3 Tips for Better Quality Speaking

One of my pet peeves in speaking is listening to a speaker whose voice is raspy--as in "I went to a rock concert last night and screamed my lungs out" raspy.

If you plan on speaking as a career, then you really need to preserve your commodity.  Vocal health is such an important factor in your ability to, well, speak that it will be a blog or podcast entry unto itself.

The beginnings of vocal preservation go deeper than just your throat.  They go down to your lungs--and actually, further, to your diaphragm.

When we're born, we breathe from our diaphragms.  Somewhere around the age of 2, we cease breathing correctly and begin breathing in a manner called "clavicular breathing."  The clavical is the shoulder bone.  It runs along the top of your chest--shoulder to shoulder.  Clavicular breathing is breathing from the upper part of your lungs, usually characterized by the raising and lowering of your clavical (shoulders).  Most people breathe in this manner.

Why is this bad?  A variety of reasons, including an insufficient intake of usable oxygen (meaning, you have to breathe more rapidly in order to attain the proper amount of oxygen for brain function), and unsupported speaking or singing.

When you breath shallowly, your voice becomes strained and your throat may begin to hurt after a duration of time (most likely an hour).  Your vocal chords are muscles that must exert force to create sound.  As your body works in harmony to communicate (the process is actually QUITE complex), you may find your voice getting tired or strained in some manner.  This is bad.  Very, very bad.

But!  There is hope!

As with any "muscle sculpting" program, you can sculpt the muscles of your diaphragm and vocal chords to produce quality sound every time you use them.  Follow these 3 tips below for better quality speaking:

1. Warm Up.  When you roll out of bed in the morning, before even saying hello, warm up your voice.  Hum; do tongue twisters; stretch your face.  The more relaxed your muscles, the better quality speaking you will do.
2. Diaphragmatic Breathing.  This is a learned skill.  It does not take long for it to become a natural way of breathing, but it does take work.  Lie on your back and put three heavy books on your stomach.  Push those books upward as you breath in and keep them in the up position as you hiss the air out of your lungs.  Check out the DVD from Berklee Workshop for more information.
3. Home Remedies.  When in trouble, remember your voice box is a muscle.  It has been my experience as both a speaker and a vocalist that drinking Lipton Tea with a teaspoon of white vinegar and enough honey to kill that taste, vocal silence, mineral ice on the throat with a scarf wrapped around it, and rest have dispersed my laryngitis quickly (usually overnight).  Everyone is different, however.  The tea, I know, works for most people.  Avoid cough drops that numb your throat.  If you can't feel your muscles, you can't feel the damage being done to them.  Play it safe and just stay silent.

Just by following these three tips, you can extend the life of your voice by 10 years!  Enjoy and have a happy and healthy vocal day!