It’s generally understood that all activities have a mental aspect. Several books on the subject emerged in the 1970s and ’80s, including classics such as The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, The Centered Skier by Denise McCluggage, and A Soprano on Her Head: Right-Side-Up Reflections on Life and Other Performances by Eloise Ristad, which explores the “inner game” of singing. All of these books examine the effect that thinking has on performance, and they suggest that attending to the nature and quality of our thoughts is ultimately more fruitful than trying to perfect technique.

About a hundred years earlier, Mary Baker Eddy explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that consciousness is not just an important element of experience, but ultimately the only element. She had spent a lifetime studying the Bible to discern its spiritual truth and many years rigorously researching—incorporating both observation and practice—the effect of thought on the body and physical health. Through these consecrated efforts, she had gathered conclusive evidence that by aligning thought with and yielding to the Divine, every individual is capable of the extraordinary healing works that Jesus accomplished and promised that his followers could do. She proved in her own healing works that “whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power” (Science and Health, p. 192).

It came to me very clearly that this was an opportunity to prove that singing is entirely mental and not dependent upon materiality at all.