How Not To Lose Your Voice

How to lose your voice? Well, as a voice coach, the first thing I want to say is that you really don't want to lose your voice. What most people don't know is that the voice is incredibly delicate and sensitive, and that if you start to get a kind of husky sound, or your voice starts to go or if it's even feeling sore, you should really get it checked out because what can happen if you have continuing problems with your voice is that you get what's called nodules. Now, if you were to clap your hands very fast for a minute, your hands would get quite sore.

And nodules are a little bit like your larynx which is doing a movement, a vibration like that. If it does it at too much tension, then you get little blisters like if you would if you were clapping very fast. They appear on the larynx.

And that can be very difficult to trace. At some stage, people sometimes have an operation on the larynx. But that is a really last resort.

If you do start to get what's called nodules, you need to see a speech therapist, and you really need to do the exercises that they give you. But that's quite an extreme end of the scale. Some people just lose their voice because they have a cold or they have laryngitis, or some people lose their voice because may be they're shouting in a bar.

Now, if you wake up one morning and your voice is gone, it can really help to do a couple of things. First thing is take a big bowl of water, hot boiling water, and put a towel over your head and do what's called steaming which is that you inhale the steam and that can help the throat a little bit. Another thing that is often recommended is that you have a salt gargle.

You take some salt water and you put it and you gargle it at the back of your throat, and that can help to disinfect your throat if you got laryngitis. If it's an illness and if it persists, then go and see the doctor because that may be something that they can help with. Now, there is a different kind of sore throat, which is a sore throat that comes not from an illness but because you're not using your voice properly.

Often, when I've worked with teachers, because teachers have to deal with very big groups of people under lots of pressure, they often lose their voice. In fact, I think teaching is the profession that loses its voice most. Now, things that cause people to lose their voice under pressure is often that when we're tensed, our shoulders come up and we stick our head out like a chicken and we start to speak like that.

Now, if you do that for a long period of time, you will definitely lose your voice. And if that's something you know you're doing, first step, sort out your posture. Make sure that your shoulders are as relaxed as possible, that your spine is straight, that your jaw is relaxed, and then make sure that you're really using your voice from centre, and it will be worth listening to the video How to Project Your Voice.

That will help. If your voice is persistently sore and you wake up every morning with a feeling you got a sore throat, then it's really important to go to the doctor. If you go to the doctor, they'll refer you to a speech therapist and a speech therapist will help you to use your voice effectively.

It's crucial to do the exercises they give you each day. There's also a good network called the Voice Care Network which is online, which has teachers all over the UK, and will be able to recommend teachers beyond the UK, who can help you to use your voice better. But in a nutshell, if you start to lose your voice, take it seriously because your voice is very precious, and once you've really damaged it, it's very hard to get its full power back.

So, protect it as much as you can. And that's how to lose your voice, or rather from a voice coach, how definitely not to lose your voice.
.