Yanik Giroux - Stage & Studio

I just finished a very interesting week of singing and made some interesting discoveries...

I have noticed since September that my voice is getting tired after a long day of teaching. I also get tired quickly if I am talking a lot, or in a slightly noisier environment. It started stressing me out a bit, since, well... singing and talking all day is what I do for a living!

I started having soar throat early December and so, was thinking a bad cold might be coming. I waited for 2 weeks hoping it would go away, but no bad cold, just a soar throat and so, I decided to go to the clinic to have my throat checked for infection (step, mono or throat infection). Unfortunately, my throat was clear of any infection (and I say unfortunately, because any infection would have been easy to treat with medication and that would have been the end of it!). Acid reflux was the next thing to check, but no problem there either. Nothing has changed in the way I use my voice and so the last thing to consider and a factor that had been on my mind for the reason of my soar throat: muscular tensions.

I have had a stressful fall dealing with personal and financial worries and figured that many stress and muscle tensions might be the source of the problem and turns out... it was!

I realized that something was pulling on my left side, from the shoulder to the cheek. I started singing at home massaging my shoulder and around the neck and found the knots pretty quickly! haha! I then realized that when I was singing pushing my left shoulder down, the sound was different , I felt more space in my throat and I could even feel more air going in when breathing. Interesting... 

So I figured something was maybe pulling the voice box and making the difference in the voice production. From there, I sang all week with that awareness, pushing the shoulders down and and feeling ohhhh so very tall!  I certainly knew about tensions in those areas influencing the singing and see it all the time in my tensed students, but had never experienced it like that myself! Nothing has changed in the way I sing or talk, but life experiences have made my body react in a different way, creating that incomfort and I have to take care of it now.

So, I am taking care of that now. It got better and hopefully the tension will go away soon. Now that I figured the problem and know what to do, I can take care of the problem. I've been a good teacher to myself!

Happy healthy singing!