A Voice Apart

Dealing with various voice disorders is my specialty. Over many years, I have attended to hundreds, if not thousands of people with different voice injuries of their speaking and/or singing voices. In general, they were all, one way or another, physically and, nevertheless, emotionally distraught. What was different about them was their reactional response to their voice disorder and its consequences. What was in common that all of them had lost their confidence, especially the singers. And even after the restoration of their voices, their physical demeanour has been expressing the tightness and fear, to say the least. And even after the voice sounded as good, or even better than before, the performance aspect has been significantly lost, as they could not bring themselves out of their shell and loosen themselves up in order to produce a required performance quality. In Russia, we have a saying: “The good dancers do not show their sweat”. Speaking of dancers, they work really hard a...

  Vocal Surgery for Spasmodic Dysphonia? Against all odds... However, let’s find out if it is bound to work…? Recently, a Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD) sufferer’s email came to our attention - whereas the person revealed to us that he actually had undergone what’s called a SLAD-R vocal operation. He said that it did help him with the spasms; but after the fact, all of that had turned into Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) . That was the part he said he had desperately tried to get rid of. However, he said: “The strength of my voice is still weak and gets weaker and raspier as the day progresses as I talk more.” “I have done some sessions with some speech therapists… I do all the drills that I’ve been taught like the neck stretch exercises, straw phonation, lip trills, etc.” “I get temporary relief… my throat doesn't feel as constricted and I notice that resonant voice on the roof of my mouth… but that feeling is very short-lived and I’m back to a strained voice…” Now I would like to ask yo...

Doctors Said Yes to Vocal Surgery, We Said No… We Can Treat It Non-Surgically - PART 1 Doctors said that your voice disorder is not treatable at all… We said…, YES IT IS!! Who we are … We are natural, holistic and alternative practitioners specializing in non-surgical voice repair. With our own Vocal Science™ method, we can treat and even cure the majority of voice disorders, voice problems and vocal issues. We have a vocal technique like no other! It has been tested, tried and proven for many years. For the last 3 and a half decades, and to date, we had gotten over 25.000 people coming through our doors! Nevertheless, our Vocal Science™ method is our pride and joy and we have been able to achieve completely unprecedented results employing our best efforts, extensive experience and expertise day after day, month after month and year after year… We’ve saved peoples' health, speaking and singing voices, their livelihood, their musical careers and even their...

Natural and Alternative Treatments and Rehabilitation for most Voice Problems, Vocal Issues and Voice Disorders. Over 36 years, the estimated amount of speech/singing students and voice repair clients who passed through our doors is now over 25,000 and counting... Lately, though, our business, which once was mostly known for its professional voice/vocal coaching, became 90 percent about Non-Surgical Voice Repair . Why is that; you, my reader, may ask? Because people nowadays became extremely stressed, thus totally out of balance; and moreover, effected by losing their employment, their trade, their purpose in life and, given all of the above, their relationships and marriages, to put it mildly. Due to all of these, those people (in general) acquire a dysfunctional thyroid - which, in holistic teaching, represents suppressed emotions….  Also,   some of them, due to anger they’ve adopted because of the unforeseen situations, developed a problem with their l...

Vernon (left) - Brenda (Middle) Diana (Right) Completeion of 30 hours of non-surgical voice repair. - Case Study #2: Brenda Mooers of Calgary, Alberta Canada - Brenda arrived to our establishment on November 1st 2018. She is a 51 year old woman who has been going through hormonal changes. Sometime prior to inquiring about our services, Brenda went to a medical doctor and presented her problem to him. Her doctor prescribed testosterone needles, which had to be administered to Brenda by her husband on an everyday basis. But… incidentally, the doctor prescribed a triple dose of the latter (3 milligrams instead of 0.3 milligrams). Moreover, this very doctor never ordered a blood test to detect the exact amount of testosterone she would actually need (if any…?). So our doomed client diligently followed her doctor’s wrong instructions and suddenly discovered that her voice tone dropped 3 levels below her normal voice; and at that lower level position, her voice started to crack an...

Written by  Tushar Shukla of Netechnocrats.ltd. One in three stroke survivors can experience difficulties in communication. Even after an extended time period of post-stroke, survivors can achieve major breakthroughs in communication with regards to the improvement of quality of life and the quality of their voice. This can be done with the use of intensive and alternative forms of speech therapy. Difficulties that arise due to a stroke affect everyone in different ways. Here are some major points that you need to know: After a stroke, you may have difficulty in speaking, it may also be difficult to understand others when they speak. Reading and writing may be difficult. Your alternative speech therapist will work with you to develop a rehabilitation program. They can also suggest ways of  how to communicate more easily, and aids that can help.  Types of voice difficulties post stroke Aphasia: Difficulty in talking, reading, or understandin...

For many years, we have been attending to various people with speech problems, who were possessing some voice disorders like: Muscle Tension Dysphonia Spasmodic Dysphonia Polyps on the vocal cords Nodules on the vocal cords Cysts and lesions on the vocal cords Acid reflux & simply… strained vocal cords My answer to a question of "What do we mean by 'Speakaholics'?" would be to go ahead and beat all the bad vocal habits; and once it’s done, keep practicing (ongoing) the new adapted skills (instructed), the new adapted application of the speaking/singing voice, the new acquired diet/nutrition, newly acquired proper posture,  and  physical fitness in general. All of the above listed voice issues would cause the sufferer (to say the least) a hoarse and raspy voice, unclear enunciation and pronunciation and could even cause partial or total voice loss… Given all of the above described, these (listed above) and other voice problems suff...

We have many people inquiring about various voice disorders; but the most nasty of them I would qualify as Spasmodic Dysphonia – especially for sufferers whose speech has been severely compromised due to that disorder. The above-described voice disorder sufferers have been experiencing uncontrolled spasms in their voice, which sometimes also travels to their vocal anatomy from their chest or even their stomach! I could, perhaps, compare it to a form of epilepsy; and in this case, I personally gave it the name of “vocal epilepsy”. The sufferers of spasmodic dysphonia also often have difficulties to swallow their saliva and some foods for that matter. It is definitely a disorder of a neurological nature, but also (and I am quite sure of it) is, quite often, emotionally induced. Due to this fact, it often manifests in the various organs of one’s physical body; whereas, unfortunately, the human voice is not excluded. ‘Is this disorder curable’, you, my reader, may ask? My a...

For the last 2 and a half decades, we are more and more treating voice problems and also, sometimes, quite serious speech problems – the identification of which is  speech impediment. What is the difference between the two described above, you, my reader, may ask? There is definitely a difference between speaking voice problems (which are usually much easier to correct, as they are caused by a wrong application of one’s voice), and a speech impediment.  The former may cause voice disorders like: • Muscle Tension Dysphonia • Spasmodic Dysphonia • Vocal Cord Nodules, Polyps, Lesions, etc. As for a speech impediment, it is usually either some kind of a birth defect, (which directly effects the manner of the person’s speaking) or it is a consequence of some other diseases; like for example, stroke (pre or post condition) ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or the aftermath of any kind of accident occurrence. In the latter, the speech center of one’s brain ma...

I have to say that, in the past, the above sentences were not even up for discussion. Everybody (or almost everybody) were more then willing to “spread their wings, in a manner of speaking; and thus, unleash their voices and their spirits. Of course, to unleash the voice/spirit is easier said then done… It is especially difficult if the person already has some kind of a voice disorder or even just voice/vocal issues. Obviously, some cases are more difficult then others (with or without voice problems ), but some are nearly impossible to deal with; and it’s not the voice issues I am talking about. I am talking about people who are nearly IMPOSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH!! How so, you may ask..? The fact is, that especially lately, a lot of people (being stranded financially and thus, emotionally) had lost their trust in anything and everything. They, in a manner of speaking, became Soul-dead! How sad is that? Given the political situation in the U.S. and in Europe , people now...

When I reached Canada in 1980 and almost right from the start began teaching voice (speaking and singing), I noticed that, in general, nobody per say paid attention to the way they were speaking/singing or, for that matter, even conducting a proper posture while trying to deliver a message. Some of them, while speaking, were literally falling backwards, arching their upper back to the wall behind them, rather than to me standing right in front of them. Needless to say that by doing that, they were throwing their speech backwards and the voice would be falling to the back of their vocal cords, which is quite deadly for the vocal health . Nevertheless, the words were coming out slurred and un-pronounced; thus, their enunciation was quite poor. A lot of them were complaining of dry and/or full of mucous throats. Some of them were complaining of the actual pain and discomfort in their vocal boxes. Today, 33 years later, the problems still persist. The difference is that I am not s...

If you think that it does not, ask us how you can obtain it! Everybody lately is speaking about a “WOW factor”. During the vocal competitions like American/British Idol or shows like America Got Talent or Britain Got Talent, judges constantly looking for that WOW factor in their contestants. What do they mean by that? Well, first of all, they are looking for a good song suitable for the contestant and, of course, good and original interpretation of that song. Obviously a sharp performance with the proper technical and artistic merit should move the contestant to the top of his/her category. Similarly, during the speech presentation, unfortunately, a lot of times you want to “fall asleep”, a the presenter sounds monotone; and thus, very boring. He/she often does not have the proper emphasis and inflections in their sentences and, therefore, sometimes you can not even make out what they are actually talking about. This is especially annoying when those so called “presenter...