Total Body Voice Training for Podcasters.

Congratulations, you have completed the core training of total body voice. These exercises are designed to help you warm up your voice, strengthen your vocal folds, and unlock a high-performance speech voice. As a reminder, Find a way to incorporate these exercises into your daily routine. Preferably sometime in the morning. It will be a good way to ensure that you don’t show up to the office with a raspy morning voice. As you perform these exercises, you will notice your focal folds thicken and become more agile. The exercises will get easier and you will notice your speaking voice starting to reflect the exercises. Before speaking, be sure to take a deep breath through you nose and slightly lower your larynx. This will set you up for top game before even making a sound.Finally, practice reading out-loud. This is a good way to experiment applying the techniques into speech. Cultivating a rich and dynamic speech voice is certainly possible but it’s not always easy. I created this free resource to get you started but if you find yourself in a place where you’re practicing but not sure if you’re doing it right, I’d like to invite you to join our community. For a small monthly donation, you’ll get access to my full-length video courses, 1-1 webinars, and our community of podcasters, public speakers, and executives. These weekly webinars are online masterclasses in which you can get 1-1 feedback from me and watch me give feedback to others. To sign up, go to totalbodyvoice.com and be sure to use the code: PODCAST to receive get 10% off your membership.In the online videos you will also get lessons on posture by utilizing something called the Alexandrian method, vocal health guidelines, what to do if you want to cough in the middle of a presentation, etc, etc. But most importantly, you’ll receive the critical 1-1 feedback to ensure that your practice isn’t just making permanent, but also perfect. Of course, you’re welcome to use these free exercises on a daily basis. If you find them helpful, would you mind supporting this show by leaving a good review.I look forward to hearing your testimony one day. My name is Paul Mikhaylenko, and this is Total Body Voice.

Welcome to the final lesson of total body voice. The first 4 weeks were designed to set a strong foundation for your speaking voice. For the final exercise, we will be doing a reading while applying everything we’ve learned. The beauty of the Total Body Voice method, is that it give you full control of your voice. You can tune it to sound deeper, or more resonant, or more dynamic. I like to have good literature around the house. As weekly habit, I’ll pick up a book, open to a random page of Edgar Allan Poe or a meditation by Marcus Aurelius, and experiment reading in different dynamic voices.Here’s a poem called ”The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which is etched on the statue of Liberty.Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries sheWith silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This exercise requires your voice to be properly warmed up. If you feel any strain, discomfort or tension, be sure not to continue. For the full course and 1-1 training, go to www.totalbodyvoice.com

This exercise requires your voice to be properly warmed up. If you feel any strain, discomfort or tension, be sure not to continue. 

Welcome to the 4th week of total body voice. In this lesson, I’m going to help you develop a dynamic voice.The fact is, no one wants to listen to a monotone voice. When you’re speaking, if you’re on one note the entire time, you better be rhyming and have a beat.Otherwise, a good speaking voice utilizes a broad dynamic range, both, in terms of volume and pitch. If you want to keep a listener engaged and at the edge of their seat, you have to learn at times to whisper and at times to shout.If you are like the average person, when you want to speak with passion, you move towards a higher pitch but find yourself struggling and straining your voice.In this lesson, I will show you have to unlock a big voice. Here’s how it works.Have you ever taken a balloon and pinched the mouth with your fingers to create a squealing high pitched sound?The more you pull on the membrane, the higher the pitch, but you can only stretch it so far. At a certain point, the only to way go higher, is by pinching off a smaller subset of the membrane.Something similar happens with your voice when you learn to sing or speak in what is called the “head voice”.Notice how the texture of the sound stayed the same from the bottom to the top. If you notice a break in the texture, you’re probably going to falsetto, which is a thin airy sound that isn’t meant for speaking in passion. It is quiet and fragile.To access your head-voice, we will be using a two-octave slide on the “ee” vowel. When practicing this slide, be sure to properly support it with a good breath, and use the “ee” vowel to engage your head resonator.A quick note of caution. Thinning out your vocal folds requires them to be properly warmed up and in healthy condition. If you’re sick or experiencing any discomfort, do not continue with this exercise.

To get access to the complete course, all of the exercises, and even 1-1 training, visit www.totalbodyvoice.com today.

For our exercises this week, start again with the breathing exercises, only this time, when you breathe in, lower your larynx. You want to make this habit. Breathe in, relax (make sure larynx is down and there’s no tension), and slowly exhale on a “sss” sound. Do this three times. Now. This week I will teach you a new exercise all develops all core elements of the Total Body Voice technique. Initially, if you can’t sing the entire phrase, take a breath in the middle before descending back down to the tonic. When you sing this exercise, the goal is to experiment with the resonant position both in your head and in your chest. Once you find the place where you head is most resonant and where you chest is most resonant, and where you are most relaxed, fixate on that sensation and make it your new best friend. For the exercise, we will start on a “hum” then work our way through all 5 vowels, “ee, eh, ah, oh, oo”. I’d encourage you to learn it and start every morning by taking 3 deep breaths and then chanting this vocal exercise. You’ll be amazed at what it’ll do to your voice. Let’s do it together.

The goal of this exercise is to locate the resonance center in your chest. Just like last week, we used different vowels to locate the center of resonance in the head, we are now using the position of your larynx to access the resonance center in your chest. Be sure to maintain a bright sound in your head, but now, simply add the chest resonator. Of course I don’t talk like this. But for for the sake of the exercise, feel free to exaggerate the sound and then you can tune how much of this technique you’d like to apply to your voice.Try it yourself. First with no resonators. Then with your head only. Then with the head and chest. Your tongue is a muscle which is closely involved with the larynx, and you might have the temptation to strain it. Be sure that your tongue is laying flat in your mouth and not experiencing any tension. Learning to engage your head and chest resonators will unlock a full-bodied voice that is both pleasant and impactful. It is the perfect balance between being approachable yet powerful, attractive, yet sophisticated. 

Last week we focused on creating a bright and resonant sound by resonating in the head, this week we’re going learn how to activate the chest resonator to create a big, bold, and deep sound. Like narrators you hear in dramatic movie trailers. Your entire body is built as a resonator to help amplify and project the sound of your voice. In a sound system, smaller speakers access higher frequencies, and need smaller enclosures for maximum amplification. But large speakers, which create low frequencies, such as the subwoofer, need a large box to properly amplify the lows. Your body works in the same way. The head is like a smaller speaker for higher frequencies, and your chest is a subwoofer for the mids and lows. The secret to unlocking a deep voice, is to enable sound to travel down into your chest when you’re speaking. There’s a mechanism in your throat, which controls how much space you create for the sound to travel downward. The secret to engaging that mechanism has to do with the position of your larynx.  The larynx is a cartilage-based enclosure which houses your vocal folds and is often referred to as the Adam’s apple. It’s normally bigger for men because the length of their vocal folds are longer. Naturally, some men have longer or even thicker vocal folds which will organically lend themselves to a deeper voice. But everyone can do exercises to thicken the vocal folds, and activate their chest resonator.The secret to accessing the chest resonator, is the position of your larynx. You’ll notice how the sound becomes much bigger and you feel your chest resonate. To lower your larynx, imagine that you accidentally put some hot food in your mouth, and instinctively you open up the space around the food not to burn the top of your mouth which is more sensitive to high temperature than your tongue. Another way to lower your larynx is to imagine yourself yawning. A yawning position drops the larynx and opens the throat in the same way. If you find yourself wanting to yawn during this exercise, it means you’re doing it correctly. It might be helpful in the beginning to look in the mirror and see the position of your larynx moving up and down.

Now let’s take that resonant “hmm” sound on a sing it on three tones going up and then back down. Be sure to take a good breath through your nose, using your diaphragm between each exercise. It goes like this.The goal of these exercises is to locate the resonance center in your head, and then learn to maintain it through all of the vowels.Ready, let’s start with the “hmm”

In this first exercise, we will concentrate on the sinus resonator by starting with a “hmm” sound.The goal is to create the most resonant sound possible, accessing rich overtones, that might even cause a tickling sensation in your nose. If you feel that, then you know you’re on the right track.Start by mimicking a vibrating cell phone on a metal desk.Now, there’s a way to hum that is dull, and a way that is resonant. Notice that the neck is completely relaxed, the sound is resonant, and there is no sign of straining.Let’s do this together 3 timesIf you’re not sure whether you’re doing it right. My full online course includes full-length videos, a community where you can chat with other professionals developing their voice, and even get access to weekly webinars where I give 1-1 feedback. Practice doesn’t always make perfect, practice makes permanent. 

Welcome to the second week of Total Body Voice. In this lesson I will show you how to develop a voice that is resonant and full of texture. Some people naturally have very bright and resonant voices, while many others lean towards a dull or hollow sound. The texture of your voice is created by overtones, which are mathematical divisions of the tonic or fundamental pitch. I’ll spare you the technicalities and we’ll just call it resonance. Resonance is what gives your voice texture and it’s a unique fingerprint of your identity. The reason each person has a different voice has to do with how sound reverberates inside the open spaces of your head and chest. Now I don’t mean this an insult, but there are many open spaces in your head, starting with the bones and especially the sinus.What is fascinating, is that you can direct the sound towards a specific place in your head. The easiest way to do this, is using the 5 vowels, “ee” “eh” tend to resonant the front of your head, “ah” is pointed upward and , “oh” and “oo” tend to point to the back of the head with and sound hollow. Here’s how this works. As a resonance chamber, your head is optimized to resonate when you point the sound to a specific location. Imagine that you are aiming the sound from your throat to a specific target. For most people, the sensation is somewhere right behind the nose. It’s a unique place which allows your entire head to resonate with sound creating volume and texture with minimal effort. Notice as I go through each vowel, allowing the sound to move from the back of the head towards the front, and how at a certain place, the resonance is 2-3x bigger and brighter. Do this until you find a placement which unlocks as much resonance as possible. But if you engage the head resonator “ee” you’ll experience a far more dynamic sound with little-to-none effort. Try it yourself. What does is sound like?

Finally, for the last exercise, we will take a breath like before, and exhale on an “sss” sound, but this time we will pulsate the sound in groups of three. The goal of this exercise is to feel the delicate balance between your abs engaging to push the breath out, and your diaphragm controlling the situation. Learning to be in control of your breath will give you the power to to control your voice.Ready? Inhale, hold, relax, exhale and pulse on “sss” Good. Practice breathing this week and next week I will show you how to get rid of a dull voice. 

Next, we will do the same exercise, however, this time we will work on breath control. You should never have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence. Breath control is what allows you to have ample air to say entire paragraphs without needing to draw breath. Like last time, you will place your hands on the sides of your torso draw a deep breath through nose, hold, relax and then exhale using a “sss” sound for 15 seconds. Ready? Inhale, hold, relax, exhale on "sss".As you practice this exercise, try to exhale for as long as possible. You should be able to go over a minute. 

Start by placing your hands on the sides of your torso, towards the bottom of your rib cage. When you take a breath, you should feel your torso expand not the ribs. Start by taking 3 large breaths through your nose. Inhale, hold, relax, exhale. Do this three times every morning before getting out of bed. 

Breathing is fundamental to speaking and there are two ways to take a breath. The wrong way is by expanding the rib-cage. This breath is shallow and gives you no control over your voice. You know you’re taking a breath with your rib-cage when you see your shoulders and chest rise up.The right kind of breath utilizes your diaphragm and is experienced in your abdominals. You know you’re breathing correctly when you feel your entire lower torso expand.Finally, when taking a breath, as much as possible, breathe-in through your nose. Air rushing in through your mouth is cold and dry. By breathing in through your nose you warm up and moisten the air, a condition necessary for optimal voice performance.Breathing deeply with your diaphragm is not only the right way to support your voice, but it also allows your body to draw more oxygen, a necessary element for optimal brain and muscle functionality. If you’ve never worked on your breathing, it’s not too late to start.

Welcome to the Total Body Voice, the program designed specifically for podcasters, public speakers, executives, and anyone who expects more from their voice, more than the average person.Just like in singing, while there are a few rare exceptional voices that never require training, the vast majority of singers had to train and exercise. The fact is, any high-performance activity takes training and exercise, and speaking is no exception. There is a way to speak that is dull, strained, and lifeless. And there is a way to speak that is free, resonant, deep, and powerful. The difference isn’t so much talent, as technique.My name is Paul Mikhaylenko, I’m a vocal coach and I’ve spent over a decade training under some of the best coaches in LA, including even Seth Riggs, who taught Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, and many others.I’m about to show you how to develop a speaking voice that sounds attractive, trustworthy, is pleasant to listen to, and lasts a lifetime. Whether you like it or not, people will judge you by the sound of your voice, and I’m here, to help you take advantage of that.Join our community, get full video courses, and 1-1 training at www.totalbodyvoice.com