Publisher Description

Your voice matters. Based on your tone and expression alone listeners make up their minds about you before they even process the meaning of your words. And if what you say is at odds with how you say it, they can miss your message altogether.Barbara McAfee offers a fun, tested method to harness the power of your voice to become a more effective and flexible communicator. She identifies five distinct vocal sounds-earth, fire, water, metal, and air-explaining how to cultivate each one. You'll learn how to use your voice to support the meaning and message you want to convey. Using this book along with her free online practice videos you'll experience an authentic shift in how you express yourself - and how you listen to others as well. You'll discover how opening your full voice connects you to sources of untapped potential, power, and aliveness.

Author Biography

Barbara McAfee is a singer/songwriter, vocal coach, speaker, and consultant with over twelve years of experience in organizational change. She has studied with members of the Roy Hart Centre and recorded six CDs.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Peter Block
Welcome

Part I: Understanding Voice
Chapter 1: Voice, Instinct, and the Oral Tradition: A Context for Voice
Chapter 2: Voice and Identity: Who You Gonna Be While You Do What You Do?
Chapter 3: Brain Rats: Addressing Fear
Chapter 4: Voice 101: How Voices Work, What Goes Wrong, and Ways to Keep Them Healthy

Part II: The Five Elements Framework
Chapter 5: The Five Elements Framework Overview
Chapter 6: Earth Voice--Gut Instinct, Authority, and Grounding
Chapter 7: Fire Voice--Passion, Personal Power, and Vitality
Chapter 8: Water Voice--Caring, Compassion, and Affirmation
Chapter 9: Metal Voice--Clarity and Focus
Chapter 10: Air Voice--Inspiration, Possibility, and Spiritual Connection

Part III: Integration
Chapter 11: Five Elements Framework Summary & Practice Guide
Chapter 12: The Case for Singing and Poetry
Chapter 13: Voices Lost and Found
Chapter 14: Our Journey In Review
Epilogue
Five Elements Reference Guide
Notes
Resources
Suggested Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

Review

"A book on voice that is more a book on the art of living through the voice. All true works of prose point back to the essential truths--to be true to ourselves, to express who we are in the world completely, and to communicate fully with others."
--Joseph Bailey, psychologist and coauthor of Slowing Down to the Speed of Life

"Barbara's words are wise and wonderful; the tools are practical and playful. If, indeed, 'voice is the muscle of the soul,' Barbara offers a most pleasurable Olympic training opportunity. What a gift!"
—Jayne A. Felgen, MPA, RN, President, Creative Health Care Management, and author of I2E2: Leading Lasting Change

"This book is a gift and a call to reclaim the deep roots of our own life. It is an invitation to rediscover, embrace, and release the power of our unique voice into the world so our work can be vibrantly alive. It provides language, tools, practices, and stories that illuminate the journey. As an educator, I believe the inspiring ideas and messages in this book must be shared with all children so they understand not only the 'song that is uniquely theirs to sing' but the deep ties between their voice and their calling and how they can bring them to life."
—Stephanie Pace Marshall, PhD, Founding President and President Emerita, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and author of The Power to Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life

"I found Full Voice such a delight to read! I never anticipated that learning about vocal presence could speak to me on so many levels. The metaphors and examples helped me visualize and connect to the message. And Barbara's intimate writing voice makes it seem as though she is sitting right beside me, talking with me."
—Lori Addicks, President, Larkspur Group

"Barbara McAfee leads us on a transformational journey in finding our true and authentic voice! This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to make a difference through the use of his or her voice."
—James L. Roussin, strategic change consultant, leadership coach, and coauthor of Guiding Professional Learning Communities: Inspiration, Challenge, Surprise, and Meaning

"Every life is a journey into song. To find it, however, has often been a mystery that has involved a long, uncertain journey through a dark forest with no clear path to follow. Until now. Full Voice is a magnificent guide that illuminates this path and makes this eternal dream possible. It helps us appreciate that the vulnerability of our voice is also the source of our greatest power, courage, and strength. Every voice is needed now. The world cannot evolve without it. Each of us has a 'song' to sing. Without it, the world will be incomplete."
—Michael Jones, pianist, composer, leadership educator, and author of Artful Leadership: Awakening the Commons of the Imagination


"I've worked side by side with Barbara for many years and witnessed the brilliance of her talents—her strong, soaring voice that she so skillfully uses to encourage others to find their voices. I'm so grateful she's written this book so that many more people may discover the gift of giving voice."
—Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Perseverance and coauthor of Walk Out Walk On

"The Tibetans speak of body, mind, and voice, rather than body, mind, and spirit. This book offers wise guidance for opening our voices—and spirits—to their full expression."
—Eric Utne, founder, Utne Reader

"A practical and inspirational guide to how we can more fully bring our voice into the world. Barbara McAfee offers tangible ways in which we can strengthen and express our authentic voice."
--Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., cultural anthropologist and author of The Second Half of Life

Review Quote

Praise for Full Voice: "I've worked side by side with Barbara for many years and witnessed the brilliance of her talents-her strong, soaring voice that she so skillfully uses to encourage others to find their voices. I'm so grateful she's written this book so that many more people may discover the gift of giving voice." -Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Perseverance and coauthor of Walk Out Walk On "The Tibetans speak of body, mind, and voice, rather than body, mind, and spirit. This book offers wise guidance for opening our voices-and spirits-to their full expression." -Eric Utne, founder, Utne Reader "A practical and inspirational guide to how we can more fully bring our voice into the world. Barbara McAfee offers tangible ways in which we can strengthen and express our authentic voice." --Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., cultural anthropologist and author of The Second Half of Life

Excerpt from Book

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator chapter one Voice, Instinct, and the Oral Tradition a context for voice Our voices carry a rich legacy. How we speak and listen today has emerged from the long unfolding story of human history. In her book The Four-Fold Way, cultural anthropologist and author Angeles Arrien suggests that indigenous wisdom and practices have an essential role to play in restoring our balance with each other and the earth. She discovered that voice--as expressed in song, sound, breath, story, and even silence--is a vital element in indigenous societies around the world. In many of these cultures, the voice is directly linked to the soul or spirit of a person.1 The oral tradition is an enormous area of study, as is language development in individuals and societies. I must, however, make brief mention of these subjects as a way to root this exploration of voice in a deeper appreciation for our individual and collective vocal heritage. Let''s begin with your own vocal genesis. You were paying attention to voices long before you were born. Your ability to hear was fully formed by the time you were a three-month-old fetus. You floated in a rich world of sound as well as in amniotic fluid. Your mother''s voice and heartbeat were most familiar, but you also discerned the voices of family members and other muffled sounds from the outside world. At the moment of your birth, your first act as a distinct individual was a vocal one: you cried. That sound marked the doorway between your prenatal and postnatal worlds and announced your arrival on earth in no uncertain terms. The sound of your brand-new voice making itself audible in the world for the first time was the initial step on a vocal adventure that continues today. Next you used your voice to communicate your hunger, discomfort, and frustration with distinct cries. If the adults around you were paying attention, they learned to interpret them accurately and respond to what you needed. Within the first days of your life, you also got busy decoding and echoing the complex world of sound around you. You began interpreting vocal sounds, facial expressions, and gestures long before you understood the exact words being spoken. Within a matter of a few months, your ears, eyes, brain, mouth, lungs, tongue, teeth, and lips performed a monumental task--transforming observations, random noises, coos, babbles, and squeals into your first words. Your voice was literally formed by "reading" the voices around you. Your ability to pay keen attention to vocal nuances and inflections is innately and fundamentally human.2 Your ancestors passed these skills along to you. You are a direct descendant of good communicators. Being able to read voices accurately was a fundamental part of our human evolution. Those who got it wrong didn''t survive long enough to pass along their DNA. Spoken language is a relatively new invention--approximately 100,000 years old. No one can be sure how language actually emerged, but it most certainly was preceded by some system of expressive vocalization. Through eons of time our voices, ears, and brains coevolved increasingly complex linguistic systems for conveying information, establishing dominance, forging affection, organizing projects, and solving problems. Our deep heritage as oral communicators is still active in how we relate to each other today, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Most of us in the modern world live in cultures so immersed in the written word that it''s hard for us to imagine how vitally important the voice is in an oral tradition culture. Long before the written word emerged, the collective memory of a people was kept alive through time primarily through the power of voice. Each subsequent generation was responsible for carrying on the legends, mythology, history, genealogy, and social mores that defined a particular culture. This vast and detailed body of information had to be assimilated through a lengthy process of deep listening, vocal repetition, and correction that took many painstaking years to perfect. In the oral tradition, words and sounds carry powerful magic that can bring the rains, appease the gods, invoke healing, access mysterious realms, call the animals in for a hunt, and communicate with the ancestors. When I heard West African wisdom teacher Malidoma Som

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