A Voice Apart

How so; you, my reader, may ask? Our answer is; what else is new…? This story is about our former non-surgical voice repair client, Issac H – a Jewish community leader from Brooklyn, New York.  Once medical doctors had diagnosed Issac with such a disorder as Sulcus Vocalis ( a gap between the vocal cords), they strongly suggested to Issac to undergo a vocal operation.  On that note, Issac visited numerous speech therapists and speech pathologists…  Needless to say, he did not receive any meaningful help. Being only 36 years old at the time, he nearly lost his hope to be able to speak – using his normal voice again.  When he contacted us, he became very emotional and claimed that he was looking for somebody like us for quite a few years now.  He mentioned that he is a very significant person in the Jewish community and jokingly said:  “You know, Diana, we Jewish people are a very loud nation…”   Listening to his story, we, with absolute certainty, said...

Yes, it could! I, my reader, would like to introduce you to some stories that we had come across. In the year 2014, I got an e-mail from a person who said that she had been diagnosed with Muscle Tension Dysphonia . In that e-mail, she said that her speaking voice was quite compromised and that she was seeking help in that regard.  As usual, I responded and asked her to give me a call so that I could hear her voice - and would know what I would potentially be dealing with in order to help her to the best of my knowledge. She had never called; thus it was left up in the air… In the year 2015, I got yet another e-mail from her, reminding me that we had already communicated (via e-mail) a year ago. In this e-mail, she was revealing that now, her Muscle Tension Dysphonia had turned into Spasmodic Dysphonia. She also warned me that her speaking voice got exponentially worse. I have an extremely good memory, and I could recall right away who she was. So right from ...

Spasmodic Dysphonia is a very nasty voice disorder which is, conventionally speaking, not treatable, let alone curable. Via my observations of many years of practise, it looks like it happens more to women rather than to men. I think that men are less emotional, less loud and/or much less flamboyant in their nature. Interestingly enough, practically all of the women who came to me for treatment, before acquiring “SD” (according to them) were very active, very loud and yet very sensitive emotionally; and then… ”suddenly” they began to feel changes in their voice… It gradually began to deteriorate… Those women, naturally, were very-much surprised experiencing the latter; and thus not agreeing with the obvious fact of the above-mentioned matter. They began to push and pull their voice trying to bring it to the surface while, concurrently, doing further damage to their vocal anatomy… Needless to say, after producing these very damaging manipulations with their voice, one day, it may b...

Strained Vocal Cords, Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) or Spasmodic Dysphonia for that matter... Is there a connection between them? Strained vocal cords - a serious voice problem that could lead to various, more serious voice disorders like Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) or even  Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD). What causes strained vocal cords in the first place? Overuse and misuse of one's voice; speaking very loudly, screaming, yelling and forcing the voice to its maximum capacity. Vocal Strain is also likely to present itself due to professional and occupational hazards, naturally affecting certain professionals - like teachers, fitness instructors, worship leaders at churches, lawyers, politicians etc. Also, it affects those who, for example, choose to participate in various chorus groups and big gatherings. In addition, radio and TV personnel, voice-over actors, as well as public speakers - due to the nature of their professions, are also greatly affected...

From our side, a Holistic Approach to Rectifying all of the above and more! Now, with over 36 years of business, we thought that we had seen it all. As it appears to be, the above is actually not the case. In the previous years, we had never seen people who have no control whatsoever of their physical bodies; nor we had seen people who absolutely do not know English phonetics. We do see a majority of clients who are entering our establishment and who developed very bad habits over the years; especially while trying to conduct their physical body with obvious inability to “walk and chew the gum at the same time” in a manner of speaking. The fact is that the Vocal Science™ method and its very unique vocal technique requires the person to use certain body movements while walking and talking (or singing) at the same time.   Also, a lot of our clients, especially those with speaking voice problems, possess the wrong formation of the words to begin with. While pronouncing cert...

Please read below the synopsis of our present voice repair client and SD sufferer, Tanya G. We have just received a client suffering from the Spasmodic Dysphonia voice disorder . She came to us (just 4 days ago) from another side of the planet - New Zealand! We’ve learned that it took her over 22 hours to fly to us - to Toronto, Canada. To date, Tanya, under my thorough guidance, completed 20 hours of a very intense voice instruction coupled with a natural herbal treatment. In my estimate, our client’s Spasmodic Dysphonia disorder originally was determined to be between stage 1 and even possibly 2. In my previous blog about the same voice matter, I specified that in “my books”, this very nasty voice disorder possesses 4 stages, whereas the stage 3 and 4 could be somewhat treatable, but usually never curable (at least to my knowledge and experience). Tanya and I are working very hard, executing very detailed instructions (bringing it almost to forensic science)… The pr...