How Training Your Voice Can Change Your Life

[Music]

the voice

is an incredibly powerful muscle that we

all use every single day

it can affect our success in meetings

interviews

conversation connection and it can even

help us find

and share more of our true authentic

self

and i don’t think a lot of people

understand how it functions

or even know that they have the power to

build their own voice

hello my name is carolyn quinn and i’m a

vocal coach

so i work with professional singers

recording artists

speakers actors and wondrous humans just

beginning their vocal journey

and it’s pretty amazing watching other

people find

and be empowered by their voice

so the voice is a muscle and we all know

that

muscles can be trained right they can be

built

in fact it takes around 100 different

muscles

to speak or to sing so we’re not simply

born with a voice

and that’s all we get but we have the

power to shift it in a multitude of ways

some of the artists that i work with

have the most amazing

beautiful powerful wonderful voices

are the ones that have worked it

built an understanding of it

started to trust it and did not stop it

this is all i got the voice is run by

the

the laryngeal motor cortex in the brain

so that simply means it uses motor

function

so that’s similar to the muscles that we

use when we learn how to ride a bike

or run snowboard dance in the hallway

so you no matter who you

are you can learn how to

sing and if that doesn’t resonate with

you

that’s okay but you can also learn how

to speak

and i don’t mean language but i mean

with

power grounding

pitch control

one of the best ways that you can learn

how to control your voice

is by learning breath control so a good

example of this is with a client of mine

when they were at a speaking engagement

in front of 600 of their peers

so they were wearing their fitbit that

day and they told me they

looked down at it and they noticed that

their heart rate was 120 beats per

minute

so that’s a lot of adrenaline and

heightened emotion

i’m sure all of us can remember a time

when our hearts started racing faster

maybe we started breathing a little more

shallow and our voice was getting a

little shaky and trembly

but we remembered some of the breathing

exercises that we do

so i want you to try this with me

take a deep breath in

release all of your air

now don’t breathe back in yet but hold

it out for five

four three two

one breathe back in

[Music]

release it again

hold it out for eight seven

six five four relax your body

three two one

breathe back in and release it out

awesome so they continued to do this

while they walked up on stage while they

put their

papers down and they grabbed their

microphone

and they looked down at their fitbit and

they noticed that their heartbeat was

82 beats per minute so

we have this incredible power and these

tools

to control our experiences

a more extreme example of how powerful

understanding the voice and building the

voice is

is in an audio recording that i’m going

to show you right away

so this is a wonderful client that i

work with

she’s a mom she is an educator

and she’s a singer and sometimes she

loses her voice during heightened

emotional stressful

situations so last year she was dealing

with some pretty hard stuff

and she lost her voice completely

but together we were able to bring back

her voice

using voice science and vocal

rehabilitation techniques

it was pretty amazing so i want you to

listen to this

i don’t really have a low range

pretty much amazing because i have a

full voice again it’s sore

my throat is really sore um but i do

have a full voice again

now you might be wondering how did they

bring her voice back

what did they do so i thought i would

show you some ways you can work out your

voice today

so let’s just get grounded you can

either stand or sit whatever feels

natural

and i’m gonna remind you about the thing

we did earlier it’s called a vocal

vacuum

so take a deep breath in release out

your air

and hold it out for five seconds

now you could also hold it out for eight

or ten and repeat

and what this does is it actually slows

down your heart rate

stops adrenaline production and it

starts to calm and ground you

the second thing we’re going to do is

we’re going to take our pointer fingers

and we’re going to put them behind our

ears so i want you to find

this little divot or that little kind of

hole behind your ears

and press in and slightly down and

forward

towards your jaw so you might be feeling

a little bit of tension

a little bit of pain that’s quite normal

a lot of people

hold that here but just breathe

and you can either do little pulses

you could do little circles or you could

hold and breathe

but this affects our voice it affects

our vocal freedom

and our tone

awesome

the third thing i want you to do is a

side bend

so you’re going to take a gentle side

bend and it’s not about going really

flexible

but it’s more about connecting to your

side body

so take your hand put it on your rib

cage

and see if you can feel yourself

breathing into that portion

so this is important for singing or for

speaking

because it starts to expand the

intercostal muscles

stretches the cartilage opens up the rib

cage

or the home of your lungs so that you

can breathe more

feel that expansion awesome now

swap to the other side breathe into this

part of your body

and something i like to ask the people

that i work with

when they’re working or loving their

voice is to also

maybe say out loud or in their mind

my voice matters

i deserve to be heard my voice is good

i’m a badass wondrous warrior

whatever resonates with you but there’s

power

in the voice in our mind as well so go

back center

relax do a little dance relax those

shoulders

and now we’re going to go into some

sound production

so if you want you could pause this

video go grab a straw and a bottle of

water

and we’re going to build your vocal cord

muscle

so you’re going to take a straw now the

smaller the straw the more

workout you’re going to get but i would

start with a regular size straw at first

we’re going to plug our nose and we’re

going to do something called a freedom

slide so freedom slides simply means you

get to create your own pitch

your body your instrument your voice

knows what it can do

and what it needs to do so it could be a

low slide

high one

[Music]

or maybe you don’t feel quite

comfortable to do that that’s okay

you could also speak through the straw

and that’s going to build your vocal

muscle as well

[Music]

so i’m plugging my nose just so that i’m

only going through the straw but

eventually you can unplug and make sure

it doesn’t go through your nose the next

thing we’re going to do is we’re going

to grab our water

and we’re going to build our lungs we’re

going to build those amazing lungs of

yours

so we’re going to literally blow through

the water like little kids

and we’re going to take a deep breath

and blow as long as you can

so maybe that’s 10 to 20 seconds at

first

but you can build your lung capacity and

you can get it to 30

45 maybe in a month a minute

so let’s try slow deep breath

and blow in the water

awesome the last thing we’re going to do

for your voice today

is we’re going to create sound through

water so we’re going to combine

with the water blowing now i want to i

want you to imagine you’re in a swimming

pool

right and you’re trying to run through

the pool you’re a lot slower in the pool

than out of the pool because there’s all

that resistance

all that resistance from the water so

when we sing through the water

you’re actually utilizing that

resistance

it creates back pressure and your throat

actually gets a nice massage so it’s

going to massage your throat muscles

it feels really good so just create some

freedom slides or speak

awesome now you’ve loved that voice of

yours you’re starting to build the

muscle

build your lungs starting to connect

more with it

so if you want to start training your

voice you can try this five-minute vocal

love workout

for five times a week for the next few

weeks

so i really believe in training the

voice with the combination of science

and soul i love watching people grow

when we do athletic voice science

like that water resistance training

straw phonation

we do a lot of exercises that build the

vocal cord muscle

expand the range build the lungs shift

the color

and the tone and so forth but

the really beautiful thing that i’ve

noticed

is that when someone’s starting to build

their physical voice

it usually coincides with them starting

to build

and uncover their holistic voice

their authentic voice their courage

it takes a lot of courage to sing at an

open mic or

on a karaoke night or post on tick tock

perhaps speak at a meeting in an

audition

or on a date singing or speaking in

front of others

is some of the greatest fears out there

i can tell you right now if we were

alive i would be feeling

a lot of feelings so

if sharing our voice with others

has the power to make us feel so

vulnerable

i’ve noticed and i’ve seen building our

voice

has the power to make us so much more

brave

and grounded and share more of ourselves

one of my favorite examples of this is

of a long time client

she is an executive in the corporate

world she’s starting to

build her own business and she came to

me about 10 years ago in her early 40s

she said she’d always wanted to sing she

didn’t know how

but she was willing to learn she also

told me that she had previously taken

lessons

and she was told that she would never

really grow and she would never

hit a high c now if you don’t know what

a high c

is it’s simply kind of like a home run

or a three point

shot so it’s a goal note for a lot of

singers

i was 23 and super feisty and passionate

at the time

and i remember being at my piano and

turning and looking

and saying no that’s not right

the voice is a muscle and muscles can be

trained

if you’re willing to show up work hard

and be vulnerable

but yeah we can build you that voice we

can get that high seat

she would say that it wasn’t easy for

her it didn’t feel natural to sing

but she showed up every single week

and she started to see little growth and

then

in a few months she actually hit that

high c

and then in a few years she started

singing in front of other people

and now a few years later she’s writing

her own songs and she just recorded her

first song

i recently asked her what has building

your voice done for you

and she said to me building my voice

has shown me that i am so much more than

just

one thing you see

she felt pigeonholed out of college as

an administrative worker

she said herself that she put that label

on herself too

but throughout the process of learning

her voice

and starting to claim the names artist

musician singer she started recognizing

these other parts of herself

she told me that when she started to

think about becoming an entrepreneur and

a business owner

she said that was easy that was nothing

because she had already gone through

this journey of finding other

parts of her she

told me it also makes her sick thinking

that she could have stopped

before she even started because of what

someone said

or perhaps because she didn’t know that

this is something that could be built

she now claims that she is both artist

and business and she thinks that’s her

super power

and i do too so hopefully today

you’re starting to understand and know

that your voice can be built your

speaking voice

your singing voice the voice is a muscle

and muscles can be trained

and by building our physical voice

we can also build uncover

empower the voice of our

authentic self