Kathy Lette: How I joined the choir and met my Waterloo
WE’VE become a nation of psychological hypochondriacs. Stress relieving remedies fill magazines and airwaves, promoting everything from raspberry enemas, mindfulness and cranial massage to having your aura feng-shuied, writes Kathy Lette.
ARE you sick and tired of feeling sick and tired?
What with Trump’s tweet diplomacy, Russian hacking, oceans drowning in plastic and, most ghastly of all, the threat of nuclear warfare, who isn’t thinking “Armageddon out of here!”
Truly, anyone who is not feeling stressed right now, should be stressed by the fact that they’re not feeling stressed.
And the angst is taking its toll.
Everyone I know seems to have developed O.C.D., depression or chronic anxiety.
We’ve become a nation of psychological hypochondriacs.
Stress relieving remedies fill magazines and airwaves, promoting everything from raspberry enemas, mindfulness and cranial massage to having your aura feng-shuied.
Well, a new study led by Professor Brady from Glasgow University reveals some interesting facts.
Firstly, forget guzzling gallons of trendy coconut water or gargling with organic beetroot juice.
Apparently two bowls of porridge a day is much more effective at lowering blood pressure. But do you know what turned out to be the biggest stress-buster by far? Singing. Yep. Simply belting out a tune brings about the most dramatic lowering of levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Like most women, I spent my teenage years chirruping ABBA hits into a hairbrush whilst gyrating before the bedroom mirror. It only took one karaoke night for me to accept that a showbiz career
didn’t beckon… Put it this way, during the “requests” section, when
I asked the audience what they’d like me to play, one bloke replied gruffly, “Scrabble”.
But with de-stressing in mind, I rekindled my pop fantasies and joined a rock choir. Now, the true definition of a “choir” is 40 or so people …who think the other 39 can’t sing. Within minutes of arriving at the local church hall and launching into some arduous scales, my diaphragm was pumping so hard I felt I’d run a marathon.
The choir mistress then grilled us in our separate harmonies for Hey Jude. The discordant droning as we tried to perfect our parts was like having my eardrums shredded on a cheese grater. We were the new Beatles all right – except with 40 Ringos.
Noticing that I’d gone as limp as a perm in a sauna, the instructress reprimanded me for not focusing on each bar. By now the only kind of bar I was interested in, was the one that served gin and tonics.
I was then informed that I had to incorporate choreography. The sad truth is, I am to dancing what Barnaby Joyce is to fidelity. I dance out of key. The women on either side of me, however, began to dance as though they had Tina Turner strapped in their knickers.
Trying to harmonise while shimmying and sashaying proved so confusing, I could actually hear my feet thinking. I was so busy counting steps as I belted out lyrics full volume, that I promptly rear-ended the woman on my left, winded the man behind then concussed myself in a head-on collision with a pew.
I don’t feel that joining a rock choir was doing much to lower my stress levels, but it was definitely proving a tonic to the others. If laughter really is the best medicine the rest of the choir were feeling pretty damn healthy by the time they’d picked me up off the floor.
But just when I was about to give up, the choir mistress turned
up the volume on the backing track. The music was so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself say that I couldn’t hear myself think — but it did the trick.
Miraculously, the hour and a half of tortuous practice suddenly paid off. I was singing and dancing, and, even better, I was doing it in time. A feeling of euphoria swept over me as I realised that we rocked!
Next week we’re mastering ABBA’s Waterloo. And so, 40 years later, I’m back, crooning into my hairbrush in the bedroom mirror – and I couldn’t be happier. The greatest thing about singing in a group is that anyone can a choir a good voice (Ha ha).
But maybe the real reason I feel less stressed is because at the end of each session we have cake, and after all “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts” .
Happy warbling!
What’s the best song to sing to forget your troubles?
Share your stories at saweekend@adv.newsltd.com.au and
go in the draw to win a double pass to Paul Lewis, at Space Theatre on September 22 at 7pm.