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Leading with the Heart: What Singing Taught Me About Intelligence

I’ve always led with my heart.

Even as a young singer, I was attuned to emotional nuance — mine and others’. That sensitivity became one of my greatest strengths in performance and in teaching. I could read a room and respond accordingly. I could feel the shifts in energy. When teaching I could intuit when a student was holding back, even if their technique looked solid.

But leading with the heart isn’t always easy.

For me, emotion often weaves itself into thought. A small moment — a glance, a phrase, a missed note — can spiral into a flood of internal stories: “What did they mean by that?” “Did I do something wrong?” “Am I too much?” and the fawning and shape shifting begins!

In singing, this kind of emotional overdrive can knock me off-centre. Suddenly, I’m not in my voice anymore. I’m in my head about my feelings, trying to make sense of them, fix them, soothe them. It’s exhausting — and not particularly helpful when I just want to sing.

Over time, I’ve learned something simple but powerful:
When I reconnect to my body — through breath, gentle sound, and movement — the stories soften. The feelings settle. The voice returns.

Three Centres of Intelligence — A Clue to Integration

Through my work with Enneagram theory and coaching, I have been introduced to the idea that we all possess three core centres of intelligence:

  • the head (thinking, analysing),

  • the heart (feeling, relating), and

  • the body (doing, sensing, grounding).

Each of us leads with one, supports it with another, and tends to neglect or suppress the third. While this isn’t a pathology, it can become a pattern that limits how we learn, create, and respond to challenge.

This information was a revelation to me and my personal development, and over time I began to use it within my teaching. 

Noticing the Centres in My Students

Some lead with the head — brilliant analysers, quick thinkers, questioners, who want to understand before they risk being heard. Others lead with the body — physical, grounded, wanting to get things done, often highly capable but sometimes disconnected from emotional nuance or inner reflection.

And then there are the heart-led students, like me — open, expressive, sometimes flooded with feeling, and always wondering how they’re being received.

It’s not that any one approach is “better” or “worse.” Each has its gifts. But when a student is stuck — whether in technique, confidence, or expression — it’s often because they’re over-relying on one centre, while another sits quietly in the background.

When integration begins — when a head-centred singer starts to trust their emotion, or a body-led student softens into feeling — something opens. It’s subtle, but unmistakable.

There’s more breadth.
More presence.
More voice.

Because the gold is in the curiosity of discovering parts of ourselves that open new pathways. Why rely on one or two intelligences when there are three?

A New Way of Thinking About Learning

This idea — that we each lead from a particular centre, and that the journey of learning is, in part, a journey of integration — has become central to how I teach.

It’s a framework that helps me meet each singer where they are, with compassion and clarity. And it helps them understand themselves not just as voices to be fixed, but as people with unique internal maps (and forgotten territory!)

This isn’t therapy. But it is transformational.

And I’ve created a training for singing teachers who want to explore this further.

 Coming Soon: The Three Centres of Intelligence in Singing Teaching

This is a shame-sensitive, embodied, and philosophical approach to working with singers — one that honours the full human, not just the voice.

  • Reach out if you’d like to be part of the first cohort: lisapvoice@optusnet.com.au

  • Or simply keep following along as I share more reflections in the coming weeks

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