Vocal Science: Holistically Speaking... Voice Restoration through Mindset Transformation and, nonetheless, the whole Life Alteration…

Attending to clients who were in desperate need of voice repair for so many years, I have never seen so many people who not only had their voices compromised, but also their whole lives (their mental and emotional state), had appeared quite challenged. Some of them, of course, were more stable and more present then others.

Those whose mental and emotional state was, to say the least, quite shaky, had a much harder time achieving the holistic transformation of their emotions; and, nonetheless, also achieving their altered way of thinking.  Nevertheless, they even had a hard time accepting their newly sounding voice, as some of them had completely forgotten how their real voice actually sounded before they discovered that they had acquired a voice/Vocal Disorder. 

So... somebody just lost their voice…? So what, you may ask? “Let’s find a way to bring it back and make everybody happy”, you would think! 

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy at all!

Many times before, I declared: “The voice is a reflection of the state of your being and (in most times) is the identification of who you actually are.”

Such "tragedy" as the loss of one’s voice, could affect the whole state of being of that person. The sufferer has lost his/her communication tool which, obviously, no one would be happy about. The person becomes sad, upset and eventually becomes depressed and often ceases communication with the outer world. Now, due to that, his/her relationships are in danger; friends are lost due to lack of communication and the spouses (who are actually trying to offer invaluable support) can often get rejected. 

And then the whole saga begins…

To give you an example:

Just in the recent past, a very young-looking, 50 year old Toronto musician entered my studio with quite severe voice damage. He has been singing in a band on and off for the last 30 years and acquired quite a few bad habits which had actually cost him his singing voice. I thought, “Wow!  It’s right up my alley to help him to restore his Voice and put him back on stage to do what he loves to do the most” – Fronting a Country-Rock band.  

So I began to do my assessment and evaluation of him and his voice and found out, very shortly, that the person in front of me actually did not know where he was coming or going, so to speak. It was very difficult for me to collect his “consciousness”, presence and emotions - all in one place.

If the person in question is completely out of balance, it would be virtually impossible for me to get to the root of the problem and then begin the process of recovering his voice, which, in this particular case, had been deeply buried. I would have to bring it onto the surface and balance it accordingly, taking into consideration his physical, emotional and mental state. With great difficulty, almost 2 hours later, my assistant, my client and I began to hear the difference in the sound of his voice. By that time, his voice was quite lifted, structured, placed and projected to its aimed destination.

It seemed to be that my client was in the process of understanding where his voice was when he first entered my studio and where he arrived with his voice after his wholesome vocal mechanism started to work to his advantage.  I had been very blunt with him and told him the absolute truth about what I thought of his inner state and his voice condition. On that note, he revealed, at the end of the session that he had just gone through a quite difficult divorce, which had probably added to his already fragile emotional state. 

With the Vocal Science method in my possession, I was more than certain that I could help him on every level.  I advised him that he would need at least 30 hours of instruction, counselling and natural herbal and homeopathic treatment. Since he was local, I was even ready to start with just an introductory/exploratory 10-hour course to make it easier for him financially and emotionally. 

Unfortunately, at this time, he said that he was unable to embark even on a 10-hour course and treatment. Then, on a later date, he wrote us an e-mail stating exactly that: "I think that if I don't sing at all, my voice will heal itself…"

That came after he spoke for over an hour with me on the phone and then spent over two hours with me in person. Needless to say, I got puzzled for a minute or two…

But then I understood that all of my observations of this potential client were more than correct. He, obviously, wanted "change without any change" (in a manner of speaking); as he obviously was afraid of any conceivable change whatsoever!  So he created a story that I was the one who told him to keep out of singing to fix his voice…? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Go figure!

Honestly, I have never heard such nonsense from any of my clients ever before!

He has been suffering from this voice inadequacy for over 4 years and had been "through the ringer", no doubt. He has been seeing a lot of medical professionals and speech therapists as such. So obviously, he was in a "little mixed-up" state of mind. And also, evidently, his state of mind, body, soul and, (nevertheless) voice was indicating that his whole being was completely out of balance on every level.

I, actually (if I was given the chance to work on his voice restoration) would not only be able to fix his voice, but also I would be able to put him back in his, so to speak, “vocal shoes”, (A direct quote by one of my former voice repair clients). i.e., put him back on stage to front the country-rock band, as he had always desired!

Nevertheless... The conclusion of all of this is; "no matter how you slice it", it would still be inadequate without the presence of the human totality.