Be it through song or meditation, local woman always seeking to improve

Singing in a children’s choir at 5 years old, she thrilled to the applause and happiness of the nursing home audience.

In first-grade music class, she sensed “something magical in singing.” Her voice resonated against her bones, vibrating from the inside out and made her feel like smiling and crying at the same time.

At 10 years old, she was singing solo as the princess in “The Frog Prince,” standing center stage in a fanciful gown. There, for the first time, even while wearing a neck brace after a horse fall, she flowed into the zone.

Once having found it, Lori Moore could never resist that state of energized focus where the activity itself was its own reward.

She would return to it again and again while earning a bachelor’s degree in music from East Carolina University, pursuing a singing career in New York City, performing as Evita in summer stock, touring in “Zorba the Greek” through 46 states, rocking with the group Ride with Daddy and starring in the premier run of the opera “Joy of Bernadette.”

“Part of the joy of performing on stage is making people feel good,” says Lori, now Corda. “But there’s more. There’s magic for me in singing rock and roll, blues, folk, 1940s standards, classical, musicals, opera…”

She explains that singing takes her to a private elsewhere, to enjoy the gift of her talent and the exercise of her skills earned through experience and ongoing practice. Even when alone, with no one to applaud, she feels accomplishment and pleasure in her voice flowing across a soprano range of almost three octaves.

In 1992, her future husband, singer and musician Vinny Corda, introduced her to yoga. In the poses and mindfulness of yoga practice, she found a zone as rewarding as singing.

The newfound flow would take her forward through countless practices to multiple teaching certifications and finally owning her own yoga studio, The Tree House, at her home in Columbus.

Today, Lori is a registered yoga teacher through The Yoga Alliance, and holds a yoga teacher certification from the Anusara School of Yoga, pre and post-natal yoga certification through The Integral Yoga Institute, and IM=X Pilates Certification.

“Singing and yoga are exactly the same,” she says, as we sit outside her studio on the back porch, an ancient oak within close touch from the railing and a calming fountain behind us. Below, shades of green slope away through branches and trunks to a distant pasture.

“Yoga and singing complement each other so beautifully,” she says. “Both are about breath. Both demand strength without tension. Both call on the ability to focus, go inside oneself and feel what needs to be done mentally and physically. Both do best with consistent, correct practice and letting go of the ego.” 

She smiles as she recalls a lesson learned from “The Frog Prince” decades ago.

“When my solo came up, I sang and unconsciously went into this outer-body experience where I had no fear, but absolutely no recognition that it ever happened. Later that year, I had the opportunity to solo again and decided that this time I wasn’t going to miss it.

“That was a big mistake. I was only aware of the audience. When you perform, you are always aware of the audience to a certain degree, but you can’t be thinking of their approval or be self-conscious of what you’re doing. Otherwise, you have lost the magic.”

The flow is gone. The zone is missed. There is no “in the groove.”

“Flow” is a term introduced by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975. The premise of his book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” is that artists, musicians, athletes and all others are most creative, productive and happiest when in the state of flow.

He defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it…for the sheer sake of doing it.”

He hypothesizes that autotelic personalities may be better able to achieve flow. Autotelic is based on the Greek “auto” for self and “telos” for goal. These are people with traits that include curiosity, persistence, independence and little or no need for possessions or power, but a need for challenge.

“No matter how much I’ve learned, I will always have further to go,” Lori admits. “Both yoga and singing are continually challenging. I practice yoga for fitness and the flow, and take yoga lessons to be a better teacher, to help students find flow within themselves.”

She enjoys seeing the flow evolve in students lesson after lesson. For example, one gray-haired man, with accumulated equestrian injuries, could barely touch his toes with a grunt in his first class, but, over time, was bending at the waist to touch his forehead to his knees.

Lori’s fondest memory is of a woman, self-conscious of weight, coming up after the second class and confiding that this was the first time, in a setting with many people, that she felt beautiful.

She didn’t use the words “in the zone,” but that’s where she’d been.

“Yoga is a practice and so is singing,” Lori says. “Practice, practice, practice. I have an absolutely amazing voice teacher, Sonja Karlsen, who wrote the music and libretto of the opera ‘Joy of Bernadette.’ I started studying with her in New York City, about 25 years ago, and continue to study with her when she’s at her local home or we Skype when she’s in New York. Lessons are once a week, and three times when preparing for a recital. They range from one to two hours. 

“Friends wonder why I still take lessons. Well, with singing, just like yoga, you never arrive ‘there.’ There is always more to learn. I sing when cooking and in the shower, and practice while playing our piano in the living room when Joseph and Sofia are at school.”

Her current favorites are an aria of love and loss from Massenet’s 1884 opera “Manon” and the 1951 version of “Because of You” popularized by Tony Bennett.

“Singing makes me happy,” Lori says. “Yoga helps keep me grounded, calmer in maintaining balance as wife, mother, singer, teacher and entrepreneur working to fill classes and book my next gig.”

People may learn more about Lori’s yoga studio by visiting yogaatthetreehouse.com. •

A photo waits in all things, all places, and everyone with a passion has a story to be told. That’s the perspective Vince Verrecchio, lightly retired ad agency creative director, brings as a writer and photographer contributing to Foothills Magazine. He can be reached at vincent.verrecchio@gmail.com.