Vocal Rehab for Seniors as well as for Everybody Else for that Matter? Let's Find Out What I Mean By That...

When I work with people (Seniors) over 65 years old on their voice problems, I very often have to literally revive them back to life before starting to work on their voice. When these people finally ended up under my care, they, most of the time, looked, felt and acted quite vulnerable, so to speak.

Prior to getting under my care, they had a lot of health issues, not to mention, dealing with other aspects of life like; Their relationships, finances, marriages, children and etc.
Besides the above described, some of those (now Golden Aged) people, had undergone various surgeries, including vocal operations. However, instead of expecting to get better, they, instead, acquired some usual, and not to mention, strange side effects... 

Several years ago I attended to one of my clients who told me that due to her very disturbed upper and lower respiratory organs, she began to lose her voice. She also said that the tone of her voice now is much deeper than it used to be. Nevertheless, to me, she sounded raspy and hoarse.

Needless to say, her pronunciation and enunciation were also severely compromised. Her posture was very slouched and her upper back was not straight while, concurrently, her pelvis was very much tilted forward. She, nonetheless, had been distributing her weight right into her lower back and apparently, had been also experiencing low back pains on top of everything else...

Her whole demeanour definitely did not appear happy, let alone upright.

Obviously, given the above, her spirit was very low, as her heart and soul (not to mention physical aspects of it) were compromised for nearly three decades. So I, no doubt, had to deal with her whole being while concurrently fixing her voice. Everybody who has read my publications before may know that my theory is such that the voice is the expression of who you are and, no doubt, is the identification of the state of one’s being.

So, you, my reader, could easily see and understand that all of those components -- mental, physical, emotional -- and yes, vocal are completely and totally interconnected. Once the voice started to sound brighter, more lifted, and much clearer, the person’s being becomes much more alive and rejuvenated in every aspect, for that matter...
No doubt, my client started to look younger while the skin on her face began literally glowing!

With all of the voice and other instructions she received from me, her posture became much straighter, which, in turn, helped the sound of her voice to be correctly structured, not to mention, very much so projected to its aimed destination.

If you visualize a violin player who holds his violin crooked, it would mean that he would obviously would play the wrong notes while using the wrong strings. Nevertheless, the proper position of the instrument plays a crucial role with respect to the production of the right sound. Similarly, the speaking/singing sound has to be projected up, above and forward - relatively and respectively to the person’s height, weight and centre. With that said, if the body is inclined backwards instead of forward, the sound would be drawn to the back of the throat and if it gets to be delivered at all, it would be delivered to the wall... at best!

My previously doomed student went to numerous doctors and specialists, naturopaths and homeopaths and never got any help for the last 27 years. She is 68 years old now and, unfortunately, she spent almost half of her life dealing with her health and voice problems.

The latest news she had received was before seeing me, where she got diagnosed by two ENT specialists; One of whom told her she would need surgery ("God knows for what?" I exclaimed) and the other revealed to her that she had muscle tension dysphonia (MTD)…?

With regards to the latter diagnosis, and if they were right, she would have never needed the surgery, as MTD cannot be fixed by surgical interference.

But in my opinion, she had none of those things.
Evidently, her voice reflected all of her health problems from the past and also, as a consequence, it became damaged during the process of dealing with her health and other related problems. 

Go figure...