Yoga for Voice & Voicemoves Yoga
Yoga can directly impact the voice by its effects on body alignment, breathing pattens and a range of unhelpful muscle tension and other physical manifestations of psychological stress.
‘Shifting state’ away from stress can directly impact the voice, This is particularly the case if you have become stuck in a maladaptive stress response. Certain yoga techniques can specifically improve self awareness and focus making it easier to learn vocal techniques.
As a Speech Pathologist and dual trained Yoga instructor, Carmel has 25 years experience supporting voice therapy clients with yoga postures, breathing and other yoga techniques to optimise voice therapy outcomes.
Based on her yoga and other somatic trainings and ‘practise-based evidence’, Carmel has refined the way she uses certain yoga practises linked with vocal techniques to optimise your voice and learning in voice therapy. Many are surprised at the powerful shifts that can occur through simple postural changes (such as aligning the feet), which impact voice production through the skeletal , muscular and fascial systems. In addition to releasing unhelpful tension, we often need to strengthen and learn how to actively recruit certain muscles,
If you already practise yoga , Carmel can assess your yoga practice and suggest modifications and incorporation of vocal exercises, so that your yoga and voice therapy practise support each other. Some people can actually practise yoga in a way that can be detrimental for voice production by increasing holding patterns in breathing or within the body. Practises such s Ujjaiyi breath generally require modification so as to not increase constriction in the throat.
Carmel may also refer you to a physiotherapist / specialist pilates instructor to extend and refine the alignment, strength and functional use of your body and breathing to support your voice.
Carmel works face-to-face and online, and accepts referrals from other Speech Pathologists wanting to support their clients with a yoga-based approach as an adjunct to their voice therapy.
The Development of Voicemoves Yoga
As a Yoga teacher, Carmel first developed Vociemoves yoga in 1999 whilst completing her Diploma of Ki- yoga (Japanese meridian based Yoga strongly influenced by Japanese actor Masahiro Oki. Carmel ran classes for actors and acting students, designed to support and balance the meridians traditionally used to improve voice production. She undertook additional research on the acupuncture points used to treat singers in China and Japan.
Discovering the powerful effects of yoga on her own voice, inspired Carmel to enrol in a masters by research program at the Sydney University ‘National Voice Centre’. She consequently presented at Australian Voice Association and Speech Pathology Australia Conferences and taught workshops for Speech Pathologists.
As she taught more Voicemoves yoga classes and workshops, many participants reported the additional benefits of the voice work on their sense of well-being.
What is VoiceMoves Yoga?
Voicemoves Yoga incorporates vocal technique, movement, breathing and subtle yoga practises with other self regulation practises such as heart coherence, mindfulness & self compassion, to both free the voice and create a sense of inner harmony.
When we explore new ways of using our musculature to produce voice, we chart new territories and create pathways for expression for our authentic voice. Certain yoga practices can align us in subtle ways that make it easier to access vocal settings with the shifts occurring ‘from the inside out’. Awareness of how we created these shifts and the accompanying body – mind states can provide a rich resource that can be integrated to achieve lasting change.
Voicemoves Yoga processes can help release habitual contraction patterns and move us into the ‘flow-state’ of embodied expanded awareness.
Voicemoves Yoga has two aims:
Firstly, to free, develop, and empower the voice.
Secondly, to teach an array of yoga, and self-regulation practises together with vocal and subtle yoga techniques that can shine light on and help transform habitual patterns of contraction into aligned presence and expression.
What happens in Voicemoves Yoga sessions?
Voicemoves Yoga sessions, workshops and courses can be tailored to your vocal and life goals. Elements may include:
- Exploring the inter-relationship between physical posture, breathing and the voice.
- Exploring how aligning the ‘central channel’ and releasing jaw, tongue, face & throat tension effects both our voices and states of awareness.
- Energising the body and engaging core musculature to support an embodied voice.
- Learning to re-posture the ‘vocal tract’ and discover the power of specific vocal techniques to bring more resonance and clarity, beginning with the voice and extending to the whole being.
- Developing tools to create balance in various energy lines and centres, and support an aligned voice.
Accessing awareness expansion and inner harmony with a range of tools including chakra based (hatha) and meridian based (ki-yoga) perspectives- Learning acupressure points and meridian stretch techniques, that may impact the voice according to the traditional chinese medicine system (TCM).
- Exploring how certain yoga practises influence the health, strength and vitality of the body-vocal instrument.
- Deepening awareness of how shifts in the body/mind effect the body-vocal instrument we explore the science behind and the application of generative gratitude, mindfulness, self – compassion and heart coherence.