Conducting voice repairs for so many years, I have never seen so many people who not only had their voice compromised, but also their whole life (their mental and emotional state), appear to be 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 to achieve the holistic transformation of their emotions, their altered way of thinking, and had a hard time accepting their newly sounding Voice as, nevertheless, some of them had completely forgotten how their real voice actually sounded before they discovered that they had acquired a Vocal Disorder.
You would think that somebody just had a loss of 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 said: “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 communication tool which, evidently, nobody 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/hers relationships are in danger; friends are lost due to lack of communication and the spouses who are trying to offer support can often be rejected.
And then the whole saga begins…
To give you an example:
Just in the recent past, the 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 very bad habits which had, evidently, cost him his singing voice. I thought, “Wow! It’s right up my ally 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, 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.
As 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 had been deeply buried) onto the surface and balance it relatively and respectively to his physical, emotional and mental state. With great difficulty, almost 2 hours later, my assistant, myself and my client begin to hear the difference in the sound of his voice. By that time, it 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 he was when he first entered my studio and where he arrived (after a lot of explanations and manipulations) to balance his voice and make the wholesome vocal mechanism work to his advantage. I was very blunt with him and told him the absolute truth about his inner state and his voice condition. He added, at the end of the session, that he just went through a quite difficult divorce, which probably added to his already fragile state.
With the Vocal Science method at my disposal, I was more than certain that I could help him on every level. I advised him that I would need at least 30 hours of instruction, counseling and natural herbal and homeopathic treatment. Since he was local, I was even ready to start with just an introductory 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; and added at the end of his e-mail that he thinks that if he does not sing at all, his voice will heal itself…
Go figure!
That came after he spoke 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 change, (in a manner of speaking); as he 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…?
Honestly, I have never heard such nonsense from any of my clients before!
He has been suffering with this voice inadequacy for over 4 years and had been through the ringer, no doubts. 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, obviously, completely out of balance on every level.
I, actually throughout his voice restoration, would be able to not only fix his voice and put him back in his “vocal shoes”, ( A direct expression by one of my former voice repair clients), but also put his mind, body and soul, working in full synchronicity with each other.
The conclusion of it is; that without achieving the latter, no form of voice mechanics would be adequate in the absence of the human totality.
Diana Yampolsky is the one of the world's foremost specialists on the topic of the human voice and is the creator of Vocal Science, a unique and truly revolutionary accelerated vocal development technique that is trademarked with the government of Canada. Diana is also the world's foremost Non-Surgical Voice Repair Specialist. Through her revolutionary vocal technique, special exercises and natural herbal and homeopathic remedies, she can resolve most vocal problems naturally and prevent singers and speakers from having to resort to surgical procedures and pharmaceutical products that often produce unwanted side effects. As a true holistic practitioner, Diana works on the source of the vocal problem, rather than the symptoms.