***Vocal Abuse: Unless You Change How You Place Your Voice, It Will Never Go Away

I recently received an email from a man who runs a museum in Australia inquiring whether he could include my blog posts in his newsletters for his museum guides. Why would a museum guide need information on the voice? Because his employees often speak non-stop throughout their day.

Anyone who talks for great lengths of time, be it politicians, ministers, public speakers, trainers, coaches, teachers, professors, and the like, rely on their voice for their living. But vocal abuse does not just affect people in these professions. It can happen to those who root for their favorite sports teams and those who yell for their kid’s soccer or football team.

If you are suffering from chronic hoarseness or a persistent sore throat and you are not sick, the chances are likely that you have vocal abuse. The problem with this type of abuse is that it will not go away on its own. If you continue with the same practices that brought about the abuse, it will continue and in many cases get worse. Unfortunately, worse can mean permanent damage.

The only way to stop the abuse is to learn to place your voice differently. Currently you are probably using only 4 of your 5 resonators to produce voiced sound which places a tremendous amount of strain or stress on your larynx (voice box) and the pharynx (throat). Those 4 resonators include your throat, voice box, mouth and nasal cavities. When you speak, each one of those cavities vibrate.

By learning to use your chest cavity (your 5th and largest resonator) as your primary sounding board, you will find the abuse promptly ending because you are relieving the stress on both your larynx and pharynx. It truly is as simple as that.

A man with whom I worked, who was in his later 60’s, was suffering from vocal abuse because his volunteer job required him to talk on the phone all day. After my 2-day voice training workshop, he found the abuse was gone and phoned me the next week because he could not believe the difference in how he was feeling. The same thing happened to a man who runs several webinars a week. Talking on the phone throughout his day and then pushing his voice continually for 60-90 minute webinars was creating too much strain on his throat and he found he was quite hoarse by the end of the day. Today, he has no problems speaking for as long as he needs to.

Learn to use your chest cavity as your primary sounding board and the abuse will stop. It really works.