Anatomy and Physiology Series: Respiratory physiology at rest and during speech (or singing)

Most A&P classes typically start off with anatomy, but I feel that some introduction into physiology at the start can be a big help bringing the "big picture" together as you learn. So here we go! 

Now, the very most basic biological function of respiration is pretty obvious to most of us today: It takes in oxygen and diffuses it to the blood stream while getting rid of carbon dioxide during the gas exchange in the lungs. So how does the gas get into the lungs to begin with? Physics, of course!...okay, there's some muscular effort that takes place too, but we'll get to that later...

The lungs are a very spongy tissue that would deflate if they weren't attached to the surrounding tissue in some way. The lungs, inner thorax*, and the diaphragm are all covered in pleural (connective tissue) lining, but the lining around the lungs maintains a strong negative pressure, called intrapleural pressure, which sort of "suction cups" the lungs to the tissue. This pressure is always negative...which is a good thing. If it ever changes, you end up with a collapsed lung, and, as anyone who's watched House one too many times knows, a collapsed lung ain't a very good thing to have. 

*Quick anatomy side-note, if you didn't click the link: The thorax is the name given the space between our head and our abdomen, minus the neck...so basically our chest. See? It's that "name something fancy for specificity's sake" coming back to bite us!

Thanks to this intrapleural pressure, the lungs both expand when the thorax expands and decrease in size as the thorax decreases. That is very convenient for us, because it means we can take in air during our resting state relatively easily. How do we do that? (Warning: You're about to be physics-ed...um, yeah.) In a state of rest, inhalation is where we exert force, i.e. muscular effort, to overcome the effects of gravity on pulling our chest down. So we've got to contract something to expand our thorax (hint: This is where the diaphragm and external intercostals come into play). Expiration, while at rest, utilizes the principles of elasticity and gravity which make it a passive act. (Elasticity is also a principle from physics where a material put under strain or stress will return to it's original state after the stress is removed. We'll come back to it when we talk about the physics of sound in the future. But what's most important for now is to understand that your muscles are put under strain by your nervous system when they are told to contract, and they will return to their original resting state once active contraction ceases.) 

The fancy-pants name for the principle governing the intake of air into the lungs is called Boyle's law, which states that as the as the volume of a chamber (for us, the lungs) increases, the pressure inside the chamber will decrease. So when you expand your thorax through use of your diaphragm and external intercostal muscles (among others), the volume of the lungs increases, air pressure inside the lungs decrease and becomes more negative than atmospheric pressure. Air will always move from areas of high pressure to areas of lower pressure, and so, when negative (less) pressure is created in the lungs, air rushes in. This is inhalation at work when you're just sitting and hanging out on your couch, like I am. Exhalation, in my current state, involves the relaxation of my diaphragm and external intercostal muscles, which, due to gravity, decreases the volume of my lungs by decreasing their size. This causes air pressure in my lungs to increase and become more positive than atmospheric pressure, which then causes the air molecules to rush out to freedom!(...or where ever those air molecules like to go on a Saturday night. I'm not judging.) The key to this: Air will always move from an area of higher pressure (smaller cavity) to an area of lower pressure (larger cavity). Might want to remember that for later, cause pressure is a big deal when we get to laryngeal physiology too.

Big farting deal, right? What the heck does this have to do with breathing for singing or speech, or whichever it is I do on a daily basis? Well, it does have a good amount to do with how we want to use our muscles, and which muscles we want to use while we sing. Here's a fun little exercise from my A&P textbook I sighted below*: "Close your eyes and breathe in as deeply as you can and hold it for a few seconds. Feel how much pressure you are fighting to hold your chest in that position. Next, take a quiet breath (interjection: Like me sitting on the couch) and hold it: Do you feel the difference in pressure?" Yes. Yes I do. Thank you Drs. Seikel, King, and Drumright!

So why does that happen? Well, the forces that restore your thorax to it's resting position, elasticity and gravity, generate their own pressure on the situation, much like when your manager's manager shows up at your crummy day job. The recoil that happens on exhalation obeys those forces rather well when left alone, but if you want to extend that exhalation, you've got to exert more effort. Like my lovely little text book says here, "The greater you distend or distort the material, the greater is the force required to hold it in that position and the greater is the force with which it returns to rest." So the more you want to hold back your exhale, the more muscular effort you will need to hold it back, and if you want to keep it at a steady flow while extending it, you've got to exert a great deal of flexible yet strong control, since what your body really wants is to give in to elasticity and gravity and let out a fast, big "sigh" of breath (much like what I was doing in my my-teacher-is-in-such-great-shape-that-she-has-no-idea-how-much-she-is-kicking-our-butts yoga class earlier today). 

This is why "breath support" is such a HUGE deal in the singing world. This, and little bit of the relationship between the abdomen and the larynx that we'll go over later, is the key basis of any excellent vocal technique. 

*And if you guys would love to have this material in the oh-so-user-friendly format of a $100+ textbook, here it is: Seikel, J. A., King, D. W., & Drumright, D. G. (2010). Anatomy and physiology for speech, language, and hearing. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar.

--But all joking aside, this is a fantastic book that I highly recommend to any serious voice-user and/or teacher of voice. I'm not ever selling my copy to anyone...unless I'm just upgrading to the next edition when they come out with it.

Anatomy and Physiology Series: Anatomy and Physiology Terminology and orientation

Hello all!  It has been a little too long since I posted something of significant substance, at least for me.  So I will now begin on my first blog series on the anatomy and physiology of our respiratory, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and articulatory systems.  It might be a bit of a long haul, but I feel this information can never be over-emphasized to the singing world, and indeed, to all professional voice-users out there (that includes you too school teachers, and God bless ya for doing what you do!).  Why from the bottom up?  Well, things actually get more complicated the further up you go, so it's a nice way to "ease" into this series, before I whomp you with too much A&P terminology. Also, I will be including an overlay of what the biological function of these systems are for us, because sometimes, that biological function runs counter to what we want when we sing (mainly thinking of the pharyngeal systems here).  


Speaking of terminology, a little anatomy/physiology orientation might be in order.  We're going to be talking about a lot of muscles, and I might include some innervation as well (nerves that run to muscles), so here's some background into names of muscles.  Muscles are named either for function (i.e. anything with "levator" in it's name would elevate something, "depressor" would lower something, etc.), for point of origin and insertion (which would correspond to similarly-named parts of the skeletal structure), for how the fibers run ("oblique" muscles run at an angle to the midline of the body, "rectus" runs with or parallel to the midline, etc.), and/or for the size of the muscle (i.e. "maximus" would be a large muscle, "brevis" would be a short muscle, etc.).  So the names don't always make a lot of sense unless you know what it's being named for.  (Here's a little test:  What would you think the "levator veli palatini" is named for?  Well, the "levator" part is elevation, the "veli" has to do with the "velum," or soft palate, and the "palatini" comes from the palatine bone.  So this guy is the muscle that elevates the soft palate.  Pretty cool, huh?)


Spinal nerves (the guys mostly responsible for respiration) are named and numbered according to which vertebrae they exit from (we'll go vertebrae numbers/names further down this entry).  Cranial nerves are much more confusing, (thanks past A&P research scientists!), having some named for function, some for where they coarse in the body ("vagus" meanings "wandering," and it travels far and wide to it's destination points in the body), and some for how many parts they have ("trigeminal" comes from having three branches...kinda saw that one coming, didn't ya?).  Cranial nerves are all numbered (thankfully!) from one to twelve from the origin at the front of the brain (#1:  Olfactory, in charge of your sense of smell) to the back (#12:  Hypoglossal, in charge of most tongue movement).  Why cranial and not spinal?  Well, cranial nerves all branch off of some area above the foramen magnum, which literally means "giant hole," at the base of your skull.  Anything above this puppy is considered a part of your brain stem (all the way up to your frontal cortex), and what comes out below it is considered your spine.  

A little bone orientation:  A foramen is an opening (or hole), processes are projections in the bone (usually a point of attachment for a muscle or another bone), and "articulation" (when talking about bones) is a point where bones connect...so it's bascally a joint.  (Why not just call it a joint?  Well, a point of articulation usually a little more specific, like just the skeletal structure, since "joints" properly consist of connective tissue like ligaments and tendons.  When you don't want to talk about that silly connective tissue, you use "point of articulation" instead.)


Vertebrae:  These guys are classified by name and number.  Anyone who's ever had back trouble have probably heard of their names.  There are seven cervical vertebrae (with #1 and #2 being your "Atlas" and "Axis" respectively), twelve thoracic vertebrae (these guys articulate with the ribs), five lumbar vertebrae, five sacral vertebrae (they're in the back of your pelvic region), and 3-5 (usually five) coccygeal vertebrae which are fused together (this is your "tail bone.")  So when I get to rib movement and/or start throwing out spinal nerves at ya, you'll know where to refer to (and I'll probably link it anyway if you're like me and forget).  


For next time:
Important respiratory skeletal structures:  The spine, the 12 paired ribs (24 total, and yes, the number is the same for women as for men), the sternum with it's three parts (top-down: Manubrium, body, and xiphoid process), the clavicle (or "collar bone"), pelvis, and the scapula (as a point of muscular attachment for some respiratory muscles.)  

Singing after a break: Why getting back into the game sucks

Time for some honesty:  I didn't sing much this semester.  It's a little hard for the voice majors I know to understand since they sing all the time at school, but when you're in a non-music major, music starts to take a back-seat to your studies.  I sang a couple of concerts back in March and April, and since then...nada.  So I decided this week to get myself back in the game.  


If there is ever a time when you get reminded of all your bad vocal habits, it's when you start singing again after a break.  I think in part it's because you think you can just jump back in where you were, but the truth is, you've got to ease back in, at least for a couple of days, before you can sing like you used to.  If we think about this in terms of daily workouts, I think most people know that if they stop jogging, weight lifting, or fitness classes for a few weeks and do absolutely nothing that the first day back will hurt!  Your muscles will be weaker and your stamina just won't be there like it was before.  Don't know why I always forget it's the same with my voice, since it is muscle after all!


So here's what I've figured out as a recuperating singer/voice teacher:  First, allow the laryngeal muscles to balance out again and the resonance will come shortly after, with some work.  (Or, to follow the South Park model:  Step 1:  Balance laryngeal musculature, Step 2: ?, Step 3:  Perfect singing!...maybe that's just what it feels like to me sometimes.)


Here's another confession:  I've always had easy high notes.  I'm one of those freakish sopranos with the easy high notes that drives the rest of the folks trying to get high notes insane.  (Sorry about that.)  When I come back from a break, however, while I still have the high notes, the stamina is just not there at all!  I can't sing up there for very long before I feel tired.  So I've learned to just not do that to myself.  I go back to practicing really short bursts of time and that's it, until I feel I can go longer without tiring myself.  


However, the very first practice session back in the game:  I always, always wear myself out!  Singing just usually feels so good after a break.  I find myself enjoying it so much that I just don't stop until I can't sing anymore.  This is like my little "bowl of ice cream" I allow myself that one day.  I just allow myself to enjoy the heck out of it, even if it's not perfect by any means.  By allowing myself this moment of "singing for singing's sake", I gain so much motivation to go back and practice again the next day.  I give myself the motivation to do those short, intentional practice sessions that aren't that much fun.  I remind myself of how great singing is in general, and I'm reminded of how great it is when my voice is really in shape by struggling a little through what was easy a few weeks ago.  (Now, I do always allow myself a good 20 minutes or so of vocal rest, along with laryngeal massages, at the end to curb the fatigue a little for the day.)


Does it take long for my muscular balance to come back?  No.  Takes about 2-3 days of intentional practicing at most.  (Just like it takes your body about 2-3 workouts before you're back in that fitness class for real.)  Is that time going to increase as I get older?  Absolutely.  Heck, it used to only be one day before I was back when I was in my 20's, so the amount of time has already extended a little.  (And these are breaks of a few weeks, not a few years.)  But hitting that grind stone again after I've reminded myself why I need to hit it is worth my one day of vocal extravagance.  


My best advice for those coming back after a break:  Just enjoy singing a couple of times before you really hit the grind stone, cause the grind stone alone sorta sucks.




Next up:  The bad vocal habits I always, always have to work through every time I come back to singing.  Fun times. 

The science and responsibility of vocal training

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense." --Carl Sagan


As many of you may be realizing based on my past posts, I am training to be a scientist.  Through this lovely process, I am learning that being "scientific" about things really is more about a thought process than anything else.  Until I'm big enough to conduct my own studies, being scientific about the studies I read involves thinking critically about the quality of the study, the reliability of the results, and the decision whether or not to put those results into my practice.  To put it another way, I am training to be hyper-critical of the evidence that either supports or contradicts any hypothesis I might think of.  Where there is no evidence, I let my hypothesis remain just solely that and I don't hesitate to change what I think is right as soon as quality evidence is presented to contradict it.  This all leads me to wonder:  Why is this training not part of every pedagogy class in music, at least to some degree?


In the SLP field, there is a huge push for something called evidence-based practice.  This is a practice put in place in the other medical therapies, like physical and occupational, and the field of education, just to name a few.  The reason for a big push is there is relatively little evidence for the SLP field.  Part of this could be how far-reaching the field is as a whole.  I mean, you could be recuperating injured voices, working with neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson disease, improving children's language skills, working on speech problems like stuttering or apraxia, working with aphasia, or treating cases of dysphagia.  It is a really broad field!  At the end of the master's degree in SLP, you test for your ASHA license which tests your proficiency in the field as a whole.  After that, you've got to log in a certain number of training hours every year with ASHA to maintain your license.  If you specialize in voice, it would be logical for your training to be in that area and vice versa for any other area your specialize in.  Being able to discern quality evidence for your treatment plan from the body of evidence available is rather critical for your choice in on-going training in the field and for your responsibility to provide the best treatment you can for your clients.


This has led me to wonder why we don't train voice teachers to discern quality evidence from techniques lacking evidence, even if it's based on expert opinion and experience and not randomized control studies or meta-analyses.  Heck, a fair number of voice teachers aren't even trained up on the physiological intricacies of the vocal, pharyngeal, and articulatory systems well enough to understand current studies being published on those topics.  (Obviously, the excellent and well-educated teachers out there are the exception to this.)


Perhaps it is being in an artistic field that we tend to think of the best voice teachers as people who have the talent to teach.  We think of teaching as something that's ingrained, not taught.  While I do agree that the passion and desire for teaching can be based in innate talent, I would argue that what great teachers do instinctually can be taught, to some degree.  If students in SLP can be taught to think critically about the evidence for their treatments, then I believe music students can be taught that as well.  Obviously, this is not a field in which licensure demands you keep up on the current studies (which makes me wonder why don't we require ongoing education on voice/vocal technique at least from our university professors...), but the sense of responsibility to use the best techniques at your disposal to aid your students should be emphasized.  We like to think that so much responsibility lies on the student, and they do bear a great deal, but when it comes to what they are being taught and putting into practice, that lies with the teacher.


Perhaps there is an assumption that students are lazy if what you teach them doesn't work, but I think that is an irresponsible assumption to make.  When my voice was partially paralyzed, I'll be honest, I did stop "practicing" technique at a certain point in my path.  I didn't stop because I was lazy, I stopped because I wasn't making any progress no matter how much I practiced.  I stopped because it was frustrating and disheartening, and it was equally frustrating and dis hearting to have my (at that time) voice teacher to assume my laziness and not think to ask why I had just given up like that.  Was it my laziness or his/hers?  


Here's the other problem:  There are probably a lot of voice teachers still all aflutter over what some great voice scientist discovered twenty + years ago and basing much of their pedagogical ideals on that study.  In the SLP field, there is some great, great stuff from 20 + years ago that is still in practice because it works, there is a much larger body of evidence from 20 + years ago that has been disproven, that has never been recreated in another study (meaning that study lacks test-retest reliability), and/or has been proven not to generalize to the client's daily life.  If you're still practicing something that's been disproven or that was initially based in grand assumption then you're being irresponsible to your clients (in SLP).  I believe the same thing happens in our field as well.  


We assume things about our students and we assume things about vocal science that might not be totally reliable, and then we put a lid on it and don't think of changing our assumptions.  Or, because we didn't think the old studies from the 70's served any reliable purpose in the training of our voice or our students, we throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume voice science has nothing to offer operatic training.  I propose that those tendencies to make broad assumptions should be what gets trained out (or we at least attempt to train-out) of all of those thousands of voice students that go out into the world and teach to some degree.  We should feel enough love and respect for our field to make that effort, shouldn't we?

I have a gift...apparently

In the next two weeks, I would have presented four presentations worth significant portions of my class grades based on research I have done. One will be on a term paper I’ve written, and the others are in place of a term paper. I would be more worried about this, but I recently received a wonderful compliment from a very knowledgeable professor in the SLP field on my presentation skills that has calmed my fears, to a certain extent. (To be honest, I’m still a bit brain-blurry at receiving such a glowing review of my work. Coming from the field of music and being that “girl with the nice voice but with problems,” I’m not very used to receiving professional compliments. I’m just taking it as a sign I’m heading in the right direction.)

A few weeks ago, I gave a 10 minute presentation on an assigned research article as part of one of my classes.  Recently, the professor said that I had a real gift for teaching.  I had a great comfort level talking to the class, I was well-spoken, and she was thoroughly impressed.  She recommended I really consider getting a PhD in speech pathology to be a professor, which was something I was already considering, so it was very nice to have someone else suggest it unsolicited. 

Now, I don’t feel like I have some sort of “gift” for speaking in front of people.  In fact, from my perspective, I felt like I might have been giving too much info at some times and not going into enough detail at other times, but my classmates all said it was a very good presentation.  So now, I have a friend of mine who doesn’t feel she’s very good at presenting asking me for tips.  This got me thinking of why I was able to present that day so well, and I decided it’s directly related to my experiences as a singer. 

Obviously, I’ve become very comfortable standing in front of audiences, and I’ve cultivated the coveted demeanor of not looking nervous when I am nervous.  Those things came with time and a lot of performance experience, so that’s not going to help my friend out much at all.  But the thing that I decided was the biggest help is that I am very used to being judged on my performances.  The ability to stand and deliver, even when I know I’m being evaluated, judged, and graded based on what I say, has come directly from my training as a singer.  It’s really lovely to know that the years I spent training to be a professional performer are not wasted at all.  But something else from my experience in preparing presentations this semester crosses over to singing as well:  Preparation.

I was VERY prepared for that presentation.  I wanted to make sure I was standing up in front of the class as an “expert” on my topic rather than as a peer.  I knew if I could stand up there as an expert, I could make the experience informative and interesting for my classmates.  Maybe I got this from my training as a singer, but I think it’s more likely I got this from my desire to do well in my new field and the passion I feel for it.  But, as a singer, and especially as a professional, you MUST prepare just as well.  You must prepare so well for your list of arias, opera role, or recital, that you feel you are the expert on all of that music.  At least, that is what professionals do. 

This is one of the things I took as a sign that continuing on to be a professional opera singer, as was my original goal in life, was perhaps not the right path for me.  I remember sitting in the chorus at the local “big name” opera house where I live and realizing that I simply did not share the same level of passion for the nuances of the Italian language that our chorus master did.  Now, I did my job and made all the adjustments he requested, but I realized that the “big name” soloists singing the leads in this opera probably not only knew of those nuances, but had mastered them for their roles.  (Okay, maybe not the tenor, but the soprano I could believe absolutely had done her work!...and I’m sure it was just that one “bad apple” of a tenor, so no offense other tenors out there intended.)  This was right around the time that I was considering going to school for SLP, and this was one of the moments that made me realize I should go and do it.  I love singing.  I absolutely love singing!  But I love singing on MY terms.  (Honestly, this is what has empowered me to seek out a new career, while still working toward a polished, professional quality of singing I can do in my community…on my terms.  I get to pick the venue, the repertoire, and the terms of my performance.  And I really like it that way.)

So now, my friend has taken my advice to heart and recently felt "over prepared" for her presentation, and she did really well.  She began to realize the importance of preparing for your "performance," and the comfort level that preparation gives you in spite of your nerves.  But realizing that I’m finally going far enough with my preparation, that I'm going far enough with the "nuances" of my new field, that I feel so driven to being the expert in my field, and that I keep hungering to go further and further with the science and research brings this all back to this one thought:  I’m heading in the right direction.  And that feeling is so worth the effort. 

Personal note:  I might not be able to post too much in next two weeks due to it being “finals time” at my university, but I will be posting more on neuroscience, neural plasticity, basic physics I believe singers should know, and what the big deal with vocal fold efficiency is.  Thank you all for reading so far and for the great compliments.  I’ll try to get more posts up as the semester officially winds down. 

Neuroscience, I think I love you

I promise to get back to my singing journey, but as my semester is winding down, I've just got to say I freakin' love neuroanatomy and physiology!  If I could go back in time, I would totally be a neuroscientist of some sort right now.  (And why do we say "winding down" in reference to semesters?  Anyone who's ever been in college knows it should be "winding up" given all the projects, performances, term papers, and exams you have to do in a two-week time frame.)  But this post will be about singing...and neuroanatomy!  Woo hoo!

Currently in my anatomy and physiology of speech class, we are studying the most basic of neuroanatomy. As this is technically an undergraduate course in the speech pathology field, it really is more basic than a full-on neuro course.  Nonetheless, I am loving it!  How could you not see the way the brain communicates with itself and other parts of the body as fascinating?  And if you don't, maybe I can help bring it home to singing.

Let's start with the basic regions of the brain.  We all know, in one way or another, about our prefrontal cortex.  This is the area located right behind your forehead.  This is the seat of your decision making, personality, reasoning, and what philosophers call "qualia."  Qualia is the "what it's like to you" character of mental states.  It's the way YOU see the color red, smell a rose, etc.  The idea behind qualia is that every experience you have had is unique and individual to you, even if someone else was there.  It's undefinable...which would be why philosophers like it so much.  (Well, it's still pretty cool to the rest of us too.)  The frontal cortex is pretty much the "boss" of who we are.  It also sends signals out to the motor cortex when we cognitively command our body to do something, like dance, yoga, running, speaking, or singing.

As you can see up there in the brain image I posted, still in the frontal lobe of the brain is the primary motor cortex (called the "somamotor cortex" above).  This pretty much does what it's named for:  it sends the motor-coordination signals out from the brain (via a lot of different nerves) to the rest of your body.  Okay, just to set up my next point here's a quick little brain-fact:  the cortex is the upper "layer" of brain tissue that deals in higher functions.  The cortex is made up of six layers of different neurons with different jobs to do.  So, these layers vary in thickness throughout the cortex depending on what area is in charge of what.  In the primary motor cortex, the layer of neurons associated with projecting signals to motor centers beyond the cerebrum is at its thickest throughout the cortex.  Just as in the primary sensory cortex, the neurons associated with receiving information from other areas is at its thickest.  Pretty cool stuff, huh?  Also interesting in the motor cortex is the fact that larger regions of the cortex itself is in charge of fine-motor movements, such as the production of voice, and smaller regions do the gross motor movements, like moving your quadriceps.  Yup, even though your quadriceps are the larger muscles, the motor cortex assigns more space to finer movements of smaller muscles.  In light of that, here are a few cool facts for ya:  A single motor neuron triggers fewer than 10 muscle fibers in the muscles controlling eye movement. A single motor neuron for the calf muscle triggers 1000-2000 muscle fibers, but for the laryngeal motor unit, there are 2-3 muscle fibers per one single motor neuron.  That means there are more neurons devoted to moving the laryngeal muscles than your calf muscle and eye muscles.  (Did that blow your mind a little bit?  It did mine, but I'm a huge geek, so it's hard for me to tell if that's a normal response or not.)

In contrast, the primary sensory cortex doesn't have much space devoted to receiving sensory information from the larynx in comparison to some other areas of the body.  So if you're getting all frustrated because you can't "feel" what's happening in there, it's cause your brain has decided it didn't really need to know that much.  It didn't devote much space to receiving impulses from there.  But...your primary auditory cortex does send sensory information about the sounds it hears.  (Just my theory, but I think that's why it's so hard to "stop listening" to yourself as a singer.  You're entire speech system is governed by the information received from the auditory cortex.  It's known as the feedback loop, and it's very important in speech production.  For example, this is why it is very difficult for profoundly deaf people to speak intelligibly:  they are getting no information from the auditory to sensory cortex loop to inform the motor cortex of the proper motor planning for speech.)

So where am I going with all of this?  Now, this is so much more of a theory than actual researched fact, but I believe this is why "imagery" teaching works so well for some and so poorly for others.  It is why teachers who teach well with those techniques can alter their images student to student and why some students can thrive with one "imagery" teacher where others crash and burn.  So much of the imagery we use is dependent on our qualia of that image.  All our personal experiences and concepts are poured into the image.  Due to that, who knows what muscle coordination pattern is being sent to our motor cortex when we command our body to sing off of that image?  (For that matter, it's probably why one image works great for a little while and then stops working.  Our qualia of that image has shifted due to it's usage, and so the "command center" is sending a different command in relation to it.)  I also believe this is why imagery can be such a powerful teaching tool, when in the right hands.  The right image can really command the right coordination so much more quickly than trying to "sense" the right coordination.  Our frontal cortex is a direct link to our motor planning.  Our sensory cortex, which is already a little more "out of it" on the laryngeal side of things, sends it's information to the frontal cortex ,which then process it and sends out motor planning in response.  Truth is, even if your image is a scientific one, it's still an image that's working from frontal cortex to motor down to larynx and back up to your sensory/auditory cortex where to process repeats over and over again.  I'm personally having a lot of luck with having my high school students imagine the tilting of the thyroid cartilage as their cricothyroid contracts as they go into their higher range.  (The thought is not to think "vertically" and send the wrong vertical motor response which I think might have something to do with too much laryngeal elevation.)  But, this is still an image, right?  Who actually senses their cricothyroid while it contracts?  I know I don't.  I can also always back up any image I give with a scientific explanation of what I'm trying to get at.  That way, I can work with that student to figure out what image will work with their qualia and yield the muscle response I'm after in our lesson.

So next time a teacher or coach gives you an image that just ain't working, consult with your qualia, talk with your teacher, and see if you can find something that will work for you.  (And yes, I'm sure I will geek out a lot more about this neuroscience stuff along my new study path since I plan on making it part of my specialty.)

It IS a confidence issue

Let’s talk about the psychological effects of a vocal injury…or at least, the ones I experienced.  The more I teach, the more I realize that how you feel or think psychologically about singing really is 90% of the battle of learning how to sing.  And I know that about 99% of getting back into singing post-injury for me was a total mental game.

I had zero confidence in my singing at the time of my diagnosis.  I was never able to trust my voice, and it had betrayed me to a unforgivable point at the Met competition.  I pretty much wanted nothing to do with it.  But after therapy, my voice mended its ways and I had to begin to trust it.  Building that trust took a whole lot of time, and I still don’t trust it 100% of the time two years later.  I had to remind myself over and over that my voice WAS healthy, my voice COULD be trusted.  Thank God for a positive and encouraging teacher!  Positive encouragement isn’t just blowing smoke up the butts of those of us with injury.  It’s a vital part of our recovery!

About five months after my injury, I found I was constantly getting down on myself for still not getting my technique right.  My main problem I kept thinking was, “I know my voice was healthy, so it just should work, right?”  Getting my larynx in the right position was a struggle.  Keeping my pharyngeal space “open” was a struggle (still kinda is sometimes).  I failed over and over again to get things right for years, and now that my fundamental problem was healed, I was expecting to not fail at all.  Yet there I was, still “placing my sound” by tweaking my throat into funny ways.  My tongue was still bunching, and my jaw was still tight.  My confidence when performing was shot, because I knew my technique wouldn’t be perfect.  Ten years of always hitting a developmental wall had made me extremely impatient to get to a good place with my singing and my technique…never mind that almost no one sings with perfect technique all of the time and that it takes most people years to get close enough to “perfect” to be world class.

Some singers have great little mottos they say to themselves before they sing such as:  “This performance is going to be so fun” or “Please let my performance touch someone out there.”  And other singers have so much confidence or experience that they don’t even need silly little mottos.  They just do it.  Know what I would think before a performance?  “Please, just let my voice work!”  That’s what I would think.  You know how you’re not supposed to think about technique when you perform?  How it’s supposed to be on auto-pilot so that you can think about your character, emotions, musicality…?  Yeah, well, that still wasn’t happening for me.  It wasn’t happening because I didn’t know how to trust my voice.  I still expected it to be a traitor.  It also wasn’t happening because I still felt like a failure for not being able to figure out the right way to sing, even though my voice was better.  Never mind that it takes most people a few years to figure it out anyway.  Never mind that I was basically starting at square one after the injury, so it would take time.  I wanted my voice to work now!

You know what helped with my confidence?  Improving and solidifying my technique.  That allowed me to trust my voice because good technique made it reliable.  I really think that's one thing the "close to natural" talents out there in the operatic world have over those of us who struggle:  They have trust in a voice that is 100% reliable.  That takes a lot of the worry off the table.  I never realized how much pressure it is to sing with an unreliable voice until my voice became reliable.  It's such a revelation!  And the exhilaration of being able to finally, finally truly make music with my voice was so completely worth the struggle...I cannot even being to tell you!

Know what kept me going so that I would finally feel like I could use my voice to make music?  Positive encouragement from my teacher.  So, so vital to healing the psychological hurt I had experienced with my injury.  Being reminded of how far I had come and being reminded to be patient were such gifts during this time.  I was so used to being that girl with “a nice voice with problems” that I would fall back into that crippling mental state of always being that girl with the vocal issues.  And you simply cannot learn how to sing well if you’re crippled by negative labels and doubts, especially when those labels don’t apply to you anymore.

Another vital thing I did was change my moto before singing.  Instead of “I hope my voice works,” I started to say “My voice does work and will work, even if my technique is not perfect just yet.”  That really helped me when it came down to actually performing on my not-so-perfect technique with my healed-up voice.  I still got nervous as heck, but if it didn’t go perfectly, I was at least able to laugh it off as a fluke rather than as a sign of my incompetence.  Might seem like a little thing, but it was a big step in the right direction.

*Voice teachers, don’t babysit your singers or coddle them, but for your student's sake try to learn when they need some encouragement.  Students who sang on an injury, even if for a short amount of time, are going to need a lot of encouragement to get through the trauma.  And if encouragement doesn't seem to be cutting it, send us to a counselor.  The psychological impacts of vocal injury really should not be ignored or belittled.  But some of us were just put in the wrong “box” as a young singer, and we need someone to take the lid off for us before we can make any progress.