Blog

Guess what happened…

On Monday I was having a session with a private client, and I said “I know what would be great for your warm up. Try the animals exercise!!” So I hopped over to the How To Warm Up youtube playlist to grab the link, and it wasn’t there. Hmm.

After the session I started digging, and I realized O.M.G… Suzie and I got our wires crossed on dates and we never released the video!! I pinky swear we had no...

Wow wow wow. This is the last How To Warm Up video of the series. We have to wind it down because I’ve taught you everything I know! (Joking/not joking )

But truly, the How To Warm Up series is now quite complete in terms of giving you a ton of great options for How To Warm Up. And what’s a fabulous way to end? With a batch of my favorite tongue twisters! Check out today’s tongue twister finale video, and be sure to download the handout too to...

Have you ever heard the word “pranayama” from yoga? It’s made up of two parts: prana, which means life force or breath, and yama, which means control. So a pranayama technique is essentially a way of managing the breath.

Today’s exercise is a bit of a departure from other exercises in the How To Warm Up video series because it doesn’t directly pertain to your voice. But I share it because I find that it’s my absolute go-to way to calm down when...

Comin’ atcha with Part 2 of the Exaggerate Your Sounds exercise! This week we’re making every possible lllllllooooooooonnnnnng sound that we can. That includes vowels plus categories of consonants that are called frictatives, nasals, and approximants/semi-vowels. (You’ll get what I mean once you watch the video!). The exercise will take you considerably longer than Part 1 when we were making things short and sharp, so be patient and take your time. I find that if you really...

Here’s an exercise to help you with your reading! In Part One of two videos about exaggerating your sounds, you’ll learn how going overboard to do an exercise that makes your crisp explosive sounds even crisper can help with the clarity of delivering text or a speech.

This How To Warm Up video falls in the category of Language, so it’s all about ultimately helping your listener understand your message better. Try it and see if it helps you! And standby for Part 2 of the...

When’s the last time you got a professional massage? Of course I hope your answer is “Yesterday!,” but chances are that’s not the case. I mean look, getting a massage requires transporting yourself to a different location, paying someone money, lying naked on a table for an hour, and of course subjecting yourself to a potentially weird or uncomfortable experience if the person isn’t great. What’s easier? Give yourself a 3 minute self massage every day as...

Did you know that spinal flexibility is really important to your overall health? (If you’re a chiropractor, I’m guessing your answer to this is yes!!). Of course your spinal health contributes to your alignment, which means it’s also really important for your voice. So including spinal movements in your vocal/physical warm up is crucial. And an easy way to include spinal movements in your warm up is to do this really fun and simple swinging sequence. In these exercises,...

Hey you! Question: what do you do when you wake up in the morning and you know it would feel good to move? I’m gonna take a wild guess… you go get coffee! (Am I right, am I right?!) Okay maybe you’re actually good at taking a moment to stretch rather than reaching for the ingestible stimulants. But just in case you aren’t doing your morning stretching, let’s make it easy for you… try this really simple stretching sequence as a great addition to your warm...

Do you like yoga? Are you scared of it?? Either way, I encourage you to try this simple yoga warm up for your body. It’s a super common practice called Sun Salutations – and in fact we’re just doing the half-version so it’s truly easy to follow even if you’ve never practiced before. Yoga is all about syncing your movement and your breath, which is incredibly beneficial as part of a voice warm up. So follow along in this week’s How To Warm Up video and learn...

Do you ever have issues with clarity with your nasal sounds? (M, N, or NG?) If so, you may actually have a soft palate issues. You may know your soft palate as the squishy part at the back of the roof of your mouth, but something you may not know about it is that it’s actually a flap of tissue that lowers and raises to close off the airway to your nasal passages! Whoa!!

In order to have super clear nasal sounds then, and also to have less nasality in your overall speaking voice, you...