HOW ABOUT YOUR VOICE?

In this day and age, western culture is familiar with the importance of mind and body. Also EQ (Emotional Intelligence) seems to be on the rise and spirituality is trying to make its way in. However our voices are a bit more mysterious. Considering how frequent we use our voices and how little knowledge we have about them; i thought it might be useful to share some information i was lucky enough to gain, with the internet. This is a summary of the things i learned in an Erasmus+ Training Course, focusing on the voice. Before i start, i’d like to remind you something. The course was following non-formal education which means there were very few sessions of learning by listening, most of the time we were learning by doing and working on our own individual case. So that’s what i’m capable of telling here.

1 | Anatomy Behind The Magic

Apparently for a simple sound to come up; we need our diaphragm, spine, our back, chest, jaw, palates -there are two-, tongue, lips and of course vocal chords to work in collaboration. No, i didn’t forget about the neck; Gabi -the trainer- said it’s the same muscle as the shoulders so... Add shoulders to the list! The core of the whole process is optimal breathing, then comes resonating and lastly, articulating. Breathing properly means using our diaphragm properly. It’s a muscle and is located around 3 fingers above our belly button. Of course, inside the body, right below lungs. An optimal breath feels like our rip cage doesn’t move while inhaling/exhaling but our belly does. Try lying on the floor backstroke and just relax and observe how your body moves while breathing, it should give you an idea and then you can try to mimic it while standing. Now… Resonation… It means being on the same frequency and reflecting. Apparently if the bones in our spine, back, chest and palate resonate better; the sound will come out stronger. Also it’ll be way easier to speak because now we have their support. Have you ever experienced the situation when someone sitting next to you is speaking and you feel the couch vibrating? It’s their spine and back, resonating! We’re closing this chapter with articulation. It means whatever we’re saying, saying it very clearly; making every letter have its proper moment. Actors of this show are jaw, cheeks, tongue and lips. Because everything except the jaw is a muscle in this case; to improve, we need to think like a bodybuilder and practice hard-to-say-phrases regularly. Other than that, we worked on muscles that are on the root of the tongue and also lips. Easy! Just stick your tongue out until you feel the burn and stay like that. Then for lips, blow some big big kisses. Also i know a simple exercise; put a pen between your upper and lower teeth and just speak. Don’t put it far in the back though, we don’t want a tensed jaw. Behind 4 upper-teeth would be fine, Gabi said. To relax the jaw; rub your hands together like there is some cream in between and gently massage the jaw area.

2 | Get Your Body, Vocal Chords And The Space Ready

There are different options but I’ll tell you what i like to do, okay? There are some parts in our body that needs to wake up and be ready to be used, some parts need to be relaxed and some parts should vibrate. We want shoulders and jaw to be relaxed, not tensed. If the jaw gets tense, i already told you how to take care of it. The thing that should vibrate is our vocal chords, below i will be telling you about the parts that should get ready and relax. But for this process to be a vocal warm-up, instead of an exercise; you need to hum. Pretend there is a ping pong ball in your mouth and say “mmmmm...” All. This. Time. So we start with some movement; move everywhere for a couple of seconds, for example you can shake and jump -“Shake It Out” like Taylor says-. Second; our diaphragm, back and chest needs a little bit of extra care. So using our hands, we move our diaphragm -honestly the upper belly-; we gently hit our upper back with fists, do the same for the chest -like a gentle Tarzan-; at last, we massage lips. Before applying these, we learned something called “neutral position”, apparently it’s the best posture to have when you are warming your voice up. Our feet are just as wide as our hip and parallel to each other; our knees are not flexed, they are like "mambo knees", we can shake our hip easily; our spine, from hip to head, is all straight like there is a string attached to the ceiling, hanging us like a puppet; we roll our shoulders backwards and now we have an open chest; lastly we shake our head just like we do when we’re saying “yes yes yes, no no no, maybe maybe maybe” so that shoulders relax... Done! So, let’s remember from the top: We started humming, we moved everywhere a little bit, we took the neutral position, we moved and hit some places, massaged lips and then here comes "the present" -as Gabi says-. Open your mouth and let “maaaaaa” fill the air. I believe you can simply repeat the sequence a couple times and you are good to go. If you do these where you’re going to perform, the space will also be warmed-up. That was really interesting for me to learn but if you know what you are doing, you can turn the space on your behalf. How magical! If all these are too much to take for you, there is another option: yawn. Man, do our bodies know what they are doing...

3 | Take Care Of The Blessing

Let’s say that you have 24 hours before showtime. There are certain things to do and avoid to prepare your best voice. First of all, hydrate and sleep well. Secondly, starting from the morning; avoid fizzy drinks, caffeine and sugar. In addition to that if you have a running nose; avoid dairy products like milk, cheese, yoghurt etc. Apparently they make mucus go wild, but we want clear breathing canals, right? If you feel your mouth getting dry during the speech; you can gently bite your tongue, especially two sides of it. This will send the signal to release more saliva. Lastly -i really have a hard time trying to explain this one but- there is something you can do to rest your voice: Making the sound of a creaking door in a low pitched way. Or of course... Stay silent. It’s show time, good luck!
*For more detail, here are some names to check out: F.M. Alexander, Roy Hart, Linklater.

berak