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