Taking care of your voice is a practice that you might not think about in the same way as you think about overall health, but there are a lot of similarities. Choosing well-being over excess physical and emotional stress has a powerful effect on your body and your voice. If you’ve ever had vocal fatigue from overusing your voice or a sore throat from blocking emotions such as sadness or anger, you will know exactly what effect those stress factors have.
Although we don’t always put it into practice, most of us know what to do for our physical well being. It’s a matter of education and making good choices. Become aware of what you need to do for your vocal health and understand that what your voice needs may be different from someone else’s needs.
Here are the top six factors for taking care of your voice in order of priority.
Good Vocal Technique
Although you may think that vocal technique is just for singers, this is more important than any other factor for everyone. Knowing and using good vocal technique is essential to the long term health of your voice. It will help you avoid problems and ending up in a crisis situation. Watch for signs that your voice is out of balance: if you have a chronic sore throat, if your voice tires easily, if it’s too nasal or too husky, you are putting stress on your vocal mechanism. Over time it can worsen if you reinforce the habit. A good voice coach can help you prevent this or even help you recover your whole voice if you feel any of these signs of vocal stress.
Warming Up Your Voice
Good vocal technique is a long term strategy. Warming up your voice before speaking or singing is an important short term strategy. Most people don’t think about it but even a few minutes of warm-up may help keep your voice healthy especially if you use it a lot. Even ten minutes in the shower in the morning or vocalizing on the way to work could make a tremendous difference to maintaining a healthy voice. Find a good vocal exercise CD or program that feels good and is easy to understand and use.
Pitch Modulation
People who don’t modulate the pitch of their voices sound monotone. When speaking in the normal course of your day, modulate the pitch so that you are not feeling any strain. Remember pitch modulation is not the same as modulating the volume. Raising your voice to be heard over noise causes fatigue even though you may not feel it for a while.
Whispering
Whispering is another thing that will cause strain because it’s extremely hard on the vocal folds. And if you have laryngitis, avoid talking altogether until you are well again, even if it means carrying a notepad and pen with you to communicate. Better yet take some time off if you can.
What Affects Your Voice?
Anything that is not good for the body in general is not good for the voice so use common sense when it comes to the consumption of alcohol, caffeine, or cigarettes. Certain foods will affect your voice adversely as well. One common food that many people react to is the dairy category. Others are nuts, wheat for some people, even certain juices. If you’ve identified food allergies, all of your body including your vocal apparatus will react to them. Although for a small percentage of the population, the effect is dramatic and involves a trip to emergency, for most the effect is minor. Nonetheless, it can mean your voice is less than it could be.
A Voice Timeout
If you can, give your voice a time-out, especially if your work involves heavy use of it, such as phone sales. Find a way to rest it for a few hours. It’s the same as any other part of you and it needs a break from work.
Good vocal production and vocal care mean more endurance, more resonance and a more satisfying experience with your voice.
