Heather's Happy Voice Blog

EDIT     The Podcast "Happy Voice Conversations" is now available on all podcasting platforms! Please subscribe and help spread the word! We also have a Facebook page   https://www.facebook.com/voicepod  and community on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/happyvoice_podcast Like to be featured guest?     Happy Voice Conversations explore people's relationship with their voice. If you have a story to share please get in touch. Original Blog post I will be producing a series of Podcasts starting in 2019.  The content will be based on my 25 years coaching experience, research and exploration of ideas around people's relationship with their voice, on a professional, personal and emotional level. I will also be in conversation with voice practitioners, singers, speakers, healers, thinkers and inviting people to tell their vocal stories I wanted to share some of my early ideas and notes, below, with this in mind:...

A young woman I teach went off to sing her first professional "session" today. I have no doubt it will be the first of many! Although she is an accomplished and confident singer,  she was shocked how her nerves played havoc with her body and mind, before she even left the house.  She called to ask me what to do. I thought I would share my advice... Firstly - Understand what's going on: Nerves, adrenaline, butterflies, nausea, shakiness, wobbly knees, shallow breathing, needing a wee..  These (charming!) symptoms are all natural responses to fear, excitement or other emotional arousal.  They are part of the body's primitive "fight, flight or freeze" response to danger, signalled by the amygdala in the brain.  Oxygen pumps to your muscles,  so you're ready to run and react in super-fast time. Great for saving you from a stampeding woolly mammoth, but singing a jingle for a TV commercial? Not so much. (Alas, the amygdala doesn't k...