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Say Aaah! by Micki Nellis, February 13, 2006 When I landed at Connie Pike and Mike White's Voice Intensive in Apollo Beach, Florida, my psyche soaked up the sunshine and water and warmth and said "Aaah.!" During the four days, my breathing was worked on and straightened out by Mike, my voice was analyzed and pointed in the right direction by Connie, and I discovered that I love Karaoke. I changed. Maybe it had something to do with being plucked up from Texas and dropped down in a sunny retreat in totally different surroundings. All I know is that somewhere between the voice and breathing work and sunning by the pool overlooking the canal, sipping the green smoothies Mike made, doing the standing meditations and belting out "Your Cheatin' Heart" on the Karaoke, something broke loose in my personality. I enjoyed tremendously letting my southern drawl roll out those long honky tonk sounds. (I don't know how the listeners enjoyed it - they had this awestruck look on their faces - or was it a stricken look.) Connie said I'd been stuck, and I believe her. Stuck in my work, my role, my voice, my image, and stuck in a place where I was having no fun at all. Connie said with the voice, you start with what you can do well. I could laugh. She said I could start my sentences with a bit of excitement and a "Ha, ha --------." Now you must realize that back at home I fix computers and straighten out software. We fantasized how I could say to my customers "Ha, ha, you have a virus." Or maybe "Ha, ha, you need a new computer. Ha, ha go for the works. Ha ha, that'll take me three hours to fix." This sounds ridiculous, but it pointed up to me how stuck in my conversational habits I had become. All computer geeks speak in a monotone, low key, matter of fact voice. That's partly because you don't want to alarm your customers by varying your pitch and speed. That's bad for your voice. It's like a record player needle stuck in the same groove. I would have a completely different speaking manner if I were a salesperson. Then I would want to get people excited. But as a computer person diagnosing bad news on a computer, you seldom want to send your customers to the brink. And I realized that there are lots of times I don't even want to talk. Like when a customer calls me up and asks me to explain something I've been asked a million times and know that even if I explain it, he's not going to understand or remember. I fantasized about some answers I could give. Customer: "How does a computer work?" Me: "Works good." (I had a minister friend once who didn't understand the first thing about computers. He always asked "Why do I have to do it like that?" - Like it was a theological question. Finally I started telling him "Because that's the only way it's going to work." ) My voice had taken on the tone of someone who really doesn't want to talk. I used to have a friend who worked at the gas company doing collections. Once we forgot to pay our bill and she had to call us up. Her voice sounded like she'd rather be doing anything else in the world but reminding me to pay my gas bill. My voice has a lot of that in it. You find a little air and squeeze out the sounds with your throat muscles. I decided from now on I fix computers, I don't answer questions. If a customer wants handholding, I refer them to a friend who needs some extra money. The four days was a mixture of science, art, mechanics, and gut feelings. I had taken Mike's free breathing test before I went. I was breathing at a rate of 18 times a minute! I had an exhale of about one second. (How can you speak on the exhale if your exhale lasts only one second?) I had tried to breathe slower and deeper, and each time I would feel panic, air hunger. I had done yoga for three years. I never got the breathing right. I had read a lot on breathing, and had asked questions. I got a lot of different answers. Mike reached in his bag of tricks with his exercises, devices, and gut feelings, and suddenly I'm breathing at 5 or 6 times a minute, much deeper and calmer. I'm sleeping soundly, and I know how to relax myself. Since coming back home, I have successfully taken myself from panic mode to calm. I have been using the diaphragm strengthener, the straps, and exercises, and the karaoke every day. Plus he got me hooked on Green Smoothies. That's a whole other story in itself that I'll save for another time. Before I went to Apollo Beach, I had learned easy onset and confidential voicing in traditional speech therapy. I was one of the lucky ones to go through Roger Love's spasmodic dysphonia study. My voice improved a lot from his training. There were so many things wrong that we barely got started. He said I discovered my larynx there. But every time we would start to think about breathing, I would lose concentration on my larynx. When allergy season hit in October, I lost ground badly. When I arrived at Connie's, it took her only a few minutes to realize that my velum was closing so air wasn't going into my nose, so I had no resonance. I had previously worked out that I could scrunch up my nose, raise my upper lip, and say no no and nah nah and nay nay, and that after practicing this a while, my voice would smooth out. She pointed out that I didn't have to contort my face, that all I had to do was send a puff of air through my nose to get the sound started (like a reverse sniff.) Much easier, and much less alarming to whoever I was talking to! She gave me resonance training exercises and my mantra - R&R, which has a triple meaning. Resonance and Release, and have more fun (R&R). I am convinced that fixing the voice mechanics is a necessary step, but only one step. I think personal problems have to be fixed too. To me this voice problem is like a ball of string that needs unraveling. Instead of just one long piece of string, it is made up of several different strings, with lots of ends. I think you have to unravel the ball of strings by pulling on first one end and then another until it all comes out straight. Once again I was struck by the fact that each of us had different problems, even though we all had been diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia. We had different speaking problems and different breathing problems. Saying someone has spasmodic dysphonia and therefore needs to do certain exercises is like thinking that American Indians all spoke the same language. Unless you are a trained speech pathologist, you cannot diagnose your own mechanical problems. And I have not run into anyone other than Mike White who can diagnose and fix breathing problems. He's made a lifelong study and practice of it. All of the success stories I have heard involved the person making a major lifestyle change. I don't see myself uprooting my home and business, but I do see myself making in situ changes - reinventing my life in place. I have been incredibly lucky to have had the best teachers. I have good tools. I do not have "an incurable neurologic problem". I am well on my way. And while I'm getting there, I'm going to have more fun! ***
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