In this episode, I talk with soprano Jeni Houser about her morning routine of bodywork, meditation, and practicing, why vinyasa yoga was not the best choice for her, and why she's thinking about openness these days. Also FOOD.
You can follow Jeni's career over at jenihouser.com or see what she's up to @songsofjeni ! The blog posts we discuss are at https://www.singingbodyclinic.com/blog
Follow us @thisembodiedvoice to hear about new episodes and tell us who you want to hear next on the podcast.
Music, both courtesy of Madison Opera:
"Among Trees" from KEEP MOVING, a song cycle written by Scott Gendel with text by Poet Maggie Smith, performed by Jeni Houser, soprano, and Scott Gendel, piano.
"Getting to Know You" from THE KING AND I by Rodgers & Hammerstein, performed by Jeni Houser, soprano and piano, and David Blalock, tenor.
In this episode, I talk with soprano Jeni Houser about her morning routine of bodywork, meditation, and practicing, why vinyasa yoga was not the best choice for her, and why she's thinking about openness these days. Also FOOD.
You can follow Jeni's career over at jenihouser.com or see what she's up to @songsofjeni ! The blog posts we discuss are at https://www.singingbodyclinic.com/blog
Follow us @thisembodiedvoice to hear about new episodes and tell us who you want to hear next on the podcast.
Music, both courtesy of Madison Opera:
"Among Trees" from KEEP MOVING, a song cycle written by Scott Gendel with text by Poet Maggie Smith, performed by Jeni Houser, soprano, and Scott Gendel, piano.
"Getting to Know You" from THE KING AND I by Rodgers & Hammerstein, performed by Jeni Houser, soprano and piano, and David Blalock, tenor.
Suzanne Lis 1:34
Welcome to This Embodied Voice, the podcast where we talk about the voice, the body, and everything in between. My name is Suzanne Lis and this episode is an interview with soprano Jeni Houser. That's her singing the song "Among Trees" from the song cycle Keep Moving, written by Scott Gendel, with text by poet Maggie Smith. And Scott is also the pianist you heard in that clip. The text you heard is oddly fitting for our conversation. We went into a lot of detail about her body work and her mobility practice and how she relates that to not only her singing, but also her personal life and her mindset around performing at this time.
Welcome to the podcast.
Jeni Houser 2:12
Thank you.
Suzanne Lis 2:13
How are you feeling today? And how is your body feeling today?
Jeni Houser 2:16
Oooooh, okay, I love that question. I feel like this is where my headspace is a lot is like checkins like this that are just sort of simple and fundamental. That's been really essential to me during this pandemic period. So I feel good today. Um, it is early afternoon for me and I did my yoga session for the day and I did some meditating. And then I came straight off the mat, and did a warm up with my voice and a little bit of practicing. And I am feeling fairly well hydrated. And fairly good in my body. And emotionally, I would say today is a pretty a pretty ok, day. They vary, you know, quite a lot. The ups and downs are extreme these days. So I think today I feel pretty centered and pretty good. I didn't sleep particularly well. And I, I do notice that at different points throughout a day, you know, but what I've learned is that when I kind of have my other routines in place, and my other health checks are going well, it actually doesn't affect me as much as it used to, you know, day by day, how much sleep I've actually gotten or how restful it felt. So yeah, I feel pretty good today. Yeah.
Suzanne Lis 3:40
It sounds like the health checks that you do, they're not only to get you back to center, but also to - I'm sort of reminded of like those pilots who they check, they go through like this long checklist and you just see, they check everything possible. And then you know exactly when something's off that it's only been gone wrong in the last six hours, two hours, whatever. It's both like a maintenance and a check in I would say.
Jeni Houser 4:05
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's how I keep my sort of base level. And my balance is by knowing day by day, kind of how things are going and then you can make small adjustments without having to overhaul everything because suddenly you realize something's out of whack and I feel terrible, you know. So I think what you're saying makes really good sense that by doing sort of regular mental and physical check ins more frequently. I definitely keep tabs on the balance issues. Yeah.
Suzanne Lis 4:36
And I can't help but notice that you're at, I think at a standing desk..?
Jeni Houser 4:41
Yes, you are at my teaching workstation. So I have my electric keyboard right in front of me. I have my desktop monitor, which is how we're seeing each other for this. And when I am teaching I stand here or if I'm you know having coaching or lessons myself this is my spot for that, which has been absolutely created from scratch during this pandemic, this, this spot did not exist. But yes, I have absolutely discovered that for me, when I'm doing any kind of zoom call, or any kind of singing work or teaching, I like to be standing. And part of that for me is that I feel good when I'm when I have the option to move at any time. And I definitely am someone who can get kind of stuck, if I'm sitting and get into, you know, alignment, things that don't feel great and not. Again, going back to the check in idea, I feel like this standing sort of position just gives me more opportunities to check in throughout an hour, you know, if that's the time period, I'm doing something. And if I'm on casual zoom calls or something with friends, I also like I'll sit on a yoga block to break it up. I do you know, I'll move positions and stuff. But for me, it really the moving is the key, I'll do like a couple of lunges. While I'm on a call just standing here, I'll do a couple of squats, I do some toe raises, I'll stay in an unbalanced position for a while. And that I you know, I've heard of, of the pandemic body issues that a lot of people are having. And I've had some of those sorts of things too. But I think that the standing has really helped me not get into the you know, the really tricky neck and spine alignment issues that I've had in the past. So yep.
Suzanne Lis 6:34
When you're teaching, when you're teaching a lesson, what does that look like for you? How do you try and get the students started? Do you guys do like talk a lot at the beginning?
Jeni Houser 6:43
Um, I do think that some of that same checking that we've talked about the same sort of maintenance and checking is a part of the start of a voice lesson in my world as well. So I think I can't really curate a lesson experience that's going to be helpful to the student unless I know where they are that day. I mean this that, you know, sort of the same question that you asked me? Of course, how are you feeling? What's going on? How has your week been? Or, you know, however long it's been since I saw them?
And then I would say we go from those sorts of check ins, General check ins into what have you been thinking about or working on? Is there anything specific you want to address today in this lesson time? And then from there, if they don't have anything specific that we need to, you know, jump in on right away, then then we go into some always some body breathing stuff first, sometimes very brief, but always a little something. And then into some exercises, see what's going on? And yeah, I think it really varies, you know, from there, depending on the student, what they're working on.
Suzanne Lis 7:53
And you're still taking lessons of your own. Is that right? Like, you are a student?
Jeni Houser 7:59
Yeah, yeah.
Suzanne Lis 7:59
Of someone else?
Jeni Houser 8:00
I am for sure a lifelong student. I think that is one of my, like, defining personality traits. So yeah, absolutely.
Suzanne Lis 8:08
I've always wondered about this, like, really, exceptionally, I guess advanced and like established singers like you. Like, what are you working in your technique? You talk about, like openness, but I guess what has been like always, I don't know, like tricky for you and your voice or something that you know, you're always gonna have to like work a little more like mindfully around?
Jeni Houser 8:31
Yeah, well, I would say, in general, we already discussed the idea that we are people who like to work hard and try really hard and give everything the good effort. And for me, that can really manifest as tension, excess, unnecessary, troublesome tension in various parts of my body. And I sort of feel like I'm on a lifelong quest to find the spots of tension that I was never aware of before. And, again, open them up or release them. And of course, in order to release tension, I think you have to replace it with with energy or something somewhere else, whether it's space or energy or something. Yeah, and so it's actually that same give and take that you just mentioned, you are always looking for the things that you want to do a little more of in an easy, gentle sort of way and the things that you want to let go of in an easy, gentle sort of way. And easy and gentle are not my personality keywords. So that that is my that is my eternal struggle. So that and what that means currently is I just discovered some more jaw tension that you know, you think -
Suzanne Lis 9:58
The gift that keeps on giving!
Jeni Houser 10:00
Oh I worked this out years ago, right? I found these things, I tried this and of course, your voice changes, your body changes, your repertoire changes, whatever it is, and something wants to help, once something wants to get involved. Again, it's like, oh, I still have something to bring to the table. So I've been re convincing my jaw that it really doesn't have much to bring to the table, and I don't really want it at the table.
So yeah, those are I mean, that's some of the, you know, the body stuff, I've had a really new experience with breathing in the last year, I've been working with a coach and with Jay, my trainer on various ways of thinking about breathing and how it ties to laryngeal position, and jaw and tongue. And I think, you know, when you start off learning to sing or learning to do anything physical, you can maybe only be aware of certain things, like a couple of things at a time, and you have to build the awareness of, here's how my feet are going to move, if I'm a runner or something, right, like, I'm very aware of how my feet are hitting the ground, and then gradually, oh, I'm aware of my core or whatever, whatever the order is. And with singing, I think, you know, as a beginning singer, it took all my mental energy, just to think about whatever it was, breathing right in, in the capacity that I was able to do it at that point. And so to your point of what does someone who's been singing for quite a while continue to work on, I find that it's more about connections. Now, it's more about finding the, the way that the nervous system actually connects my breathing with my laryngeal position, and my jaw position or my job, feeling, you know, and those connections become sort of the basis for technical work. So that that is a really that's, that's a fun thing for me to find new connections.
Suzanne Lis 12:05
And then what is your, your yoga practice? Like look like these days? What kind of - if you had to like put a label on it, what kind of yoga would you say that you do?
Jeni Houser 12:15
I don't know. Honestly, my yoga practice is very personalized.
Suzanne Lis 12:20
That's awesome.
Jeni Houser 12:21
I have done vinyasa. regularly in the past, there was a period of a couple years where I did vinyasa flow yoga, quite regularly. And actually, I don't think that was the best for my body. Um, my work with Jay has involved some pretty intensive one on one sessions, discovering a lot of things about my body and my awareness of my body and how to cultivate and develop that. So I think they're my, um, my sort of workout practice in general looks sort of like yoga a fair bit of the time. And sometimes it really doesn't. Today, I did do an actual yoga class led by Adriene Mishler, Yoga with Adriene. And I've been doing her 30 day like, she does a thing every January with sort of a you know, it's got it's got a beginning middle end, every day flows into the next, it's got this whole thing and I don't do it day by day. Again, I throw in my own individual stuff on off days, I take breaks when I need to, to work on other things, you know, but I am doing that. So today was - today was actually a fair bit of vinyasa. But I would say that when I'm doing what looks really more like traditional yoga, it tends to be more hatha.
And I also do some yin yoga, which I got from Jay and has been really really hugely helpful for me in finding more ease in my body and more mobility and flexibility. So that is definitely part of my regular everyday maintenance routine.
Suzanne Lis 14:10
Yeah, it's so funny that you say that because I feel kind of similarly,where I started with yoga in like a very, you know, vinyasa, dynamic, sweaty, hot - not even heated - just I would get hot - yoga style. And then I also have been kind of in the past year and I don't know if it's like, just this would have happened anyway. Or if it's like a pandemic thing, but I have been leaning more towards more like yin yoga and you know, walking a lot and like doing lots of like, very specific small mobility work. And yeah, I think it's interesting also, because I think the vinyasa was like very, like fit my personality in terms of like, you get things done, you do it and let's move and move and do something. And it's been really hard to, but also really beneficial just to kind of slow down. And I don't know if it's getting older, or if it's just that I'm, I don't know, I'm feeling this like natural slowdown that everyone has been experiencing.
Jeni Houser 15:15
Yeah, that really resonates with me what you said also about the personality tie ins. And I definitely also am someone who has always been focused on kind of working hard, you know, trying really hard, going hard -
Suzanne Lis 15:29
Fixing the problem.
Jeni Houser 15:30
Yeah, yes, in all aspects of my life and it's been, I think, as you said, beneficial in all aspects of my life to slow things down a little bit.
Suzanne Lis 15:42
I really like how, I guess for anyone listening, if anyone wants to delve into Jeni's wonderful brain, you have this really awesome series of blog posts that you wrote, where you take like a concept from, let's say, bodywork, and then you would tie it into real life. So among them, you have one called Take It Slow. Another one called Balancing Act, Isolation, there's a great one about food. And there's one called One Step at a Time.
But it was wondering if you have one of these concepts like bumping around in your brain at the moment?
Wow, I love that question. I do, I think I always have at least one thing like that sort of bumping around in my brain that I'm writing about, if not for public consumption, then for myself, yeah, I would say one that comes to mind that I've been thinking about recently is the idea of openness, for opening. So in body work, that can mean all sorts of different things, it can mean what we were just talking about being open to sitting in discomfort, being open to a sensation that is new, or seems a bit scary, it can mean being open to trying something new, it can also, you know, literally physically mean opening up parts of your body or, you know, sort of in a mobility sense, opening joints and exploring that the edges of what you have access to in your body at that point. I think in my singing, I'm thinking about that, what it means to have an open throat, what it means to have openness in my breathing.
Jeni Houser 17:43
And it has been a huge concept in my personal life, during the pandemic, everything. Everything feels looking into the future, everything feels a little bit like a black hole of uncertainty right now. And it has, it has for a really long time. What an interesting sort of life experience of yin yoga, having no choice but to kind of sit in the discomfort of that uncertainty. So for me, that has meant or where I have found sort of good feelings in that place of discomfort have been when I am open to opportunities, when I see possibilities instead of endings, or, you know, if you think about the reality of canceled gigs, and you think "that was something I was looking forward to, that was something I was working toward," it's canceled, and there's nothing replacing it. And it's just this emptiness, or this sadness, or this anxiety, all those negative things can go along with it. But I've also found sometimes a sense of relief. "Oh, well, now I know that that gig isn't happening. I had been wondering for a long time if that one would be possible. Okay, now I have to let that go. That's a release into the universe. All right universe, what else do you have for me, you know what, what else is going to fill that time or fill that space in my work in my energy?" And I have found things that I didn't expect to fill those spaces. And I, I always think that I am I tend to be someone who looks for opportunities and looks for possibilities in general.
Of course, I have dark moments where I don't but that is my tendency. And I have seen a bunch of really new things and really different things during this time period. And I don't know where any of that is going to lead into, you know, in this, the black hole that's coming up in another year or whatever. But that kind of doesn't matter. So the idea of being open to inspiration, open to conversations that might change a trajectory and mental trajectory for me. All of that has been percolating in my brain, especially in these last few months. Yeah, for sure.
And it sounds like it has a lot to do with - I keep going back to the checkins. But has a lot to do with like recognizing patterns, or just like just recognizing if there is closure at all, or even like a little bit of tension or holding or whatever, because I think like, then once you see it, they can kind of decide we want to do with it. Like, Oh, well, could we open here? Do I feel safe opening here? Like both in the body and I think in like, our ways of thinking.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes that takes time and it could be journaling could be meditative pondering, you know, it can take a while to determine whether there's room for opening there. But I think the idea of being okay with that or looking for it is the key for me, even if some days I don't find it some days, I might still feel constricted and tight. And I think tomorrow will probably be different.
Suzanne Lis 21:37
You said in one of your blog posts, I think, yeah, I'm just gonna read what you wrote is in my body work with che, we have focused a lot on mobility, particularly if my pelvis, which has historically been the center of a network of muscles that I thought had to be gripped tightly to hold myself upright in the world, just so I really like your writing, by the way.
But I think this is really true for a lot of people like the, this whole area of like hips, lower back pelvis, which is both like incredible and beautiful, but also such a tangle that it's so hard to sometimes kind of figure out like what's going on there.
Jeni Houser 22:21
Yeah, what I will say is, I, when I started working with Jay, I had no idea that the psoas existed. I mean, I think it was a word I had heard before. But I had no concept and the iliacus, the whole region, front of hips, and then connecting back to the spine, how that all connects to the diaphragm, I mean, I just had no like, mental image, no body map of that area of my body. And I think that I was kind of gripping, as I said in that post gripping, specifically psoas almost all the time, and I actually didn't really know how to release my, my low, low abdomen and my pelvic floor, I mean, I just had never quite felt the sensation of those things truly releasing. And so when I would do when I would do like core work or something, that stuff would just get so tight. And that would go into my lower back. And I thought that I had - I thought that I had back issues.
Oh, and I didn't mention, I've been talking about the front side. But I also very tight piriformis, very tight glutes, you know, just like this whole area. And really as I said, like, I think that I thought that's how you hold yourself up. Not consciously, but I think that's what I was doing. So yeah, I you know, I had lower back problems at various points. And at some point, you know, I had made the connection to glutes, and again, didn't know what the piriformis was. But I was aware that there was something there that was tying into my back pain, but still had no sense of the psoas. And then it was, let's see, I don't know three years ago, now that I had one of these issues where things started getting really tight, and I was running, I've always been a runner. I was running and I was doing some core work and some stability, lower body work with Jay that started just getting, like my back just kept getting tighter and tighter. And again, I didn't really know what to connect it to. And then, like the day after these things really started to get pretty bad. I had to drive - how many hours- 18 hours or something over two days to Colorado for a gig. And so sitting in the car was like the worst thing of all time.
And I got to Colorado. And I immediately started seeking out a chiropractor who would do Active Release Technique, ART, which is for folks who don't know, a soft tissue - a way of working with soft tissue that some chiropractors do. And they do lots of other things with soft tissue as well, which I had never heard of at the time. Now I know about it a bit but I found a guy who was really great. And I started seeing him twice a week because he was so alarmed at how tight my iliacus and my psoas were, and that was and again, Jay was, was really cued into this as well and started saying "I think this is really coming from the front side of your body."
So I spent a whole summer not really being able to run, not being able to hike very much and just kind of resetting. And this is what we talked about the beginning: the difference between sort of major resets versus finding balance, and then doing check ins and being able to keep your pendulum swings a little smaller. This was like a huge pendulum swing from like, intense pain to much less activity than I had been doing, but really focused on sort of rehabilitation. And so that was my resetting point, and a huge source of awareness for me of that part of my body. And by the end of that summer, when the chiropractor would dig in under my hip bone. And do you know and manipulate the iliacus with me moving my leg and stuff, it didn't hurt. And it was some of the most excruciating pain I've ever felt at the start of that summer. So that was a really big change.
And then, with the help of Jay, I have a bunch of stretches and exercises and maintenance things, as you've said that I do really regularly. And that's part of why I think doing traditional yoga classes isn't great for me. This, as you mentioned, this emphasis on hip opening, my piriformis tends to get tight and kind of locked in if I do too much of that without, you know, doing internal rotation as well. And I have to I have to build strength and stability in both of those positions. And I also find that Yoga has a lot of forward folding, and maybe not quite as much opening up in the front, you know, as I maybe need in my body. So that was a very long answer to that.
Suzanne Lis 27:30
No, that was excellent. And that was super interesting. So then it sounds like you and the chiropractor were doing some like, I guess, restoration of like the soft tissue. But did you also have to do like retraining of kind of like, you know, for example, when you do do core work like "Psoas, there's no need for you to engage"? Like, was there any sort of that retraining work?
Jeni Houser 27:57
Yes. I would say that a lot of that comes from - at this point comes from Jay having given me a bunch of different movements and things I do that kind of set me up for success with that. Because, you know, my awareness still only goes so far. I mean, it's improved a lot, it's different, but I know that there are certain types of movements that kind of get me in a good place there. And I know the the ways to sit and the ways to stretch to kind of set things up. And then if I go from that into all sorts of other things, I tend to be alright. So yeah, so I would say yes, there is a lot of awareness of again, actually, it's kind of the same thing of just not having extra tension.
It's kind of the same thing as singing, right? Like, just letting things be a little bit more and trusting the parts of my body that that really can take the load in those moments. So yeah.
Suzanne Lis 29:04
Did I understand correctly that like this morning, you said you did your yoga meditation and then you went to practice?
Jeni Houser 29:13
Yes, as in singing, yeah.
Suzanne Lis 29:15
Can you talk about like what it's like to go directly from like yoga, bodywork session meditation into practicing?
Jeni Houser 29:25
I think my awareness is heightened, my physical awareness is heightened when I do it in that order. So that is what I like about it. Depending on what type of workout or yoga session it has been, it can - I might need a break in there. I mean longer than a just a meditation length or whatever. Also, if it you know, depending on the intensity, I might need more release to find my sort of soft breathing before I start singing but in general I do like, I find the, the awareness is great. And also the the idea of the amount of energy and feeling the flow of energy, they work really well together. So yeah, I do like to do it that way. I don't always but it's one of my, one of my typical ways of doing things.
Yeah. Do you - I also asked this yesterday, to Maya - when you get nervous, how does that manifest itself in your body? Do you get stage fright, for example?
Yes, I, um, so I would say my nerves have changed a lot through the years. There's something really powerful in experiencing a number of times that even when you're super nervous, you can still do your job. You know, there's just the the experience of like, Oh, I survived that, and I wasn't sure I was going to, is powerful.
In terms of my body, you know, I do remember I think two times when I was in grad school, I threw up directly before competitions, like, you know, you hear the classic story, I think it was Corelli, who would always throw up backstage or something. So I had that experience once or twice. And it was so intense. And again, I was like, well, I can't sing now. I mean, I just had, I just had all this acid on my cords, like I there's no way and then you, it turns out, you can.
So, um, but that hasn't happened in ages and ages and ages. So that but that was one experience I had early on, I think when I was starting to get a sense of like, do I want to do this? Is this worth it? Is putting yourself through then the anxiety and the nervousness worth it? And then I did actually have a bout of really increased performance anxiety a couple years ago, I think it was tied into Imposter Syndrome. I think it was tied into some things in my career, that kind of, you know, were on the upswing and some gigs that were coming up, that looked really great. And suddenly, the little voice in my head was like, What are you doing? There is no way that you should be doing these things. And that was tough, you know, that to be that far into things and have a sense that like, Oh, I can do this. I've been doing this for a long time, and then suddenly to be back with this whole new level of anxiety. So yeah, I mean, sometimes I think that performance anxiety can lead to, you know, actual viruses taking hold to actual like sickness.
Suzanne Lis 32:47
Like, literally worrying yourself sick.
Jeni Houser 32:50
Yeah, again, the, our bodies and our brains are just so connected in so many ways, and our nervous system. I mean, so what's really powerful about nerves for me now is the knowledge that that feeling in your stomach and that feeling of shakiness, which is how mine has always kind of manifested really changes if I take some really deep breaths, if I just sit, maybe meditate, maybe do some humming, but do some good breathing that activates the vagus nerve, which is what activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which, you know, is the counter response to the sympathetic nervous system, which is what causes all those feelings, it's the fight or flight response. So we want to activate the opposite system to calm all of that.
Um, I will say that I when I was younger, and up until this most recent bout with performance anxiety that I mentioned, I always felt nervous the day of a performance until I started warming up.
Suzanne Lis 33:55
Oh, interesting.
Jeni Houser 33:56
Yeah, again, I think it's a nervous system response because you start humming and you start literally activating the vagus nerve, which counteracts that, that fight or flight response. So that has always been a powerful tool for me just to do a little humming or a little start my warm up and just do it gradually throughout the day tends to tamp the nerves down. So but this most recent bout of performance anxiety, I did actually work with a coach Nicholas Pallesen who used to be a singer and is fantastic. He doesn't work with performance anxiety so much anymore, because he he did a lot of that for a long time. But he was really helpful to me with that issue, and also with other things in my life. And so one of the key ideas that I took from my work with him was the concept that I am okay. Regardless of what happens, regardless of how much I might feel like an imposter. Or even if I actually were an imposter, even if I somehow got the gigs because of some crazy thing where I didn't deserve them. And if somebody looked into it, they would discover, "oh, this was an accident. Jeni didn't deserve that gig." Like, even if that happened, I'm still okay. I'm still a worthy human. Right. And we all are. And because I believe that about other people, I kind of have to embrace it about myself to some extent. And I do I do truly believe that about other people.
So that changes how you look at performance anxiety a little bit like, "Well, yeah, this might be scary. This might be intense. What's the worst that's gonna happen? It'll be scary and intense. I mean, I'll crash and burn." "Well, and then what?" "Uhhh then I'll go home to my husband, who's wonderful. And then I'll hang out with my dog." You know, like, the worst case scenario, it turns out, still ends up with me being okay. And so that leaves a lot more room to to feel freedom and to feel playfulness, and to allow things to kind of just feel the way they feel when you're performing. And you know, what I love about performing and always have is that you really can play while you're out there because it's a it's a form of communication, and it's there's just innately playfulness, and improvisation as part of it. And so I think Nick has helped me embrace some of that, again.
Suzanne Lis 36:26
If you look at your Instagram, there seems to be a lot of pictures of trees....
Jeni Houser 36:32
Yes, that's true.
Suzanne Lis 36:34
....A lot of pictures of your husband who's also a singer, I gather.
Jeni Houser 36:38
That's correct.
Suzanne Lis 36:39
He is a tenor?
Jeni Houser 36:40
He is a tenor, yes, David Blalock. His brother Jonathan, was a performing tenor as well.
Suzanne Lis 36:47
Oh, wow.
Jeni Houser 36:48
Family of tenors, yep.
Suzanne Lis 36:51
Do they? Do they have a third tenor? Could they do like a revival of the Three Tenors?
Jeni Houser 36:56
Oh, that is such a fun idea. They have a sister who is a lovely, a lovely singer as well. And they grew up singing a lot together. She did not go into it professionally. Yes. It's very adorable. And their parents are both musicians as well. Um, but sadly, no, no third tenor.
Suzanne Lis 37:14
Okay. And then you also have like pictures of food. Yeah. And yeah, maybe tell me about, like, how you've been nourishing your body. And, I mean, you have this beautiful blog post about cooking and food and I there's like, it's so there's so much in there. Metaphorically. So, how have you been nourishing your body recently? You could also ask, like maybe what's what's what's like a particularly delicious thing you've eaten recently? Eaten, cooked, ordered, whatever, it doesn't matter. Hmmm. I'm just gonna throw all those thoughts out there and let you let you talk.
Jeni Houser 37:52
I love it. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Yeah, so love this question. Um, we have gotten very into cooking. We were into cooking and food to some extent before we I would say we've we've always been a little bit of foodies in that we enjoy trying new things it has been in the history of our relationship, going to find restaurants has been a really big like, connector thing for us, you know, a great, a great date night. And with the traveling lifestyle. Of course, that means that we get to do research for each new city, we're going to and find a fun restaurant to try. And it's been this big, adventurous thing in our, our whole relationship.
And then you know, a pandemic hits, and you're just home and you don't eat out, ever. And suddenly, you think, Well, we've really enjoyed some, you know, some really interesting things out there at restaurants. And then we've enjoyed cooking maybe somewhat simpler things. If we want to have the more extravagant things now we're gonna have to cook them. And we had already gotten kind of into some cuisines from Asia. And so we already had a bunch of the Indian spices and seeds and things we started that few years ago. And we've expanded into our understanding of some Thai flavors. My family has always cooked Korean food that's been my favorite meals from childhood. We had a good friend who was Korean who taught my parents to, to cook these things. So we have delved more into that. But then we have also invested in some things like the KitchenAid stand mixer, and David has gotten into baking, and a really good Dutch Dutch oven and we made our first you know, Beef Wellington. We try, we've just done that some of the big things, right. So
I think it's been a really inspiring Jeni Houser 0:00
hobby for us. And it does, it feels like a hobby in that we like daydream about it, and we research it when we're not doing it. And we watch - David watches hundreds of cooking videos. I mean, he's very, like, always looking at something new, always found some new recipe through a cooking video or whatever. And then what what that has meant in terms of the actual eating of this food is, I mean, I think it's been a really powerful force for good in our family, during this pandemic.
And so, to the idea of, of nourishment, it has given us this thing we do almost every day together, usually somebody is kind of the head chef of meals, and then, sous chef.
Suzanne Lis 40:55
"Here, chop this. Thanks."
Jeni Houser 40:57
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and somebody different is exploring the recipes, or like we, you know, we're, we're planning our meals ahead now, which we never were able to do before, obviously, with traveling and stuff. That just wasn't how our lives worked. And it's so fun. It's so fun to figure out the balance. And then we've that I think we've been able to make some really conscious choices. So we're eating less meat. Um, we I don't think we've had red meat now in, I don't know, a month or, and we're certainly not vegetarians, but we have discovered all sorts of wonderful ways to have tofu and beans and chickpeas. And you know, we're just constantly exploring.
So when we do have a roast chicken, which David made last night, that was incredible, with the crispy skin of all time, and the most perfect seasoning and so tender and moist and delicious, it feels really special. Right? Like, oh, this, this is a special meal. And it's I mean, it literally had nothing on it, but salt and a little oil. And it was just like the most delicious. So I think we have - we've gained a real appreciation for when we do have meat. And then both of us definitely feel good about the environmental impact, the ethical issues, you know, of eating less meat. You know, we made a French onion soup the other night wwith some homemade bread. We've been making the New York Times No-Knead Bread, which is a very popular recipe.
Suzanne Lis 42:33
Yeah.
Jeni Houser 42:35
Have you made that before?
Suzanne Lis 42:36
Yeah, where it's almost like the dough is like so wet and floppy. You're just like, "how is this - How is this gonna work?"
Jeni Houser 42:46
It just kind of like sticks to the towel, and you have to dump it into your Dutch oven.
Suzanne Lis 42:49
Yeah, like "here goes nothing." Yeah, but it works quite well.
Jeni Houser 42:52
It's beautiful. Yeah, we make that probably once a week. So you know, have our own little toasts on top of our French onion soup, and a little cheese on top of there. It's, we've, I would say, you know, every week, there are probably three meals that feel really special. And that is just a whole new experience for us in terms of our cooking so, and we've learned a lot, you know, picked up a lot of techniques. It feels good. It just feels good to improve at anything, I think, so I feel like we're much better cooks now. And it's just really fun.
Yeah, so if I feel like I'm getting sick, I have all the things on the world that I do. And I thought about this recently because I haven't gotten sick, you know, no kind of sickness, no sort of feeling of like I might be coming down with a virus or whatever in the last year. Because we don't go anywhere. I mean, we've been completely 100% isolated, other than a couple of little virtual gigs and stuff we've done, we really just stay home. So no sickness. I've been thinking about all these things that I always do. And I realized even if half of them are placebo effects, they're still like I still believe in them. Because placebo effect is real and again because of the connection between the body and the mind. So I'm very into turmeric and ginger as anti inflammatory things, I love teas made with them. I love lemon juice and honey in some tea, right, classic singer stuff, just classic. But you know, if I feel like I'm getting sick then you will not see me without a mug of of that kind of stuff. And then I'm very into hydration and steaming and a humidifier. I think that really helps stuff a lot as well. And then I think the really big thing is releasing as much of the stress about sickness as I can, which again comes from like, I can do that by doing some yoga or doing some meditation, keeping my body active and trying to get as much sleep as I can. And then having done all of those things, whatever I can do, I have to just trust that, again, it's it'll be okay. Whatever happens. And you know, as a singer, it's really scary because canceling gigs means not getting income. So it's a very stressful thing. And so I think taking as much of the pressure off of it as possible, is the key to allowing my body to sort of heal itself.
Suzanne Lis 45:30
Yeah, I love the story you tell in one of the blog posts about you, I think getting sick before a round of - well, maybe it's let you tell the story. I love this story.
Jeni Houser 45:42
It's one of my favorite stories, and it ties into all these things. Yeah. Yeah, it was before a round of YAP auditions. So it was, I think, right after I finished grad school, the first year or two maybe. And I was living with my parents, and I was getting ready for, you know, to fly out to New York City and do who knows, right, eight auditions in two weeks or something. And the week before I started coming down with a cold.
And it's, I mean, it was just devastating. It just felt like, "I'm gonna miss my chance to sing for these people." This is like, you know, time is running out to do these programs. And there's all this pressure on all of those things. And I was, you know, so convinced, as I said, that sugar is really bad for the immune system. And so I was doing my ginger and turmeric tea, and I was eating all sorts of vegetables. My friend, Vanessa Becerra taught me that mushrooms have something in them that's really great for the immune system. And yellow peppers have like the most concentrated vitamin C, volume or something per, I don't know, whatever. So that's another thing I do, I'll always make mushroom and yellow pepper dishes if I feel sick, and tons of spinach.
Anyway, so I'm doing all of that. And then my dad is eating a bowl of ice cream. And I just start crying. And the stress is so intense. And I you know, I'm like, "I want ice cream. I want to just have something nice and fun and pleasant in my life. But I'm so stressed about these auditions." And my dad said, "I think that if you really want ice cream, that the joy that you will get from eating a bowl of ice cream will do more good for your body and mind and your immune system than depriving yourself of it to avoid the sugar." And so I've always thought about that. It's again, this idea of balance, like, Yeah, you do the things that you know will help or that you know, are good for you. And you also allow yourself whatever joys and pleasures, like make you come alive. And yeah, it's that's it's always it's always a balancing act of finding what feels good. What is good, what does good. Have the bowl of ice cream.
Suzanne Lis 48:00
Have the bowl of ice cream if it makes you feel good.
Jeni Houser 48:03
Absolutely.
Suzanne Lis 48:05
Well, I appreciate you taking the time so so much and I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for being on the podcast.
Jeni Houser 48:10
Absolutely, great questions. Really interesting stuff to talk about, so very happy to do it.
Suzanne Lis 48:16
You can follow Jeni's career at jenihouser.com or see what she's up to on Instagram @songsofjeni . Thank you for listening to this third episode of This Embodied Voice. In case you're new here, welcome. This is a podcast where we talk about the voice, the body, and everything in between. So if you enjoyed the episode, then please rate, review, subscribe and tell a friend. You can also reach me, Suzanne, on Instagram @thisembodiedvoice . I'll let Jeni and her husband David sing us out with their rendition of "Getting to know you" from THE KING AND I. Until next time, take care of your body, take care of your voice, and be well.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai