We started the day with theory lessons on how the muscles essential to our voice moves, which in other words are the muscles we will want to be protected such that our voice will not be affected. Having such information will probably allow us to prioritize which muscles to carefully stretch in our warm-up exercises and also how we can try to train those muscles to produce a better voice. I thought the reason why we might stumble over our words or find difficulty in pronouncing our words accurately was that the muscles essential for helping us articulate were stiff from not using them or from misusing them. My mind could not help thinking back to when my dad was describing how much he ached from riding a horse as muscles ached badly in places he never knew had muscles. I guess that must be what will happen should we misuse our voice on a frequent level. When we got to discussing what puberty does to our voice, I realized that it was what happened to my friend back then because he sounded like he’s got a sore throat the whole time.
Chuck (2016, November). Vocal folds photograph.
Manzoor, T. (2014, January) Laryngeal muscles photograph.
All muscles relax during the period of time in which we sleep, so our voice gets noticeably deeper. Hence if the voice muscles are properly relaxed, the indication will be that we will sound deeper than we usually do. An effective method to do so would be to find the lowest hum we can do without breaking up by placing a hand on our chest to feel the vibration. The voice muscles will thus be identified by the brain and we will be able to manipulate our voice muscles. Following that, we will be able to stretch our mouth and voice muscles together by saying ‘queue e, queue ahh’. Pronouncing the word ‘queue’ will allow our mouth to stretch widely before closing, saying the letter ‘e’ will stretch out our mouth again and pronouncing ‘ahh’ as deeply as we can open out our voice muscles (Baker, 2015). Having tried the method personally, I find it to be really easy and I could hear a difference after spending about 5 minutes stretching.
The posture we hold is very important as well as I tried doing the stretching while lying on the bed, but I suddenly could not make the low hum. Coincidentally, this ties in with what Prof Matt mentioned regarding the inter-connecting muscles throughout our body! Having a pillow on my back pushed my spine towards my chest and restricted the volume of air that I could hold. Arching my neck caused the neck muscles to pull back and applied pressure on my throat, which further restricted me from making more sounds.
Perry (2013, October). Cognitive Behavioural Therapies picture.
During the dissociation exercise, I realised that I’m holding on to my worries and anxiety quite strongly because they felt like a kite flying above my head, but the strings will never snap away, only mildly tugging on to the back of my shoulders wherever I go. It was a moment of clarity where I had the feeling that I need to address my concerns directly to weaken the strings before I can try to temporarily let them go. As for the mild hypnosis exercise, being able to lie on the ground while trying to relax did help a lot more because an unrestrained shiver went through my body when a gust of cold air hit me. I was not able to imagine the sun and heat because of the air conditioning and ended up with a pitch-black sky where invisible waves turned me into dust slowly until all that is left is my consciousness. The attempt to remain relaxed on the floor left me feeling slightly sleepy but the brief moment of rest made me feel much energized.
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