Non-Surgical Voice Repair… “Backed up” Voice Anyone? If So, You Obviously Need Need A "Plumber" To Fix It.

My business, “The Royans Professional Vocal School and The Royans Institute for Non-Surgical Voice Repair” use to be located in a quite prestigious area in the northeast part of Toronto, Canada. However, in the building where my studio was located, the washrooms were not kept up to standards, and the toilets, quite often, were backed up.

To serve our clients better and provide them with safe and clean facilities, we had to contact the management of the building more often than we would have liked to.

They fixed it…, and then, the saga began all over again...

For the last 4 decades, I have been mostly specializing in Non-Surgical Voice Repair for speakers and singers. Quite a few of them had been coming into that very studio with shut-down voices and quite often, with, so to speak, shut-down bodies.

The memory brings one of my voice repair client's case:

The person came from the US with a very low-drawn, hardly understandable, speaking voice, and right at the beginning of the session, (when I asked her what she ate before she saw me), she announced to me that right before coming to my studio for her session, she ate white bread, cheese, ham and mayonnaise…

She indeed sounded like all of the above blended together. It was clear to me that the problem was not per say only vocal, but definitely emotional, and it was, no doubt, significantly related to her everyday diet as well. The well-known saying, “you are what you eat”, was indeed present in her case.

The body definitely contained a high volume of mucous and yeast. The voice got literally "stuck" in that heavy and thick muss and was unable to get projected out to the surface. So the first protocol was to do the full cleanse of the body and even most importantly, clean up the flora inside of her vocal box.

The second protocol was to identify the source of the high emotional and stressful 'make-up' of her entire body. The thyroid, in fact, upon the definition of the holistic teaching, represents suppressed emotions and hurts (colloquially speaking). That issue had to be addressed as well.

And finally, the voice work begun and resulted in a much clearer, much more understandable, much better pronounced and higher volume voice. Thus, the mission was accomplished!!!

The holistic approach to the person as a whole cured the cause of the voice disorder, while scientifically and, nevertheless, naturally, addressing the symptoms. In this instance (and figuratively speaking), her "toilet" was officially "plunged"; and now, due to that fact (and THANK GOD) the person's voice was brought up to its usable state!

Unfortunately, in real sense, our management of our building had not been addressing the cause of the plugged-up toilets; and thus, we did not have an assurance that it would not become unusable again tomorrow... or the next day.

On the contrary, since we addressed not just the symptoms, but also identified the cause of the persons’ voice issues, we are certain that if the now former client/student of ours will continue her protocol with respect to the diet, also to more-contained emotions and proper use (as she was taught intensely) of her newly found and recovered voice, she will not necessarily have to come back to us again for a heavy duty work, but maybe only for the light maintenance, or only, perhaps, just for a social visit...

Diana Yampolsky is the Master Vocal Coach, Studio Vocal Producer, and Non-Surgical Voice Repair Specialist at The Royans Professional Vocal School in Toronto, Canada. She is also the creator of the Vocal Science (TM) method and Talent Scout & Director for the 4 A.M. Talent Development and Artist Management Group Inc.
If you find yourself struggling with vocal performance or are in need of voice repair, you can reach Diana by email or phone at 416-857-8741