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    Finding Your Voice: A Voice Doctor's Holistic Guide for Voice Users, Teachers, and Therapists
    Finding Your Voice: A Voice Doctor's Holistic Guide for Voice Users, Teachers, and Therapists
    Finding Your Voice: A Voice Doctor's Holistic Guide for Voice Users, Teachers, and Therapists
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    Finding Your Voice: A Voice Doctor's Holistic Guide for Voice Users, Teachers, and Therapists

    By Brian W. Hands

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    About this ebook

    Finally, a book that addresses the wear, tear, and care of the voice in a simple yet scientifically grounded way -- a way that will help you strengthen and protect your voice.

    This concise yet comprehensive book includes:
    • Easy-to-understand chapters on voice production 101 and energy 101
    • A description of what happens during a visit to the voice doctor
    • A chapter on the origins of the most common type of vocal strain
    • Tips on proper breath support, hydration, and vocal exercises
    Finding Your Voice blends the author's understanding of Western medicine and Eastern energy systems. With this book in hand, you can avoid misusing or abusing your voice -- or make your way back to vocal health if you do.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBPS Books
    Release dateOct 15, 2009
    ISBN9781927483428
    Finding Your Voice: A Voice Doctor's Holistic Guide for Voice Users, Teachers, and Therapists
    Author

    Brian W. Hands

    Brian W. Hands, MD, FRCS(C), leads Vox Cura -- Voice Care Specialists, a medical voice centre in Toronto. He is a long-time voice consultant for the Canadian Opera Company, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Mirvish Productions, and major record labels.

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    • 5/5
      I was skeptical when i started reading it but it really changed the way i look at the voice. Thank you doctor!

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Finding Your Voice - Brian W. Hands

    INTRODUCTION

    As a medical doctor, I am trained to concentrate on my patients’ physical symptoms and problems. I have found, however, that to treat these properly, I must consider more than their vocal and breathing apparatus and their medical symptoms and conditions; I must also take into account their emotional and spiritual concerns. If voice production involves the whole person, then whatever goes wrong in a patient’s life — and hence with their psyche — will affect their body and their voice.

    This makes sense. Voice problems are not isolated to disease in the throat or the larynx or voice box areas. In fact, most of the patients I see in my office rarely turn out to have disease of the vocal cords from disordered anatomy. Their difficulties are almost always caused by the compensatory actions they have taken to create sound when they cannot use their voice fully or do not understand how to use it properly.

    These actions — for example, trying to muscle their sound with the muscles of their neck and throat, instead of breathing with the powerhouse of the diaphragm and supporting their sound with their abdominal muscles — are generally caused by stress and insufficient breath support. This tends to have a deeper source elsewhere in the body, which in turn has been affected by anxiety and stress — and on it goes.

    I believe that every aspect of one’s self-care, lifestyle, and emotional environment matters in vocal health: what one eats and drinks; how one sits, walks, and sleeps; and even how one thinks. All of these factors have an impact on the voice, so much so that they can actually shut it down. If something is wrong at any point in this system, the voice can fatigue easily and become pinched, strained, or uncomfortable. Not only will this affect the quality of the tone produced, it could lead to a chronic voice

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