be worse than the other. 

For example, if you choose to speak, perhaps to convince a loved one of your idea, you risk to crack your relationship forever. If you choose to be silent to avoid breaking the relationship, you risk keeping something inside that will gradually consume you from within. No choice is simple, you have to learn to listen to yourself and your inner silence to be able to make the best one. In fact, not all evils come to harm, sometimes the most feared consequences are precisely those that can make a change in your existence.

So, ultimately, the best advice I can give you is to be selfish and to choose thinking with your own mind and listening to your own Inborn Voice.

To speak truthfully is just as simple as it is complicated. Of course, small children are sincere, at least until they are taught how to lie. In The Way of the Voice, I have deeply discussed what I mean by “lying,” so I invite you to deepen the subject by reading my book.

In this scenario it is a good idea to investigate the meaning of “being truthful”, in fact it is often taken for granted what it actually means. It doesn’t mean other than “entirely pure”, or “entirely without any mixing”. We are expressing the idea of something that is all composed of the same essence. For example, a vanilla ice cream is “truthful”, a variegated one with black cherry is not, because in addition to the vanilla ice cream it also contains black cherry syrup.

So to speak the truth, in some way, does not imply at all to “tell the truth”. That means you can lie, you do not have to speak “from the heart”, it does not require any authenticity or any compassion. These are all fantasies, limited and incomplete visions of a much more complex reality.

To speak the truth it is only required to have a clear idea of what to say and to have the ability to communicate it without anything else interfering with the message.

In my over thirty years of experience as a Vocal Coach, I increasingly meet people and students who rely exclusively on manuals and books, without even considering the existence or the necessity of practical experience. This is exactly what I teach to actors in my masterclasses in Los Angeles, New York and Milan: to “act” an emotion you have to be truthful. Feeling an emotion, provided you are able to feel it, is not enough. You have to be able to convey only that emotion. If you add something else to that emotion, such as worries, anxiety, blackouts or whatever, you can never be truthful.

This is why we need the help of a vocal coach. Although other disciplines may teach us to control our emotions, only a skilled vocal coach, not just any coach, can teach us to recognize which and how many emotions we convey when we communicate.

Without specific training on your own voice it is really difficult to be objective and recognize when you are “lying” to yourself. If you learn to control your voice, if you are able to be truthful, even if you are just a normal person, a politician, a trader, a broker or anything else, you will be a leader.

My job is to help people find their own inborn voice, which is the only truly “truthful” voice within each of us.

How important is it to be able to present yourself, a product or an argument in front of an audience? A key importance. The first impression is still the one that will affect all subsequent ones. If you are not able to present your arguments at university, during an exam or an admission speech, if you are unable to present your product correctly to a potential client or your results to your boss, if you are unable to showcase the best of yourself at the first job interview or at a romantic date, a second chance will be very unlikely to be achieved.

Each university course, each job position, and each social relationship requires some personal presentation skills. You can read as many books as you please, take as many courses as you wish, but these three tips which I am about to give you are only available in here and you will soon also discover why.

1) Improve your voice

Today there’ a lot of advertising about public speaking. You can find manuals and courses just about anywhere. Everyone underlines the crucial importance of being able to communicate in public. Have you ever taken a second to analyze the reality of the situation or did you get carried away by the advertising? They are talking about manuals, written in black and white, which claim to teach how to speak in public. They are talking about courses where they pretend to reveal all the major techniques necessary to speak in public. Too good to be true? Indeed, books and courses start by assuming that you already know how to use your voice in the right way, that you are able to express naturalness and credibility. They are castles built on the sand!

If someone is already able to communicate that way, he/she would have no difficulty in speaking or presenting. If they cannot, it is mainly because they are unable to use their voices correctly, they are failing to convey the message correctly. Of course, learning to move, to watch or to build speeches capable of striking the target is useful, but if you can not transmit it with the voice, as well as seeming boring or uninteresting, you will also seem awkward. Not to mention that all these courses and manuals create clones, in other words they do nothing but analyze, codify and repeat the techniques that were effective and natural in some of the greats of the past, such as Steve Jobs. Do you want to become a bad copy of someone else or do you want to give voice to your own personality?

2) Improve your voice

Sometimes you can even find a funny side in manuals or public speaking courses. You are given instructions such as “speak clearly“, ” scan the words“, “keep up the pace“.

In fact, these and other instructions are just part of knowing how to use your own voice. If you have no idea how to do it, these instructions don’t make any sense. Everyone is able to press a red button whenever a red light comes on. Action, reaction. But if you’re told to press the button only when a red light comes on after a blue light is present and only if you hear a buzzer sound too, it gets more complex. The longer you lengthen the sequence of operations to be kept in mind, however simple they may be when singles, we can no longer keep up the pace and we lose control. All of these courses only add elements to your presentation process, completely taking away any possibility of control. That’s why many people would rather die than talk in front of an audience. Yet if you learn to use your own voice, then everything becomes natural. It will become a result of your speaking. In fact, if you speak the right way, transmitting to others your message, your emotions, it is only natural to have a compelling rhythm, take pauses, look at the other people in the eyes. They are all elements of effective communication because you seek some feedback from those who listen. If you see faces that are unconvinced, dispersed or otherwise, you will repeat the concept in another way. All of this will gradually grow, quite naturally, once you start to improve the way you use your voice.

3) Improve your voice

To improve your voice does not mean to make it “more beautiful”, but it means to become its master. You can’t do this by following a karaoke style singing course or learning from those who can’t speak English without bad habits, without strong accents, or to those who have some difficulties in expressing themselves. Those who teach must absolutely be masters of their own voice.

What are the benefits of becoming masters of your own voice? Here I could also write a book, but I will point out the most common ones, those that you can also experience personally or by watching the video testimonials on this website. 

• You will gain more confidence in yourself and gain confidence in the message you want to express. This may not sound like much, but it’s all you need to transform your life from one who will undergo the voice of others to someone who can express his/her ideas.
• You will be more able to communicate in any area of your life: at the university, with friends, at a job interview, at work, in a relationship and even with your children.
• Your stress level will drop, because you will no longer have doubts and uncertainties about the results you will achieve. Only those who use their voice to persuade others of some untrueness maintain a high level of stress, those who communicate their truth, will relax.
• Your entire time management will improve accordingly. You will stop wasting time uselessly by delaying or awaiting to take action. With a confident voice, there is no longer any reason to doubt yourself and your abilities, and you gradually learn to maximize your free time to enjoy your life as a couple, family and leisure.

Learning to use our own voice means to affirm our personality in every situation and make us an active part in our lives, without excuses or unnecessary complaints. Obviously, also in the case of vocal training, we must be careful, not always everything that glitters is gold and only those who begin along the correct path will find themselves able to reach the end.

The Vocal Coach work is always exciting and very often, when a student has succeeded in freeing his/her voice, he/she grow a desire to “help others”.

Here we have a sort of Hamlet dilemma because who doesn’t want to help the other ones? All the good hearted people feel the urge to help others, the only issue is that they don’t know how to do it. Before analyzing how, perhaps it is better to make a digression and try to understand where and why this fresh altruistic drive is born.

When someone chooses to work a bit deeper on his/her voice via the Inborn Voice method and my help, within a few weeks he/she realizes that life, as he/she knew it before, no longer exists. Little by little, one step at a time, he/she finally manages to succeed in accomplishing what seemed impossible: he/she manages to communicate to other people. The conscious use of the voice enables the surfacing of his/her feelings, fears and strengths.

This may not sound like much, but in truth it’s all you need to radically change your life, to start awakening. Often people are not aware of their expressive difficulties, they are convinced that are other people who “do not understands. During their lifetime they have learnt, one experience after another, that it is extremely difficult to establish a collaboration or a lasting relationship between people. Over time, they also learnt to stop searching further. At one point they even stop engaging with other people: some choose to “whine” about everything, others prefer to suffer in silence.

As I have explained in my book, The Way of the Voice, many of the people dissatisfied with their state of affairs become entangled in what I call dream-like disciplines and become part of homogeneous “groups” of people who are persuaded that it is possible to find a “cure”, a solution outside of oneself, by doing or sharing something within a small group. A group is certainly what they are looking for, but instead of building one suitable for their own life realization, they enter a pre-packaged one. Other people, perhaps luckier, realize that the solution must be sought inside us, in our depth, and try to learn a discipline that may help them with their introspection. 

Although not everyone knows it, my job as Vocal Coach is a bit like that. The human voice, the real one, our Inborn Voice, is coming from the innermost depths of our soul. When I manage to make their voice bloom again, people discover what they were looking for had always been under their noses, namely “the mouth”, the voice. And their life changes. It changes because where before they were rejected, now they find an affirmation. Where before a quarrel originated, now serenity is built. Where doors were closed, now they can see an already open door in plain sight. Depending on the determination and the person, the results can be more or less striking, as you can watch from the video testimonials that I have on my site.

I am extremely happy when someone, as a result of my work, stops believing that there are no longer hopes of improving their working, sentimental or social lives. And I’m even happier when they decide to share their “finding” among people, actually helping other individuals.

This is where confusion sometimes arises. For whatever reason, someone who has discovered the benefits of my work, a new and effective voice, chooses not to share my work with others. He/She hides me as a precious thing, he/she doesn’t want people to know what made their lives blossom. Yet still they seek from me advices on how they can help others by themselves. The answer I always give them is simple. What were the consequences of choosing to hide their voice, their feelings and their expectations? Just suffering and unsatisfactory life. By suppressing the joy of shouting to the world “it is possible to improve one’s working life”, “it is possible to have satisfactory romantic relationships” or “it is possible to improve one’s social life”, nothing good will be achieved. The easiest way to share with other people your achievements is what I have already taught them, thanks to my work as a vocal coach. Just tell the others “Listen, I was like you before, then I discovered my voice thanks to Mylena Vocal Coach and my life is now the one you are looking at”. It will then be the others to decide if and how to contact me to start a journey together. The idea of wanting to help them personally is something worthwhile, but very few people ask me how to become a vocal coach for the Inborn Voice method.

This happens not only as a result of my work, but in all disciplines that somehow move the balance of things and cause a person to feel the desire to shout to the world that, after so much suffering, they have finally found a solution. The mistake is not desiring to help others actively, in the first person, but to think that all others have the same problem or that our solution is universal. Each of my clients sees only a small number of facets of my work as a Vocal Coach, the ones that were most useful to them. They can’t understand that in reality my work is more complex than assigning some exercises. Every exercise was been built around their issues. 100 different clients will have 100 different exercises. When they find this out, very few people are willing to ” learn ” such a broad topic over so many years. 

So the best way to help a person is to share with them the idea that it is possible to change, that you have succeeded with the work of a specific expert. If you have a dishwasher that doesn’t work, you call a technician. If you meet someone who complains about the malfunction of their dishwasher, what do you do? Are you going to take it apart or do you recommend who solved our problem?