Developing a Healthy Relationship with the Voice Part 3

The All Important Breath!

Developing a healthy relationship with the voice and the vocal cords begins with developing a healthy relationship with the breath.

When I first began studying voice 10 years ago, I received some conflicting advice about breathing. At that point, I had already been practicing Yoga for most of my adult life and that included a great deal of pranayama practice. I was quite proficient at breathing from a Yogic perspective. However I did discover, fairly quickly, that breathing for the purpose of singing or vocalizing or even speaking is different from the yogic breathing I had learned. At the same time, I was also exploring and experiencing how old, unexpressed emotions and traumas can be held in the body, sometimes for a lifetime, and that they can be prematurely triggered by aggressive or incorrect breathing. From personal experience, I knew that the emotional aspect of breathing deeply was an essential factor to consider in developing and practicing any type of breath work.

Why Some People are Actually Afraid to Take a Deep Breath

Many of us breathe in a very shallow way. When we only breathe into the upper part of the chest,
we are only filling the upper part of the lungs or the upper (superior) lobe. The body cannot fully oxygenate itself when the breath is so shallow. And the voice cannot be free and full if it is not fully supported by the breath. Freeing the breath is the first and most important step in freeing the voice. Breath work needs to be done gently, slowly and with total respect for the body, both the physical and emotional aspects. (More about this below)

As infants, we do breathe fully into all parts of our lungs. If you observe an infant breathing, the whole body is involved in supporting that breath. The chest, the back, the belly -- everything opens and expands and moves on the inhalation. And everything releases on the exhalation. So why then, as adults, does our breathing become so restricted? Well, I can only speak from my own experience and resulting theory on this. I do have many years of my own breathing practice to draw on, plus years of teaching and observing the breathing patterns of others.

Back to our infant days, we instinctively knew how to breathe and vocalize (laugh, cry, scream, gurgle....) fully, again with the whole body being engaged in the action. But soon, usually at a pretty young age, we begin to learn that allowing the body to freely do whatever it needs to in order to express itself is not always "socially acceptable". We can't just scream whenever we feel like it. Crying in public is not deemed as socially acceptable. We may have been shamed or ridiculed or even punished for crying or expressing emotion in some way.  At a young and tender age, we start school and have to learn how to sit quietly in hard chairs for sometimes hours on end. We can only do that by squelching all those natural instincts to move and breathe and vocalize and express emotion. As a result, we end up tightening our muscles and constricting what was natural, instinctual physical movement and expression.

 If there has been trauma in a child's life, the holding and constricting becomes even more pronounced. There may be a lot of fear locked up inside. There may be memories and emotions locked up inside. We come into adulthood with muscles that have become tight, rigid and constricted in order to hold back all that stuff that has been buried in the body and in order to stifle our natural impulse to let loose. With all that going on, how can we possibly take a deep, full body breath? Our muscles are too tight to allow that to happen naturally.

 Our fear of letting go is likely very well developed by the time we become adults. With the passage of time it can become physically impossible to get past all the muscular restrictions that have been put on the body. As we get older, we often tend to think of all this muscle tightness and its resulting aches and pains and difficulty breathing as "normal", "part of getting older". While that kind of thinking has become the norm, there is nothing normal about having aches and pains and stiffness and difficulty breathing. The physical body isn't meant to carry all that emotional and muscular tightness. But many of us were raised in the kind of atmosphere -- at home, in churches, in schools, in a society -- that expected us to control our natural normal impulses to move, to make sound, to express emotion.

And it can become frightening, or at the very least, uncomfortable, to even try to breathe deeply. It is definitely NOT advisable to try and push past those emotional barriers and those tight muscles through aggressive, forceful breathing or vocal exercises. 




Opening the body up and releasing all that tension with deep breathing and/or vocal exercises, needs to be done slowly, gently, patiently and with a great deal of love and respect for the body and all that it may be holding for us. 







A Gentle  Three Part Breathing Exercise

** If you have not been practicing breathing exercises, please go back to Part 1 of this series and begin with the simple breathing exercise I offer there. Practice just that easy, simple breath until you feel really comfortable with it and then move on to this three part breathing practice. That is also a good place to begin even if you have been doing breathing exercises. 

You may want to go back and study the diagram of the lungs (above). Pay particular attention to the three lobes of the lungs -- the superior (upper) lobe, the middle lobe and the interior (lower) lobe. We are going to gently and slowly breathe into all three lobes, beginning with the upper lobe and working our way down -- one lobe at a time!!

To begin: You can lie down on a firm surface with a pillow or rolled blanket under the knees. Supporting the knees in this way helps the belly and lower back relax. Or sit comfortably in a chair making sure the back is not slouched. Feet should rest on the floor and the belly and chest should be as open as comfortably possible to allow maximum space for the breath to move through the body..

1. Breathing into the Upper Lobe: It can be helpful to place one hand on your upper chest and, if you are flexible, place the other hand on your upper back. If that is too much of a stretch, just bring your awareness to the front of the upper chest and to your upper back. Imagine breathing right into that space between the chest and the back. If your hands are there, imagine your are directing your breath right into your hands -- front and back. Pay attention to how much, if any, movement is happening in that part of the chest and back.  If there is easy, comfortable movement on the inhale, and an easy free release on the exhale, repeat a few times and then you can move on to the middle lobe. If there is any feeling of resistance or limited or difficult movement of the chest and back, DO NOT move on. Work gently with this exercise until it begins to feel comfortable. A few minutes a day is enough. You may need to work in this one area for a few days, a week, a month ..... whatever it takes to feel comfortable. There is no rush. Also, it could be very helpful to journal any feelings or memories that come up. Or have someone to talk to.

 **Personal note; I found it very helpful to have a therapist to talk to when I was in the process of opening up these vulnerable and delicate areas. Plus, I did a lot of journaling. 

2. Breathing into the Middle Lobe: Bring the hands down to the side ribs. Direct the awareness and the breath right down through the centre of the body and into those side ribs. Ideally the ribs should move easily, expanding on the inhalation and releasing on the exhalation. As above, work gently with this breath until there is easy relaxed movement in the ribs. There is no rush to move on.

3. Breathing into the Lower Lobe: Place one hand on the belly and one hand on the lower back. Allow the breath to move down through the centre of your body and imagine sending it out into your hands. Again notice if movement and expansion of the belly and lower back happen easily or does that movement feel constricted? This is an area where a lot of emotion can get held and trapped, so proceed with care and love and acceptance of whatever may show up. Again, journaling or having someone to talk to is highly recommended if  this work is new to you.

1-2-3 Putting It Altogether: Once you feel really comfortable breathing into each lobe individually, then you can try the complete three part breath. For those that have taken Yoga, you may find that the order of the this breath is different from what you learned in Yoga class. Remember, first of all, that this breath is geared towards using the voice in a healthy way. Plus -- I believe that it is important to always begin the breath where we are most comfortable. For most of us, that is the upper chest. THEN we can slowly work our way down into the depths. The Heart area is often loaded with feelings and emotions and to try and blast air past that, directly into the belly is, in my books, not good!! We need to move down through the body one step at a time, allowing those tight places to release gently and slowly in their own way and in their own time. (More about the diaphragm in Part 4).

The Entire Three Part Breath: 1. INHALE into the upper chest and back. 2. Continue the inhale into the side ribs. 3. Continue the inhale into the belly. 4. EXHALE starting from the belly, then from the side ribs and then from the upper chest. Play with this breath until it feels smooth, easy and relaxed.

If you are wondering why we are exhaling in this particular order, this video (link below) explains it in a really fun way -- plus offers some wonderful breath/voice exercises. I highly recommend watching this video.
.                      Importance of Exhaling From the Belly First


On that note, I'll end for now. Part 4 coming soon!

   And remember: love your body, love your breath love your voice!

Developing a Healthy Relationship with the Voice Part 2

Getting to Know Our Vocal Cords

And Why It Is Important To Stretch Through The Entire Range of Our Voices

The range of the voice, simply put, means how how high we can vocalize or sing and how low we can vocalize or sing. The range is that whole area from high to low. For people who have not had any vocal training, that range may seem fairly limited. However, with the right kind of training or exercises, almost every voice can be expanded. In fact, sometimes just learning how to relax and release the tension in the throat and jaw can free the voice in surprising ways.

THE JOY OF YAWNING!

If there is tension or constriction in the throat, that may cause the larnyx to be squeezed and lifted into a higher than normal position. The vocal cords are located within the larnyx so if there is tension, that means the vocal cords cannot stretch and vibrate in the way they are meant to. Just learning how to release and drop the larnyx can free up the voice which adds more vocal range. We will be exploring more about how to do that but in the meantime, yawning -- like we did in Part 1 -- is a wonderful way of releasing tension and dropping the larynx into a more relaxed position.
















THE RANGE OF THE VOICE

If you sing in a choir, you have likely had your voice classified as soprano or baritone or whatever classifications there may be. Even if you are not in a choir, you still probably have some preconceived idea that you have a low voice or a high voice. Just for now, it would be great if you could let go of labeling or pre-judging your voice in any way. If you are thinking of yourself as someone who has a low voice, then you probably are not stretching out your vocal cords into your high range or head voice. You may be thinking that you don't even have a high range. And vice versa for those who think their voices are high and they cannot drop down into the lower voice. The truth is, most of us have a much greater vocal range than we may think. It is all a matter of releasing tension and taking the time to explore and exercise whatever part of the voice we may feel weak or lacking in.

** Note: From my personal story: Initially, when I began my serious vocal exploration 10 years ago, the first singing teacher I went to labelled me as a Soprano and he raised the key of all the songs I wanted to sing since I could not drop down into any lower notes. I sang totally in my head or high voice. At that point I did not even know I had a chest (or low) voice. But my voice felt and sounded weak and strained in that high range. I couldn't get any volume or loudness in my voice no matter how hard this teacher pushed me to sing louder. Any attempt to sing louder just made my throat constrict and my voice crack and sound "froggy". So I searched for, and found, a vocal coach who had more knowledge and understanding of the vocal cords and how the voice actually works. I was thrilled to discover that I did have a low voice and the main reason my voice had previously been trapped in that high and unstable place was a combination of tension and simply not knowing how to access that low chest voice. The vocal exercises he gave me began to unleash a great deal of previously stored up tension and it felt totally freeing and powerful to sing, speak or vocalize in my low voice. Now I love the feeling and sound that emerges from my chest voice. 

High Voice     Low Voice

So -- the news is, we all have a low voice and we all have a high voice (providing there is no physical issue with the vocal cords) and for maximum vocal health, we need to stretch the vocal cords from low to high. When we are in our low voice, the vocal cords are thicker and more compressed. As we stretch into the higher part of our vocal range, the vocal cords stretch and thin out. If you think about lifting weights at a gym, you don't want to just keep lifting heavier and heavier weights without balancing your workout with some stretching and flexibility exercises. If your muscles are being contracted all the time with no stretching, they will eventually weaken. That is comparable to being in the low voice all the time and never stretching the vocal cords out by singing or vocalizing in the high part of your range. . Conversely, if all you ever do is stretch and work on flexibility with no weight training, your muscles and joints will become overstretched, weak and prone to injury. That would be similar to being in the high voice all the time and having the vocal cords constantly thinned and stretched out. The vocal cords need the strength and compression that comes from vocalizing (singing, speaking, doing scales or other exercises) in the chest register or lower part of the voice.. They also need the flexibility and stretching that comes from being in the high vocal register.

Note: A little bit of vocabulary! Vocal range refers to how high one can sing or vocalize and how low one can sing or vocalize. The range is that whole area of the voice from high to low (or low to high).
Vocal register refers to the various areas of the vocal range. The higher part of the voice is usually referred to as the head register or head voice. Higher than the head register is the whistle register (very challenging to do and hard on the vocal cords). The lower part of the voice is referred to as the chest register or chest voice. Below chest voice is Vocal Fry -- another register that can also be hard on the vocal cords if over done. In between the head register and the chest register is the mix or middle voice, also known as the bridge (between high voice and low voice).

The Muscles that Control the Vocal Cords

There are two main muscles that control the vocal cords. The Thyroarytenoid (TA) muscle controls the lower part of the voice and the Cricothyroid  (CT) muscle controls the higher part of the voice. As our voices transition from low to high, these two muscles work together as the TA muscle gradually hands over control to the CT muscle. That is the place in the voice that is commonly called the Bridge or the Mix Voice. Some singers refer to it as "the crack" (not a term I like) because for many people, it takes a lot of training to learn how to cross this bridge smoothly. So -- not to worry if your voice makes some weird sounds as you move from low to high or high to low. That is pretty normal. It is very important to work both muscles in the vocal cords -- just as in weight training -- if you work your biceps, you need to balance that out by also working your triceps (the front of the upper arm and the back of the upper arm).

More in part three about why this work of accessing our whole vocal range in a gentle and healthy way is very important -- not just for our voices, but also for our bodies and nervous system.

Til then -- love and cherish your voice. And make some happy sounds!!

Barbara

Developing a Healthy Relationship with the Voice: Part 1

INTRODUCTION:

MY STORY

I did not have a healthy relationship with my voice. Up until I was 57 years old (10 years ago), I never even opened my mouth to sing. Mostly I managed to avoid any kind of gatherings that had singing
 or karaoke in them. If I accidentally ended up in a group where singing was happening, I would either simply mouth the words or sing very quietly under my breath so no one would hear me. Being a pretty reclusive, introverted, shy child and adult, even speaking very much was not my thing.  I felt uncomfortable about the sound of my voice; I was terrified to express any opinions or neediness; it was next to impossible for me to speak up to people in positions of authority.  I did not even trust my voice to be there when I needed it to be. Sometimes, during a conversation with someone, my throat would simply close up and leave me coughing and choking. And feeling embarrassed and humiliated. 

As a result, my vocal cords were weak and undeveloped.

There is more to this story and I have expanded on it in a blog I wrote in June 2015. You can scroll back to that if you want more of the story and if you are wondering what happened when I was 57 to finally start me on the journey of healing and liberating my voice. By the way, I now look for opportunities to sing with others!! It really is fun!

Since that time, 10 years ago, I have explored (extensively) vocal technique and ways of healing, developing and strengthening my voice and vocal cords. In addition to many hours of  exploring, researching and experimenting on my own, I have worked with a variety of singing teachers, vocal coaches and sound healers. My lifelong Yoga practice, my years of studying the Chakras,  my experience as a Reiki Master, plus my several years of therapy and healing my own traumas (vocal and otherwise) have come together to create a very unique healing program aimed more directly at recovering and supporting the voice and the vocal cords. I sometimes think of this developing work as Yoga for the Voice. It tends to be somewhat more subtle and inner focused than most other vocal practices I have experienced.  Because of my own previous, sometimes traumatic, vocal experiences, I do my best to create this vocal work in a way that is gentle and respectful of the voice and of the deeper process and re-connection that happens when the voice is activated in new ways.

That feels like enough of an introduction for now! Let's dive in!

RECONNECTING BODY, BREATH AND VOICE

STARTING WITH THE BREATH


The breath is vital to any voice work. Without breath, there is no voice. Ideally the breath should be supported by the entire body. In other words, the inhale should feel like it is filling every part of the body, right into our deepest core. The exhale can then travel through the vocal cords in a small, controlled stream of air.  With that small, consistent stream of air coming through them, the vocal cords will vibrate in a way that is strong and healthy,  producing the sound that we are aiming for -- be it speaking, singing, sounding etc. A little later, I will offer an exercise so that we can learn to inhale into and through the entire body and then practice controlling the exhalation for the best and healthiest vibration of the vocal cords, but first:

A SIMPLE BREATHING EXERCISE

And expressing gratitude for the voice and the vocal cords

Begin by finding a comfortable sitting position with the spine gently erect in its natural curvature. Let the feet be firmly connected with the floor or ground and the belly relaxed and open. Roll the shoulders back to ensure the chest is open and the lungs have plenty of room to expand

   With the mouth closed, begin to breath in and out through the nostrils. Allow the inhale and the exhale to find their own comfortable rhythmic pattern. Relax into that breath, simply observing the flow of air in and out of the nostrils.

    After a few breaths, bring the awareness into the back of the throat. As you continue allowing the breath to flow in and out through the nostrils, focus your attention on the back of the throat. Imagine allowing the breath to touch the back of the throat. Imagine relaxing and opening the back of the throat. If there are any feelings of restriction here, just observe. Approach with interest and curiosity and acceptance  of whatever you may be feeling. No need to change anything. If you feel a need to cough or yawn, allow that to happen. Then return to the breath, focusing again on the back of the throat.

   After a few breaths into the back of the throat, allow the awareness to move more deeply into and through the throat. Focus especially on the lower part of the front of the throat -- the Adam's apple. This is generally easier to see and locate in men, but women have it too -- it is just less visible and obvious. At this point, don't worry about finding the exact location if you are uncertain. For now, just allow your breath to move into the mid--lower part of the front of  throat.

"The Adam's apple, in conjunction with the thyroid cartilage which forms it, helps protect the walls and the frontal part of the larynx, including the vocal cords (which are located directly behind it). "   definition taken from Wikipedia.

As you breathe into the "Adam's Apple" you are actually bringing more air and circulation into your larnyx, also known as the voice box, and your vocal cords which are responsible for the vibrations that create sound. 

Continue breathing in and out through the nose, extending the awareness and breath down through the centre of the throat and deeper into the larnyx and vocal cords. As you continue your focus on the breath moving down into the vocal cords, this could be a good time to actually appreciate and thank your vocal cords for all that they do. The work of the vocal cords makes it possible for us to communicate verbally, to sing, to sound, to express ourselves, to laugh out loud, to comfort others through our words and our voices. Directing that vocal vibration to a part of ourselves or to another person can be incredibly healing. These tiny vocal cords do so much for us and yet we often tend to take them for granted unless we develop a problem with them. Now is a perfect time to acknowledge the incredible gift of voice that we have been given and the amazing work that the vocal cords do to give us that voice.

After a few breaths and a few moments of appreciating our vocal cords, we can allow the breath to come back to normal breathing -- whatever that is for each of us. A really good way to follow this exercise up is by standing and having a few big open mouth yawns along with a nice big STRETCH! This can also be a good time to begin making some sound -- sighing loudly, releasing the voice on the exhale. Take a few moments to yawn, stretch, allow sighs or any sounds that may want to be expressed. Then take a few moments to just sit and observe how your body feels.

 Enjoy!