Voice Confident's Triple Take - your fortnightly trio of tips!

VOICE: drink more water!!!
Hydration is absolutely key to effective voice function - both the vocal folds themselves and all the apparatus around them need water. Drinking water itself helps to keep the mouth and throat areas lubricated, but the water you drink never actually touches the vocal folds... it's systemic hydration that they need, internal hydration delivered via the bloodstream. Without it, the vocal folds can't vibrate as they should as the mucus membranes don't have the right consistency.
Maintaining a healthy level of water intake is crucial - it takes a few hours for the water you drink to reach the vocal folds and the voice functions much better if the laryngeal and pharyngeal areas are consistently receiving the levels of hydration they need. So keep a glass of water nearby whenever you can and keep those hydration levels topped up.
PRESENCE: listening is a whole body activity
Have you noticed how much better you feel after a good chat with an old friend?
We tend to think of listening as involving just our ears and our brain - but in fact, empathetic listening, the kind of listening where someone tells you a story or encourages you or inspires you or makes you feel any sort of emotion, triggers hormonal responses in the brain which are then communicated throughout the body and influence major systems including digestive and respiratory systems.
For example:
If the story is personal, emotionally engaging, or fosters connection, listening can trigger oxytocin release, promoting feelings of empathy, trust, and closeness between the storyteller and the listener; oxytocin is a hormone that regulates the nervous system and supports healthy gut flora.
If the story is funny or heartwarming, it could trigger the release of endorphins, leading to a sense of happiness and well-being; endorphins are natural painkillers and regulate our breathing patterns.
Being fully heard is a powerful experience, and we should all make an effort to be good listeners for the positive impact it has on those who speak. However, the benefits of active listening go beyond helping others to supporting our own physical well-being - both in the way we feel at the time and in deep physiological ways we may not even be aware of.
CONFIDENCE: an anti-anxiety tip - reverse tunnel vision
We feel anxious or nervous or stressed when our nervous system is dysregulated. We may feel the effects of a 'fight or flight' response, when stress hormones cause all manner of physiological symptoms including shakiness, brain fog, blushing and tunnel vision.
One way of regulating our nervous system is to make our brains do things which they wouldn't do if under real physical threat. For example, you can intentionally make your eyes (the eyes are part of the brain) take a wide perspective - this sends the message: 'I am not under threat, I do not need to focus directly on a danger in front of me, I can take a wide angle, I am safe.'
To do this exercise:
👁️ Pick a point in the distance… then try to expand your vision. Use your eyes and your mind to see more and more of what is either side of that central point, without moving your eyes. That central point may go out of focus, but keep going.
😄 Smile and breathe slowly as you widen your vision until you are having to imagine the things at the far sides of you behind your ears.
Performing this exercise sends a powerful message of safety to the brain and is particularly effective when combined with other exercises that regulate the nervous system via the vagus nerve, including exhale-emphasised breathing... which I will write about another time!