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This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr.
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Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.
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This is A Voice.
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Secret singer, burnout, boundaries, and connection.
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Hello, and welcome to This Is A Voice, season 12, episode 12.
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The podcast where we get vocal about voice.
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I'm Jeremy Fisher.
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And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes.
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And this episode is the best of season 12.
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Ah.
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We've chosen a few little excerpts from episodes, and these are our favourite bits.
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Mm. We're actually gonna start with the episode which has become my favorite episode of all time, and that's episode five, The Secret Singer.
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Oh, bless you for that.
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How wonderful.
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Now, if you haven't listened to episode five, The Secret Singer, yet, then we're gonna play the opening of the episode, and this is where you find out who the secret singer is.
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I can't tell you how excited I am.
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We have such a special guest with us today, and we're actually gonna start with a recording of said special guest.
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So this is a little excerpt from one of the Handel German Arias.
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Meine Seele hört im Sehen.
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Okay.
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Okay, and can I introduce you two?
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Gillyanne Kayes aged 26.
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Do you know what?
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I almost had a handkerchief, a tearing alert there.
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I was so excited about this because, and I have to tell you, Gillyanne and I have been married 25 years.
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This is the first time that I've actually heard Gillyanne sing in a recital, and she's never played me recordings really before this.
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There's a story.
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Yeah, there's definitely a story.
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And friends, we are gonna go deep.
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Yep.
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I could well tear up again.
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Yep.
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Do you know, I had so many people get in touch with me after this particular episode.
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I mean, it was obviously very moving to record it itself, but hearing other people's stories and how other people connected with the experience that I shared, that was really special.
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And in fact, that was only half the story, because Gillyanne, in episode six, Singer Interrupted, continued the story, and we're just gonna play a little excerpt from that too.
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Okay.
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There's two things.
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The first one is you glossed over something really quite magnificently.
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Congratulations.
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I'm gonna pull it out, which is, you said mid thirties, which means that's seven years without singing.
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Mm-hmm.
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That's a long time, particularly at that age and at that point of development of a singer.
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That's a long time.
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So there was some stuff going on there.
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There was, and as I said before, and I've always said it was being a teacher that kept me going, first of all, because.
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I knew exactly what it was like to feel you couldn't make a sound and for anyone out there who listens, 'cause I've had this and I think other teachers have had it.
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Oh, she had a voice problem, she shouldn't be teaching.
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Exact opposite.
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Mm-hmm.
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If you are a voice problem survivor mm-hmm.
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You are gonna be a great teacher.
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Mm-hmm.
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Okay.
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Or you can be a great teacher.
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I was gonna say.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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So that was number one.
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Number two, yes.
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You talked about a happy ending.
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Yes.
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So did the happy ending involve getting back to performing?
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There's a step along the way.
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Okay.
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Which was, yes, I did get back, I did do some performing pretty much low stakes stuff, but that was fine.
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And I got to the point where I'd done a lunchtime concert at some venue or other, and I was pleased with what I did.
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It was lovely.
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I had a nice frock and I enjoyed the repertoire that I sang, and I think I did a couple more.
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And then I thought, do you know what?
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I'm not really enjoying this.
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I do like singing.
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I do like rehearsing, but it's spoiling my day.
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Burnout We never thought we'd start talking about burnout, but episode one of season 12, we started talking about our own experience of burnout.
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We were on holiday last year.
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Somebody very kindly lent us their lodge that we stayed in for two weeks.
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Yeah.
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And we discovered that we were in burnout and had been for some time.
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And Jeremy, I think it was only after the holiday that we realized something wasn't right.
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We still weren't rested, were we?
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No.
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Even after two weeks of doing nothing.
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No, not at all.
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And it's a, it was a beautiful venue and a- all the rest of it, and we, we did do some nice things.
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We did not come away refreshed.
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We did not come away with new creative ideas.
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And to be honest, I think in some ways certainly what you were going through was, I love this description of burnout, feeling fatigued in every cell of your being.
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Absolutely.
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I remember you just sitting up in bed most of the day before you could be levered out to go, to go and enjoy the sunshine.
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Yeah.
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And then by the way, I was just levered out onto the bench- Yeah, yeah ... in the garden to read a book.
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That was it.
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And you weren't even reading.
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No.
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And neither of us even had the energy to watch the amazing solar events that were going on at that time of year.
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It was like, "No, let's go to bed.
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00." Not getting up at midnight to watch the skies at night.
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Yes.
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So we're wondering whether this sounds familiar to people listening, because we think burnout is really underrated, undervalued.
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It's just not very well known.
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I don't think it's seen enough in our profession.
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I don't think it's recognized.
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I think a lot of people live with it.
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I went running down various rabbit holes this morning, having a look at burnout scales and articles about burnout, and there's a huge amount of material, surprise, in the medical and caring professions about burnout, certain burnout scales, and there's also a lot of material in the business world, and there's some material in the teaching world.
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But I think in particular for those of us who are more freelance voice professionals and small business owners, we really need to know some of the markers of burnout, and just to begin to care for ourselves and each other more.
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And we got one of our teachers, Franka van Essen, to talk about her experience of burnout because she always says that when she started working with us, she was recovering from burnout.
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And she talked about the boundary between burnout and boredom, and how that can be a very narrow space.
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So here's Franka on different types of burnout.
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So a burnout could start in different ways.
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You have people like me who are very much coming from that fight-flight zone.
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There are also people who are more prone to that immobilization part, where they feel like they're being overridden by a truck and can't get out of bed anymore, and that's the start of their burnout.
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Usually, it's one of those two types, the way in which it started, and for me, it was that more fight-flight start of, of having a very restless body and very tired at the same time.
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So being in a burnout as creative is very challenging because at the same time, actually, I was in a boreout.
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Now, this may sound really weird, but the time when I started following your, actually this podcast, this very podcast, and starting to follow your courses, was actually the time that I was in this burnout, and at the same time, I desperate- desperately needed something new to, to have my mind, have my head, um, do.
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And I see this a lot with neurodivergent people, that they, on the one hand, need to be very careful with their energy and their sensitive system to not get into overload, but on the other hand, they need a lot of challenge for the same system to keep them going and to feed their endless curiosity for new knowledge and new ex- exploration, really.
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Now, thinking about being a singing teacher and a creative, there are a few th- more things are going on that are specific for our kind of professions, I think.
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Most of us have portfolio careers, so we do different things alongside each other, partly because we love to do it, but partly also because the business is, is shaped like this, that we have small contracts or small jobs next to each other.
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This also means that we have to be very, mm, flexible and jump from o- one thing to another all the time, and this can be very tiring.
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It's, it takes a lot of our flexibility.
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Another thing that could be going on is the starving artist mode.
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I personally am still struggling with it, the idea that art is not meant to be paid for in, uh, a, in a good way.
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So I see friends of mine who work in completely different areas of, of profession, and they just bring home these amounts of money every month, and I'm like What the F?
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I mean, I c- it's weird in a way that I can do something that not many people can do and still get paid for it so lousy.
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Another thing that I've noticed is that a lot of singing teachers are people who love to help, as coaches and therapists often are.
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But there is this thing that's called the helper syndrome, where we, in a way, overstep being that helper so that we don't honor our own boundaries anymore, and actually also not the boundaries of our clients, because if we help them too much, they might feel that they can't do it themselves, which is actually not what we want.
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So I think stepping back sometimes and acknowledging that might feel a bit awkward is a good thing to do because it prevents us from overstepping our own boundaries and overstepping our own energy.
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So Franka has done two courses for us online on the polyvagal theory and putting it into practice as a singing teacher for yourself and your students.
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Mm-hmm.
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And we'll drop links for both of those courses into the show notes.
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In the next episode, uh, Dr. Ayan Panja kindly allowed us to share extracts from his own podcast on burnout, where he's speaking about it from more of a medical and research perspective.
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Because it's not just a word that we're bandying around in the community.
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It's real.
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It can present in many ways, and common signs of burnout would be feeling tired or drained most of the time.
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A lot of people feel like that.
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I realize that feeling overwhelmed or not taking tasks at work seriously where you just don't care if you miss something, doubting yourself or being cynical, feeling detached, all of these things that.
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Many of us might feel now and again, but if they're persistent and there's more than one of them, then you might be at risk of burnout.
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And it's also one of those things that colleagues might spot in you.
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Are you grumpy at work?
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Are you leaving things undone?
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Has your performance reduced?
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Are you alienating yourselves from your colleagues?
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Are you obviously exhausted?
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And not performing at work.
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And the real kicker is that the world we live in now is all about those things.
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It's constantly about performance, isn't it?
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And the blurring of lines between your home life and your work life.
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I mean, what's happened there in the last 10 to 20 years, it's no wonder people are more likely to feel burnt out.
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All you've gotta do is add into that problems with say, sleep or your relationships, or if you are lonely, or if you've got money worries, who doesn't have those at the moment?
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And you've got a real recipe for disaster.
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There are, of course other factors at play.
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So there are certain personality types who are more prone to burnout, so people who are real empaths, for example, or people who are perfectionists.
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And if you're both, then again, if you like, the analogy for that would be that if your cup overflows and that's burnout, then that group of people already have a cup that's fairly full.
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As a recovering perfectionist, and I did write an article on that, I think that really hits home.
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And we ended up doing yet another episode on burnout.
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And this was a result of an informal conversation that I had with our colleague, uh, Marisa Lee Naismith, who has her own podcast, A Voice and Beyond.
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And she talked about her personal experience of burnout and why she felt the need to actually pause her podcast for a while, even though it was hugely successful.
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It was right at the top of the ratings.
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It's a powerful conversation.
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Here's Marisa.
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There are times where you're in that work mode and you aren't in flow, that you find that you, you get to that point where you know the words aren't coming together, that you are reading something and nothing is sinking in.
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And you, most of us have been programmed to push through that, those moments.
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And what I've learned is that is the time to get up.
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Go for a walk or have a stretch.
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Go make yourself a cup of tea or a coffee, just mm-hmm.
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Get away from that project.
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Yeah.
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And then come back to it.
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And then you find you're so much better, you're so much more efficient, and you are talking about space, allowing yourself space.
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The word grace came to mind.
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I feel that.
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We need to give ourselves space, but also we need to allow ourselves the grace.
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Love that to do that.
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Yeah.
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Look, I stopped my podcast last year.
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Mm-hmm.
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I put it on pause, we hit a million downloads and you know, it was going great guns.
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We were top in so many cities and we were at that point where.
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We're in the top 5% of podcasts globally, and I just went, I can't, I cannot, I'm not finding the joy in this at the moment.
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I'm so burnt out that it's stressing me out, and it's meant to be something that I love.
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It's, it's my loved, it's my child.
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It's my baby here.
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It's my passion.
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Yeah, it was a passion project and all of a sudden it became something else on my to-do list, and that's the moment that I went, this is not the time, this is not working out for me right now.
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And I made the decision when it was at its peak to pull the pin on it, and I wasn't scared.
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A lot of people would've been scared.
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Would've thought, wow, what if we never get back to that again?
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What if we have this break and the audiences don't come back?
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And I was okay with it because I had learned that my health, my mental, my physical, my emotional health were way more then the downloads.
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They were way more important.
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A big thank you to Marisa for her honesty and for being prepared to share her own journey in this regard.
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For episode seven, we invited Michelle Robinson in to talk about boundaries, and this particular excerpt from episode seven talks about the inherent power dynamic in a singing lesson.
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Yes.
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I found this really, really fascinating because as you know, we are running a Master-Apprentice survey right now, and, uh, this is late stages of Michelle's own research.
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And one of the things that seems to be coming out of it is the relational aspect between the singing teacher and the student, which is a mutual beneficial thing if it works well.
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There is an inherent power dynamic.
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I know some people won't like to hear this, but there is an inherent power dynamic.
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Thank you Kim Burwell, for being the person who pointed this out in the educative process.
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So, yeah, that, that absolutely is a power dynamic.
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And actually it's not about getting rid of that in inverted commas power because yes, the teacher generally is the guide and has the knowledge on the voice and performance and what have you.
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Absolutely.
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It's how you manage that power, and I think this is one of the most important questions that, that I can give an answer to a high quality relationship.
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Is never abusive.
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It never takes advantage of the power a teacher inadvertently has.
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Okay?
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Closeness is about genuinely caring for that student and their wellbeing and, and their success.
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And also for them genuinely caring for you as a teacher, because we know that they do.
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Mm-hmm.
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You make a difference to them.
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Yeah.
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You impact their lives.
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We know that.
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Mm-hmm.
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The minute a teacher behaves in a way that is detrimental to that student, there is no relationship.
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Yeah.
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There is a situation of abuse to a greater or lesser extent as you suggest, and it must not be allowed to continue.
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As I say, we know that the student is so influenced by their one-to-one teacher.
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It is far safer to bring out the idea of closeness into the open, to understand what it looks like to understand where the boundaries are, and I think this is where the responsibility on the teachers is so high.
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Mm-hmm.
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Because as we said earlier, the teachers aren't therapists.
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Mm-hmm.
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Whilst I do think there is an element where you are cre you are having to and should create a safe space and therefore they will talk to you about things that they might not talk to somebody else about.
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Mm-hmm.
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It, it then, and this is where the safeguarding comes in, it then is knowing what you do with that information when it becomes something that's too big Yeah.
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For you.
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Okay.
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And I think in terms of boundaries, that's a really key one.
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Yeah.
00:21:51.403 --> 00:22:05.442
So being able, able to signal on where appropriate or if necessary from what you're telling me, particularly when people are working with miners, maybe there's something going on that actually needs to be raised.
00:22:05.847 --> 00:22:06.958
With a different entity.
00:22:07.137 --> 00:22:19.468
I think there's something that's very interesting about this because it's like you create a safe space that if I, if big emotions happen, they have a space, a safe space to happen in, and you are not phased by them.
00:22:19.498 --> 00:22:22.528
But I think the difference is that you don't deal with them.
00:22:22.917 --> 00:22:23.248
Yeah.
00:22:23.248 --> 00:22:25.708
You allow them to happen and then you move on.
00:22:26.515 --> 00:22:42.134
Michelle stayed on for episode eight, and in this episode, we were talking about bringing information and data from the sports arena into music education and training, and we were talking about the differences between m- sports education and music education.
00:22:42.884 --> 00:22:49.545
We could argue that musical performance is largely not competitive.
00:22:49.545 --> 00:22:50.085
Not competitive.
00:22:50.085 --> 00:22:50.295
Yeah.
00:22:50.775 --> 00:22:59.325
So what we're looking at with these elite sports coaches is by and large we do sport for pleasure, but sports are competitive.
00:22:59.325 --> 00:23:09.884
So are there any areas from those aspects of coaching and these theories that don't map across or need to be changed to map across?
00:23:10.454 --> 00:23:11.025
Yeah.
00:23:11.414 --> 00:23:12.855
That's the key difference, isn't it?
00:23:13.214 --> 00:23:20.474
With sport, it's very easy to show what excellence is by winning a competition, by getting a world record or whatever.
00:23:21.345 --> 00:23:28.305
It is far less easy to show what excellence is in music, mainly because a lot of it is subjective.
00:23:28.365 --> 00:23:28.575
Yep.
00:23:28.575 --> 00:23:37.875
You know, and I think that's possibly key because it's only, it is through somebody being truly.
00:23:38.295 --> 00:23:46.545
Comfortable and confident in their performance, in the way they deliver their singing.
00:23:46.785 --> 00:23:55.095
That enables them, I'm making this up on the spot, but enables them to be the best they can be.
00:23:55.095 --> 00:23:55.994
I never said that a lot.
00:23:56.265 --> 00:23:57.105
Just thinking it through.
00:23:57.315 --> 00:24:01.515
If you think, Michelle, if you think about the idea that music is self-expression.
00:24:02.039 --> 00:24:02.549
Yes.
00:24:02.970 --> 00:24:06.269
Then what they're doing is expressing themself Yes.
00:24:06.359 --> 00:24:08.519
To the best of their ability at that moment.
00:24:08.549 --> 00:24:08.849
Yeah.
00:24:08.849 --> 00:24:18.930
You talk about, Jeremy talks about maybe when he's working with someone on a, a performance, I want them to find their own best selves through Yes.
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.710
In the way that they deliver that performance, and you are really strong on that.
00:24:22.890 --> 00:24:25.859
It's one of the reasons why music is so.
00:24:27.569 --> 00:24:29.339
In a way easy to do.
00:24:29.339 --> 00:24:34.049
And that's gonna sound really weird because there's always a version that will fit you.
00:24:34.500 --> 00:24:34.650
Yes.
00:24:34.650 --> 00:24:36.329
There's no one right version.
00:24:36.329 --> 00:24:40.200
No matter the teachers at college say, there is no one right version.
00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:41.789
There are 58 right versions.
00:24:41.789 --> 00:24:43.200
And you could do any one of them.
00:24:43.289 --> 00:24:47.339
And in a way, the bigger goal, I think for a, for an artist.
00:24:47.670 --> 00:24:59.430
Is to be an artist so that they are themselves as much as they can be, or, or at the very least, they have a persona that is extremely polished and that they can live within for, for years.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:05.279
So if we break that down, what's needed in order for them to do that?
00:25:06.390 --> 00:25:08.970
They have to be comfortable within themselves.
00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:13.650
They have to feel that they are in control of what they're doing.
00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:15.450
Autonomy.
00:25:16.559 --> 00:25:21.660
They have to feel that they have the ability to do it.
00:25:21.809 --> 00:25:42.480
They know what they've got to do to produ, you know, they know it on a technical level, but enough that they can leave that behind and start to communicate what it is that they feel about the song or about the story, and they need to feel that is going to be received well.
00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:46.109
That they're in a space that that is gonna love, that people are going to love.
00:25:47.115 --> 00:25:58.125
Look as a person, not as a PhD researcher or anything like that as a person, I believe that good performance, good musical performance is soul to soul connection.
00:25:58.484 --> 00:25:58.724
Yeah.
00:25:59.266 --> 00:26:00.165
I love that.
00:26:00.596 --> 00:26:02.336
Soul-to-soul connection.
00:26:02.486 --> 00:26:11.695
100%. So in episodes nine and 10, we were talking about singing teachers versus speech and language therapists.
00:26:12.296 --> 00:26:16.256
And in episode nine, we were talking about the different diagnostic base.
00:26:16.846 --> 00:26:21.496
So we just wanna do this little excerpt because we think it is really important.
00:26:22.577 --> 00:26:28.097
Okay, so the speech and language therapy side will be working inside diagnosis.
00:26:28.097 --> 00:26:30.617
It's very much team-based care.
00:26:30.798 --> 00:26:44.688
Mm. So you have a whole team of people around you, all of whom may be contributing to the diagnosis and the speech and language therapist's job is to make sure that those things are put into place and also ongoing care.
00:26:44.778 --> 00:26:44.867
Mm-hmm.
00:26:45.198 --> 00:26:47.117
Outcomes have to be demonstrated.
00:26:47.117 --> 00:26:47.298
Yes.
00:26:47.298 --> 00:26:51.827
And it has to be by and large, based on evidence-based practice.
00:26:51.833 --> 00:26:51.843
Yeah.
00:26:52.768 --> 00:26:58.468
And the singing teacher or the Vocal coach is working more functionally, artistically.
00:26:58.647 --> 00:27:01.498
They're more likely to do one off or very short sessions.
00:27:01.498 --> 00:27:02.458
Short term sessions.
00:27:02.817 --> 00:27:08.548
And they're aiming to, on the whole, they are aiming towards performance.
00:27:08.548 --> 00:27:10.377
It's not always the case.
00:27:10.377 --> 00:27:12.298
There are non performative versions of singing.
00:27:12.448 --> 00:27:12.538
Mm-hmm.
00:27:12.778 --> 00:27:13.077
Obviously.
00:27:13.083 --> 00:27:13.333
Mm-hmm.
00:27:13.647 --> 00:27:16.317
But in a way, you are aiming to.
00:27:16.698 --> 00:27:23.478
Get somebody functional, usually over a wider range and usually with a bigger range of dynamics.
00:27:23.482 --> 00:27:23.603
Mm-hmm.
00:27:23.682 --> 00:27:24.163
Because.
00:27:25.022 --> 00:27:27.932
Singing requires contrast of some kind.
00:27:28.682 --> 00:27:39.123
So it is very interesting, and I put this into chat, GPT, everybody knows I'm a chat fan at the moment, and it came up with this phrase, medicalized versus functional.
00:27:39.932 --> 00:27:43.143
And I went, okay, I am not exactly sure what that means.
00:27:43.143 --> 00:27:45.992
So can you describe for me what it means?
00:27:45.992 --> 00:27:46.002
Mm-hmm.
00:27:46.002 --> 00:27:46.188
Mm-hmm.
00:27:46.268 --> 00:27:50.252
And it came up with two pages of stuff and I think it's really fascinating.
00:27:50.792 --> 00:27:51.107
So here we go.
00:27:52.667 --> 00:27:55.907
It's looking, it's starting from a different point.
00:27:56.147 --> 00:28:00.438
So medicalized means the voice is being viewed mainly through a healthcare lens.
00:28:00.647 --> 00:28:03.948
That usually includes diagnosis path.
00:28:04.008 --> 00:28:06.948
Oh, and by the way, diagnosis is not always done by the speech therapist.
00:28:07.337 --> 00:28:11.147
It's often done by surgeons or by people in on the medical team.
00:28:11.988 --> 00:28:19.067
It should be done as a result of scoping, at least, and a whole protocol of things that a team will need to go through.
00:28:19.548 --> 00:28:25.938
So they're looking specifically for pathology or underlying condition, red flags, tissue status.
00:28:26.173 --> 00:28:35.682
Surgical history, neurological factors, muscle tension, dysphonia, rehab goals, and the scope of practice and referral pathways.
00:28:35.952 --> 00:28:40.032
So they may be asking the questions that they would ask would be, what's the diagnosis?
00:28:40.153 --> 00:28:41.323
What's safe?
00:28:42.002 --> 00:28:43.532
What has been impaired?
00:28:44.163 --> 00:28:47.702
Does it need rehabilitation or does it need compensation?
00:28:48.212 --> 00:28:53.643
So the rehabilitation to get back to what would be considered standard function might not be possible.
00:28:53.792 --> 00:29:00.932
So you then need to compensate in some other way, or are they okay as far as I'm concerned and now need referral?
00:29:02.042 --> 00:29:06.002
And basically what outcome is realistic within this healthcare context?
00:29:06.002 --> 00:29:07.803
And obviously that varies country to country.
00:29:08.643 --> 00:29:13.653
I like here what you've looked at, which is with regard to function.
00:29:13.772 --> 00:29:13.952
Yep.
00:29:14.313 --> 00:29:15.423
And the bullet points there.
00:29:15.423 --> 00:29:16.472
Do you want to read those out?
00:29:16.502 --> 00:29:25.383
'cause I think they're interesting and then I've got something to say following a singing teacher or a Vocal coach might say to themselves, how is this voice currently working?
00:29:26.432 --> 00:29:27.992
What is the person trying to achieve?
00:29:29.208 --> 00:29:30.557
How is their efficiency?
00:29:30.557 --> 00:29:31.577
How is their stamina?
00:29:31.577 --> 00:29:31.667
Mm-hmm.
00:29:31.907 --> 00:29:33.317
How is their clarity?
00:29:33.528 --> 00:29:38.688
How is their range, the reliability of the voice, their expressive choices?
00:29:38.928 --> 00:29:44.117
Are they able to make expressive choices, habit and coordination across a much wider range?
00:29:44.567 --> 00:29:51.587
And how does this function carry over into speaking, singing, teaching, performing, all of the situations that you're gonna find yourself in.
00:29:51.593 --> 00:29:51.772
Mm-hmm.
00:29:52.008 --> 00:29:52.097
Mm-hmm.
00:29:52.367 --> 00:29:55.607
So they may be asking, what's getting in the way of the task?
00:29:56.343 --> 00:30:04.083
And I think as well, what I would add to those bullet points is how does the singer feel about their voice?
00:30:04.143 --> 00:30:04.593
Yes.
00:30:04.593 --> 00:30:07.323
Or how does the voice user feel about their voice?
00:30:07.323 --> 00:30:08.762
I think it's very important.
00:30:08.972 --> 00:30:17.403
I actually think this is one of the questions that speech and language therapists ask anyway, but I think also teachers should be asking this as well, which is what's changed.
00:30:17.522 --> 00:30:23.462
You know, you can hear somebody, particularly somebody who's a very experienced voice user, and they go.
00:30:23.728 --> 00:30:29.637
Oh, things have changed and you're listening to them and you go, well, I don't hear anything particularly going on, so tell me what's changed.
00:30:29.643 --> 00:30:29.883
Mm-hmm.
00:30:30.178 --> 00:30:33.807
And it's from that information that you can often work out what's been going on.
00:30:33.962 --> 00:30:42.722
I was in conversation with a speech therapist yesterday about a client that we share and something came up, which was about perfectionism.
00:30:42.722 --> 00:30:43.833
Oh yeah.
00:30:43.923 --> 00:30:48.752
And in fact, I've just re-released my article on I Am a recovering perfectionist.
00:30:48.843 --> 00:30:48.932
Mm-hmm.
00:30:49.173 --> 00:30:59.522
Because this is also relevant and it's the idea that at you must produce something as a performer that is perfect.
00:30:59.567 --> 00:30:59.627
Yeah.
00:31:00.678 --> 00:31:13.488
And perfect doesn't exist because you have, it's not like you are kept in a box with cellophane and then you take out, you take yourself outta the box, and then you sing, and then you go back in the box again.
00:31:13.817 --> 00:31:15.917
That life doesn't exist.
00:31:16.218 --> 00:31:16.278
No.
00:31:16.307 --> 00:31:24.377
So you are always dealing with whatever has happened that day, whatever's happened that week, how you're feeling physically, how tired are you, has anything happened, all of that stuff.
00:31:24.827 --> 00:31:34.667
And so there is a, a level of best I can do today, and that's a mantra that I have had for decades.
00:31:35.087 --> 00:31:36.738
I think this is really important.
00:31:37.127 --> 00:31:41.147
What is your sustainable best I can do today?
00:31:41.208 --> 00:31:41.417
Yep.
00:31:42.182 --> 00:31:47.583
And this is particularly important for people who are using their voices professionally, not necessarily in singing.
00:31:48.063 --> 00:31:48.182
Yep.
00:31:48.182 --> 00:31:50.762
Who belongs to a category of professional voice users?
00:31:50.823 --> 00:31:56.613
What is it that you are normally able to sustain and what is it now that you can't?
00:31:57.063 --> 00:31:57.393
Yes.
00:31:57.603 --> 00:31:59.373
What changes have you noticed?
00:31:59.702 --> 00:32:04.097
Something that, um, Laura signaled us to was what about time of day?
00:32:05.462 --> 00:32:09.333
Does your voice feel worse or better at different times of day?
00:32:09.692 --> 00:32:12.932
Because that can tell you something about sleep patterns.
00:32:12.932 --> 00:32:21.873
It could tell you something about possible acid reflux and again, how people are managing their general tension and and stress levels.
00:32:22.593 --> 00:32:27.962
And it can help you as a teacher or a voice ha rehabilitator if you're a singing voice.
00:32:27.962 --> 00:32:28.833
Ha rehabilitator.
00:32:29.087 --> 00:32:32.208
I think we are naturally, I think we've been doing it for ages.
00:32:32.597 --> 00:32:48.528
It can help you to help people to plan their day with little sort of breaks on SOVT bubbles and so forth and cool downs, and taking five minutes on the floor with your legs over a chair so you can just compress.
00:32:49.218 --> 00:32:52.998
Small tips like that can make a huge difference to someone's day.
00:32:54.258 --> 00:32:54.917
And the Vocal loads.
00:32:55.637 --> 00:32:58.548
And again, there are two things here which I think are interesting.
00:32:58.548 --> 00:33:03.857
One is that the moment you take away the, here is the performance that I have in my head.
00:33:03.857 --> 00:33:06.107
I must match it every single time.
00:33:06.137 --> 00:33:06.228
Mm-hmm.
00:33:06.587 --> 00:33:10.157
The moment you take that away, you take a whole load of pressure off yourself.
00:33:10.518 --> 00:33:18.317
And in with that is you need strategies to use when you are having a bad day.
00:33:19.477 --> 00:33:40.606
I really love that information about taking the case information before you start working with a client, and finding out, you know, what's been going on for them, what kind of a day they normally have, and what's the pattern that has led them to this place where they feel they have a voice problem.
00:33:40.936 --> 00:33:41.686
Absolutely.
00:33:42.317 --> 00:33:50.346
And we're gonna finish this one with overlaps and boundaries from episode 10, and this is about why boundaries matter.
00:33:50.967 --> 00:33:53.467
This is me and Gillyanne talking about boundaries.
00:33:56.115 --> 00:33:59.480
Can we just say something in terms of wrapping about.
00:34:00.434 --> 00:34:04.755
Why the overlap is important, but also why boundaries matter.
00:34:04.875 --> 00:34:05.325
Yes.
00:34:05.414 --> 00:34:13.425
So we as singing teachers have a lot to learn from the clinical precision, the observation and carry overthinking.
00:34:13.485 --> 00:34:13.574
Yep.
00:34:13.574 --> 00:34:15.135
From the medical profession.
00:34:15.255 --> 00:34:15.344
Yes.
00:34:15.434 --> 00:34:22.730
And I will say that a lot of our knowledge about Vocal function comes directly from that side of the voice profession.
00:34:22.949 --> 00:34:23.449
It really does.
00:34:23.449 --> 00:34:23.769
Mm-hmm.
00:34:23.849 --> 00:34:29.114
Some of the best courses that we've been on ourselves for our own education have been things like the British Laryngology.
00:34:29.420 --> 00:34:30.079
Association.
00:34:30.085 --> 00:34:30.260
Mm-hmm.
00:34:30.304 --> 00:34:30.500
Mm-hmm.
00:34:30.739 --> 00:34:40.610
And the speech and language therapy people, we learn so much from how they deal with voice problems and the union of European for nutritions, yes, that was a standout three days.
00:34:41.059 --> 00:34:53.744
Conversely, SLTs can gain a lot from practical singing based tools in terms of resonance, Vocal fold, fold coordination, register mechanisms if needed, because we do use them in speech.
00:34:54.349 --> 00:34:57.769
And also being able to adjust, identify.
00:34:58.235 --> 00:34:59.554
Adjust identity.
00:34:59.644 --> 00:34:59.735
Yep.
00:34:59.914 --> 00:35:00.994
And that's where resonance is.
00:35:00.994 --> 00:35:02.284
Super, super helpful.
00:35:02.315 --> 00:35:02.735
Yes.
00:35:02.795 --> 00:35:05.164
And understanding the performance context.
00:35:05.164 --> 00:35:16.655
There's something very interesting, particularly for worked with musical theater singers who have to change their style and genre, and often the sound that they make in order to inhabit that particular actor in that particular musical.
00:35:16.659 --> 00:35:16.800
Mm-hmm.
00:35:17.224 --> 00:35:23.224
That people are much more used to finding an aspect of themselves, but still sounding different.
00:35:23.230 --> 00:35:23.320
Yeah.
00:35:23.974 --> 00:35:37.025
That's a very useful piece of information to have, and it is not something that a speech and language therapist would even think about because the idea that you can hold more than one resonating shape and still make it work is really quite alien.
00:35:37.655 --> 00:35:44.945
So we had a lot of fun doing some demos where we were speaking in different, different shapes, different settings.
00:35:45.005 --> 00:35:45.275
Yeah.
00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:45.340
Yeah.
00:35:45.635 --> 00:35:50.014
And also the difference between somebody's speaking voice and their speaking voice can work.
00:35:50.594 --> 00:35:51.795
Reasonably well.
00:35:52.155 --> 00:36:02.414
And then they go in into an entirely different setup for their singing voice, because that's their singing persona and all the things that they were working quite well in The speaking voice don't work in the singing voice.
00:36:02.414 --> 00:36:06.105
So that's a another sort of disconnect that the singing teacher can help with.
00:36:06.195 --> 00:36:07.215
Overlaps matter.
00:36:07.425 --> 00:36:07.934
Yes.
00:36:08.054 --> 00:36:09.614
And so do boundaries.
00:36:09.675 --> 00:36:10.065
Yes.
00:36:10.125 --> 00:36:11.204
We singing teachers.
00:36:11.204 --> 00:36:13.875
We don't need to become clinical therapists.
00:36:13.875 --> 00:36:13.885
Nope.
00:36:14.295 --> 00:36:15.405
You don't have the training?
00:36:15.525 --> 00:36:16.184
No, you can do it.
00:36:16.184 --> 00:36:17.414
You can do the training if you want to.
00:36:17.445 --> 00:36:17.804
Yeah.
00:36:17.864 --> 00:36:19.394
But it's not part of your training.
00:36:19.514 --> 00:36:22.905
And a good therapist doesn't need to become a singing coach.
00:36:22.905 --> 00:36:28.844
Similar, we need a mutual respect for each other and for the boundaries.
00:36:28.965 --> 00:36:29.114
Yeah.
00:36:29.775 --> 00:36:38.085
But both of us can understand more about the instrument and the person and the goal in front of us if we allow overlap.
00:36:39.074 --> 00:36:40.425
I think the most important thing.
00:36:41.235 --> 00:36:46.244
Is that you recognize your own abilities and your own gaps.
00:36:46.275 --> 00:36:46.364
Mm-hmm.
00:36:46.934 --> 00:36:53.835
Because there's something very powerful about recognizing where your skills lie and where your gaps in the knowledge are.
00:36:53.864 --> 00:36:58.574
And not saying even to yourself, this singer in front of me has a problem.
00:36:58.635 --> 00:37:00.405
I am the only person who can solve it.
00:37:00.409 --> 00:37:00.679
Mm-hmm.
00:37:00.885 --> 00:37:02.175
I must solve it.
00:37:02.175 --> 00:37:03.974
I must be the person that they come to.
00:37:03.974 --> 00:37:04.065
Mm-hmm.
00:37:04.065 --> 00:37:05.925
We can't pass them on to anybody else.
00:37:05.954 --> 00:37:10.155
The SLTs are so used to working in a team where everybody has.
00:37:10.155 --> 00:37:19.454
Input and everybody has their skills and everybody has their levels of expertise and their areas of expertise, and we can learn from that.
00:37:20.175 --> 00:37:23.025
So we need to keep these conversations going.
00:37:23.054 --> 00:37:28.335
Yes, it's not about showing off, it's about choosing the right tool and the right person.
00:37:28.905 --> 00:37:28.965
Mm.
00:37:29.054 --> 00:37:29.565
That's it.
00:37:29.804 --> 00:37:30.295
Are we done?.
00:37:30.355 --> 00:37:30.724
We're done.
00:37:30.989 --> 00:37:31.280
Okay.
00:37:31.809 --> 00:37:33.045
We'll see you next time.
00:37:33.105 --> 00:37:33.585
Bye.
00:37:33.585 --> 00:37:33.644
Bye.
00:37:47.264 --> 00:37:50.684
This is a voice, a podcast with Dr.
00:37:50.684 --> 00:37:52.875
Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.
00:37:56.414 --> 00:37:56.914
This Is A Voice.
00:00:11.141 --> 00:00:15.500
This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr.
00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:19.591
Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.
00:00:19.591 --> 00:00:22.321
This is A Voice.
00:00:22.321 --> 00:00:25.940
Secret singer, burnout, boundaries, and connection.
00:00:26.850 --> 00:00:30.830
Hello, and welcome to This Is A Voice, season 12, episode 12.
00:00:31.091 --> 00:00:33.771
The podcast where we get vocal about voice.
00:00:33.771 --> 00:00:34.621
I'm Jeremy Fisher.
00:00:34.661 --> 00:00:36.161
And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes.
00:00:36.161 --> 00:00:39.371
And this episode is the best of season 12.
00:00:39.401 --> 00:00:40.250
Ah.
00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:46.521
We've chosen a few little excerpts from episodes, and these are our favourite bits.
00:00:46.521 --> 00:00:57.862
Mm. We're actually gonna start with the episode which has become my favorite episode of all time, and that's episode five, The Secret Singer.
00:00:58.253 --> 00:00:59.313
Oh, bless you for that.
00:00:59.313 --> 00:01:00.243
How wonderful.
00:01:00.273 --> 00:01:09.203
Now, if you haven't listened to episode five, The Secret Singer, yet, then we're gonna play the opening of the episode, and this is where you find out who the secret singer is.
00:01:10.632 --> 00:01:12.013
I can't tell you how excited I am.
00:01:12.162 --> 00:01:18.733
We have such a special guest with us today, and we're actually gonna start with a recording of said special guest.
00:01:19.153 --> 00:01:24.582
So this is a little excerpt from one of the Handel German Arias.
00:01:24.843 --> 00:01:27.022
Meine Seele hört im Sehen.
00:01:27.617 --> 00:01:27.908
Okay.
00:03:12.538 --> 00:03:14.788
Okay, and can I introduce you two?
00:03:15.117 --> 00:03:17.818
Gillyanne Kayes aged 26.
00:03:17.818 --> 00:03:19.587
Do you know what?
00:03:19.932 --> 00:03:25.258
I almost had a handkerchief, a tearing alert there.
00:03:26.293 --> 00:03:31.782
I was so excited about this because, and I have to tell you, Gillyanne and I have been married 25 years.
00:03:32.263 --> 00:03:39.133
This is the first time that I've actually heard Gillyanne sing in a recital, and she's never played me recordings really before this.
00:03:39.133 --> 00:03:40.782
There's a story.
00:03:40.812 --> 00:03:42.372
Yeah, there's definitely a story.
00:03:42.372 --> 00:03:45.043
And friends, we are gonna go deep.
00:03:45.282 --> 00:03:45.552
Yep.
00:03:45.703 --> 00:03:47.293
I could well tear up again.
00:03:47.293 --> 00:03:47.562
Yep.
00:03:48.362 --> 00:03:53.983
Do you know, I had so many people get in touch with me after this particular episode.
00:03:54.573 --> 00:04:05.983
I mean, it was obviously very moving to record it itself, but hearing other people's stories and how other people connected with the experience that I shared, that was really special.
00:04:06.413 --> 00:04:15.902
And in fact, that was only half the story, because Gillyanne, in episode six, Singer Interrupted, continued the story, and we're just gonna play a little excerpt from that too.
00:04:16.192 --> 00:04:16.473
Okay.
00:04:18.350 --> 00:04:18.980
There's two things.
00:04:19.220 --> 00:04:22.790
The first one is you glossed over something really quite magnificently.
00:04:22.790 --> 00:04:23.569
Congratulations.
00:04:23.569 --> 00:04:30.110
I'm gonna pull it out, which is, you said mid thirties, which means that's seven years without singing.
00:04:30.199 --> 00:04:30.319
Mm-hmm.
00:04:30.949 --> 00:04:35.269
That's a long time, particularly at that age and at that point of development of a singer.
00:04:35.750 --> 00:04:36.769
That's a long time.
00:04:36.949 --> 00:04:38.930
So there was some stuff going on there.
00:04:38.930 --> 00:04:45.949
There was, and as I said before, and I've always said it was being a teacher that kept me going, first of all, because.
00:04:46.819 --> 00:04:55.939
I knew exactly what it was like to feel you couldn't make a sound and for anyone out there who listens, 'cause I've had this and I think other teachers have had it.
00:04:56.300 --> 00:04:59.060
Oh, she had a voice problem, she shouldn't be teaching.
00:04:59.899 --> 00:05:01.579
Exact opposite.
00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:02.360
Mm-hmm.
00:05:02.600 --> 00:05:06.110
If you are a voice problem survivor mm-hmm.
00:05:06.439 --> 00:05:09.410
You are gonna be a great teacher.
00:05:09.410 --> 00:05:10.189
Mm-hmm.
00:05:11.689 --> 00:05:12.050
Okay.
00:05:12.050 --> 00:05:13.100
Or you can be a great teacher.
00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:13.545
I was gonna say.
00:05:13.819 --> 00:05:14.389
Okay.
00:05:14.629 --> 00:05:14.839
Yeah.
00:05:14.839 --> 00:05:15.785
So that was number one.
00:05:15.790 --> 00:05:17.600
Number two, yes.
00:05:17.750 --> 00:05:18.949
You talked about a happy ending.
00:05:19.970 --> 00:05:20.120
Yes.
00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:23.269
So did the happy ending involve getting back to performing?
00:05:24.170 --> 00:05:26.029
There's a step along the way.
00:05:26.089 --> 00:05:26.120
Okay.
00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:32.209
Which was, yes, I did get back, I did do some performing pretty much low stakes stuff, but that was fine.
00:05:32.810 --> 00:05:39.829
And I got to the point where I'd done a lunchtime concert at some venue or other, and I was pleased with what I did.
00:05:39.829 --> 00:05:40.579
It was lovely.
00:05:40.579 --> 00:05:49.723
I had a nice frock and I enjoyed the repertoire that I sang, and I think I did a couple more.
00:05:49.992 --> 00:05:52.752
And then I thought, do you know what?
00:05:54.343 --> 00:05:55.648
I'm not really enjoying this.
00:05:56.382 --> 00:05:57.432
I do like singing.
00:05:57.432 --> 00:06:01.603
I do like rehearsing, but it's spoiling my day.
00:06:03.492 --> 00:06:12.312
Burnout We never thought we'd start talking about burnout, but episode one of season 12, we started talking about our own experience of burnout.
00:06:12.773 --> 00:06:14.802
We were on holiday last year.
00:06:14.843 --> 00:06:18.163
Somebody very kindly lent us their lodge that we stayed in for two weeks.
00:06:18.163 --> 00:06:18.302
Yeah.
00:06:18.302 --> 00:06:23.952
And we discovered that we were in burnout and had been for some time.
00:06:24.603 --> 00:06:31.653
And Jeremy, I think it was only after the holiday that we realized something wasn't right.
00:06:31.723 --> 00:06:33.173
We still weren't rested, were we?
00:06:33.173 --> 00:06:33.293
No.
00:06:33.293 --> 00:06:34.952
Even after two weeks of doing nothing.
00:06:34.952 --> 00:06:35.833
No, not at all.
00:06:35.862 --> 00:06:41.182
And it's a, it was a beautiful venue and a- all the rest of it, and we, we did do some nice things.
00:06:42.252 --> 00:06:44.682
We did not come away refreshed.
00:06:44.682 --> 00:06:48.983
We did not come away with new creative ideas.
00:06:49.783 --> 00:07:00.572
And to be honest, I think in some ways certainly what you were going through was, I love this description of burnout, feeling fatigued in every cell of your being.
00:07:00.603 --> 00:07:01.583
Absolutely.
00:07:01.583 --> 00:07:09.512
I remember you just sitting up in bed most of the day before you could be levered out to go, to go and enjoy the sunshine.
00:07:09.512 --> 00:07:09.723
Yeah.
00:07:10.023 --> 00:07:15.502
And then by the way, I was just levered out onto the bench- Yeah, yeah ... in the garden to read a book.
00:07:15.562 --> 00:07:15.923
That was it.
00:07:15.923 --> 00:07:18.242
And you weren't even reading.
00:07:18.242 --> 00:07:18.312
No.
00:07:18.423 --> 00:07:25.432
And neither of us even had the energy to watch the amazing solar events that were going on at that time of year.
00:07:25.432 --> 00:07:26.872
It was like, "No, let's go to bed.
00:07:26.872 --> 00:07:30.942
00." Not getting up at midnight to watch the skies at night.
00:07:30.992 --> 00:07:31.202
Yes.
00:07:31.202 --> 00:07:39.793
So we're wondering whether this sounds familiar to people listening, because we think burnout is really underrated, undervalued.
00:07:39.793 --> 00:07:41.932
It's just not very well known.
00:07:42.033 --> 00:07:44.713
I don't think it's seen enough in our profession.
00:07:44.713 --> 00:07:46.202
I don't think it's recognized.
00:07:46.202 --> 00:07:47.923
I think a lot of people live with it.
00:07:48.442 --> 00:08:10.723
I went running down various rabbit holes this morning, having a look at burnout scales and articles about burnout, and there's a huge amount of material, surprise, in the medical and caring professions about burnout, certain burnout scales, and there's also a lot of material in the business world, and there's some material in the teaching world.
00:08:11.223 --> 00:08:27.627
But I think in particular for those of us who are more freelance voice professionals and small business owners, we really need to know some of the markers of burnout, and just to begin to care for ourselves and each other more.
00:08:27.627 --> 00:08:39.498
And we got one of our teachers, Franka van Essen, to talk about her experience of burnout because she always says that when she started working with us, she was recovering from burnout.
00:08:40.028 --> 00:08:47.697
And she talked about the boundary between burnout and boredom, and how that can be a very narrow space.
00:08:48.217 --> 00:08:51.618
So here's Franka on different types of burnout.
00:08:53.150 --> 00:08:56.160
So a burnout could start in different ways.
00:08:56.240 --> 00:09:00.961
You have people like me who are very much coming from that fight-flight zone.
00:09:01.530 --> 00:09:14.230
There are also people who are more prone to that immobilization part, where they feel like they're being overridden by a truck and can't get out of bed anymore, and that's the start of their burnout.
00:09:15.490 --> 00:09:28.211
Usually, it's one of those two types, the way in which it started, and for me, it was that more fight-flight start of, of having a very restless body and very tired at the same time.
00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:38.480
So being in a burnout as creative is very challenging because at the same time, actually, I was in a boreout.
00:09:38.880 --> 00:10:04.711
Now, this may sound really weird, but the time when I started following your, actually this podcast, this very podcast, and starting to follow your courses, was actually the time that I was in this burnout, and at the same time, I desperate- desperately needed something new to, to have my mind, have my head, um, do.
00:10:05.541 --> 00:10:31.730
And I see this a lot with neurodivergent people, that they, on the one hand, need to be very careful with their energy and their sensitive system to not get into overload, but on the other hand, they need a lot of challenge for the same system to keep them going and to feed their endless curiosity for new knowledge and new ex- exploration, really.
00:10:33.370 --> 00:10:43.191
Now, thinking about being a singing teacher and a creative, there are a few th- more things are going on that are specific for our kind of professions, I think.
00:10:44.370 --> 00:11:01.071
Most of us have portfolio careers, so we do different things alongside each other, partly because we love to do it, but partly also because the business is, is shaped like this, that we have small contracts or small jobs next to each other.
00:11:02.750 --> 00:11:16.890
This also means that we have to be very, mm, flexible and jump from o- one thing to another all the time, and this can be very tiring.
00:11:17.610 --> 00:11:20.350
It's, it takes a lot of our flexibility.
00:11:22.390 --> 00:11:25.921
Another thing that could be going on is the starving artist mode.
00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:37.721
I personally am still struggling with it, the idea that art is not meant to be paid for in, uh, a, in a good way.
00:11:38.860 --> 00:11:50.035
So I see friends of mine who work in completely different areas of, of profession, and they just bring home these amounts of money every month, and I'm like What the F?
00:11:50.086 --> 00:12:00.586
I mean, I c- it's weird in a way that I can do something that not many people can do and still get paid for it so lousy.
00:12:01.196 --> 00:12:09.485
Another thing that I've noticed is that a lot of singing teachers are people who love to help, as coaches and therapists often are.
00:12:10.796 --> 00:12:32.296
But there is this thing that's called the helper syndrome, where we, in a way, overstep being that helper so that we don't honor our own boundaries anymore, and actually also not the boundaries of our clients, because if we help them too much, they might feel that they can't do it themselves, which is actually not what we want.
00:12:33.596 --> 00:12:49.216
So I think stepping back sometimes and acknowledging that might feel a bit awkward is a good thing to do because it prevents us from overstepping our own boundaries and overstepping our own energy.
00:12:49.855 --> 00:12:59.522
So Franka has done two courses for us online on the polyvagal theory and putting it into practice as a singing teacher for yourself and your students.
00:12:59.522 --> 00:12:59.851
Mm-hmm.
00:12:59.922 --> 00:13:02.922
And we'll drop links for both of those courses into the show notes.
00:13:03.831 --> 00:13:16.572
In the next episode, uh, Dr. Ayan Panja kindly allowed us to share extracts from his own podcast on burnout, where he's speaking about it from more of a medical and research perspective.
00:13:16.745 --> 00:13:20.615
Because it's not just a word that we're bandying around in the community.
00:13:20.945 --> 00:13:21.784
It's real.
00:13:22.238 --> 00:13:30.368
It can present in many ways, and common signs of burnout would be feeling tired or drained most of the time.
00:13:30.427 --> 00:13:31.868
A lot of people feel like that.
00:13:31.927 --> 00:13:45.798
I realize that feeling overwhelmed or not taking tasks at work seriously where you just don't care if you miss something, doubting yourself or being cynical, feeling detached, all of these things that.
00:13:46.852 --> 00:13:56.033
Many of us might feel now and again, but if they're persistent and there's more than one of them, then you might be at risk of burnout.
00:13:56.812 --> 00:14:00.863
And it's also one of those things that colleagues might spot in you.
00:14:01.732 --> 00:14:03.592
Are you grumpy at work?
00:14:03.863 --> 00:14:06.682
Are you leaving things undone?
00:14:06.923 --> 00:14:08.722
Has your performance reduced?
00:14:09.322 --> 00:14:12.202
Are you alienating yourselves from your colleagues?
00:14:12.293 --> 00:14:14.212
Are you obviously exhausted?
00:14:14.783 --> 00:14:16.552
And not performing at work.
00:14:18.352 --> 00:14:24.832
And the real kicker is that the world we live in now is all about those things.
00:14:24.923 --> 00:14:27.263
It's constantly about performance, isn't it?
00:14:27.263 --> 00:14:32.363
And the blurring of lines between your home life and your work life.
00:14:32.393 --> 00:14:39.503
I mean, what's happened there in the last 10 to 20 years, it's no wonder people are more likely to feel burnt out.
00:14:40.778 --> 00:14:53.168
All you've gotta do is add into that problems with say, sleep or your relationships, or if you are lonely, or if you've got money worries, who doesn't have those at the moment?
00:14:53.977 --> 00:14:56.378
And you've got a real recipe for disaster.
00:14:57.263 --> 00:14:59.482
There are, of course other factors at play.
00:14:59.482 --> 00:15:10.852
So there are certain personality types who are more prone to burnout, so people who are real empaths, for example, or people who are perfectionists.
00:15:11.062 --> 00:15:23.273
And if you're both, then again, if you like, the analogy for that would be that if your cup overflows and that's burnout, then that group of people already have a cup that's fairly full.
00:15:25.669 --> 00:15:30.779
As a recovering perfectionist, and I did write an article on that, I think that really hits home.
00:15:31.128 --> 00:15:35.398
And we ended up doing yet another episode on burnout.
00:15:35.447 --> 00:15:45.331
And this was a result of an informal conversation that I had with our colleague, uh, Marisa Lee Naismith, who has her own podcast, A Voice and Beyond.
00:15:45.647 --> 00:15:57.716
And she talked about her personal experience of burnout and why she felt the need to actually pause her podcast for a while, even though it was hugely successful.
00:15:57.716 --> 00:15:59.976
It was right at the top of the ratings.
00:16:00.937 --> 00:16:02.567
It's a powerful conversation.
00:16:03.496 --> 00:16:04.256
Here's Marisa.
00:16:05.259 --> 00:16:24.308
There are times where you're in that work mode and you aren't in flow, that you find that you, you get to that point where you know the words aren't coming together, that you are reading something and nothing is sinking in.
00:16:24.609 --> 00:16:29.619
And you, most of us have been programmed to push through that, those moments.
00:16:30.219 --> 00:16:33.788
And what I've learned is that is the time to get up.
00:16:34.764 --> 00:16:37.494
Go for a walk or have a stretch.
00:16:38.094 --> 00:16:41.964
Go make yourself a cup of tea or a coffee, just mm-hmm.
00:16:42.354 --> 00:16:44.303
Get away from that project.
00:16:44.364 --> 00:16:44.423
Yeah.
00:16:45.083 --> 00:16:46.974
And then come back to it.
00:16:47.033 --> 00:16:57.714
And then you find you're so much better, you're so much more efficient, and you are talking about space, allowing yourself space.
00:16:58.224 --> 00:17:00.683
The word grace came to mind.
00:17:00.953 --> 00:17:02.004
I feel that.
00:17:02.678 --> 00:17:08.888
We need to give ourselves space, but also we need to allow ourselves the grace.
00:17:08.888 --> 00:17:10.419
Love that to do that.
00:17:10.749 --> 00:17:11.288
Yeah.
00:17:11.528 --> 00:17:14.199
Look, I stopped my podcast last year.
00:17:14.558 --> 00:17:14.739
Mm-hmm.
00:17:14.739 --> 00:17:21.368
I put it on pause, we hit a million downloads and you know, it was going great guns.
00:17:21.818 --> 00:17:28.808
We were top in so many cities and we were at that point where.
00:17:29.709 --> 00:17:41.199
We're in the top 5% of podcasts globally, and I just went, I can't, I cannot, I'm not finding the joy in this at the moment.
00:17:41.199 --> 00:17:48.638
I'm so burnt out that it's stressing me out, and it's meant to be something that I love.
00:17:48.669 --> 00:17:51.189
It's, it's my loved, it's my child.
00:17:51.189 --> 00:17:52.209
It's my baby here.
00:17:53.378 --> 00:17:54.124
It's my passion.
00:17:54.124 --> 00:18:06.759
Yeah, it was a passion project and all of a sudden it became something else on my to-do list, and that's the moment that I went, this is not the time, this is not working out for me right now.
00:18:07.419 --> 00:18:16.868
And I made the decision when it was at its peak to pull the pin on it, and I wasn't scared.
00:18:17.048 --> 00:18:19.239
A lot of people would've been scared.
00:18:20.423 --> 00:18:24.173
Would've thought, wow, what if we never get back to that again?
00:18:24.173 --> 00:18:27.983
What if we have this break and the audiences don't come back?
00:18:28.374 --> 00:18:41.213
And I was okay with it because I had learned that my health, my mental, my physical, my emotional health were way more then the downloads.
00:18:41.604 --> 00:18:42.939
They were way more important.
00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:50.580
A big thank you to Marisa for her honesty and for being prepared to share her own journey in this regard.
00:18:51.311 --> 00:19:02.922
For episode seven, we invited Michelle Robinson in to talk about boundaries, and this particular excerpt from episode seven talks about the inherent power dynamic in a singing lesson.
00:19:03.582 --> 00:19:04.092
Yes.
00:19:04.201 --> 00:19:15.011
I found this really, really fascinating because as you know, we are running a Master-Apprentice survey right now, and, uh, this is late stages of Michelle's own research.
00:19:15.471 --> 00:19:26.961
And one of the things that seems to be coming out of it is the relational aspect between the singing teacher and the student, which is a mutual beneficial thing if it works well.
00:19:28.153 --> 00:19:31.452
There is an inherent power dynamic.
00:19:31.452 --> 00:19:35.803
I know some people won't like to hear this, but there is an inherent power dynamic.
00:19:36.103 --> 00:19:41.803
Thank you Kim Burwell, for being the person who pointed this out in the educative process.
00:19:42.643 --> 00:19:46.242
So, yeah, that, that absolutely is a power dynamic.
00:19:46.512 --> 00:19:58.782
And actually it's not about getting rid of that in inverted commas power because yes, the teacher generally is the guide and has the knowledge on the voice and performance and what have you.
00:19:59.143 --> 00:19:59.893
Absolutely.
00:20:00.103 --> 00:20:10.542
It's how you manage that power, and I think this is one of the most important questions that, that I can give an answer to a high quality relationship.
00:20:11.337 --> 00:20:13.347
Is never abusive.
00:20:14.008 --> 00:20:19.407
It never takes advantage of the power a teacher inadvertently has.
00:20:19.738 --> 00:20:20.218
Okay?
00:20:20.817 --> 00:20:29.577
Closeness is about genuinely caring for that student and their wellbeing and, and their success.
00:20:31.208 --> 00:20:36.988
And also for them genuinely caring for you as a teacher, because we know that they do.
00:20:37.018 --> 00:20:37.107
Mm-hmm.
00:20:37.347 --> 00:20:39.117
You make a difference to them.
00:20:39.117 --> 00:20:39.238
Yeah.
00:20:39.238 --> 00:20:40.557
You impact their lives.
00:20:40.557 --> 00:20:41.577
We know that.
00:20:41.877 --> 00:20:41.968
Mm-hmm.
00:20:42.208 --> 00:20:48.478
The minute a teacher behaves in a way that is detrimental to that student, there is no relationship.
00:20:48.567 --> 00:20:48.778
Yeah.
00:20:49.228 --> 00:20:55.708
There is a situation of abuse to a greater or lesser extent as you suggest, and it must not be allowed to continue.
00:20:56.653 --> 00:21:02.083
As I say, we know that the student is so influenced by their one-to-one teacher.
00:21:02.442 --> 00:21:17.653
It is far safer to bring out the idea of closeness into the open, to understand what it looks like to understand where the boundaries are, and I think this is where the responsibility on the teachers is so high.
00:21:17.893 --> 00:21:18.403
Mm-hmm.
00:21:18.522 --> 00:21:21.913
Because as we said earlier, the teachers aren't therapists.
00:21:21.917 --> 00:21:22.057
Mm-hmm.
00:21:22.827 --> 00:21:36.057
Whilst I do think there is an element where you are cre you are having to and should create a safe space and therefore they will talk to you about things that they might not talk to somebody else about.
00:21:36.117 --> 00:21:36.387
Mm-hmm.
00:21:37.198 --> 00:21:46.107
It, it then, and this is where the safeguarding comes in, it then is knowing what you do with that information when it becomes something that's too big Yeah.
00:21:46.107 --> 00:21:46.647
For you.
00:21:46.978 --> 00:21:47.458
Okay.
00:21:47.653 --> 00:21:50.952
And I think in terms of boundaries, that's a really key one.
00:21:50.952 --> 00:21:51.133
Yeah.
00:21:51.403 --> 00:22:05.442
So being able, able to signal on where appropriate or if necessary from what you're telling me, particularly when people are working with miners, maybe there's something going on that actually needs to be raised.
00:22:05.847 --> 00:22:06.958
With a different entity.
00:22:07.137 --> 00:22:19.468
I think there's something that's very interesting about this because it's like you create a safe space that if I, if big emotions happen, they have a space, a safe space to happen in, and you are not phased by them.
00:22:19.498 --> 00:22:22.528
But I think the difference is that you don't deal with them.
00:22:22.917 --> 00:22:23.248
Yeah.
00:22:23.248 --> 00:22:25.708
You allow them to happen and then you move on.
00:22:26.515 --> 00:22:42.134
Michelle stayed on for episode eight, and in this episode, we were talking about bringing information and data from the sports arena into music education and training, and we were talking about the differences between m- sports education and music education.
00:22:42.884 --> 00:22:49.545
We could argue that musical performance is largely not competitive.
00:22:49.545 --> 00:22:50.085
Not competitive.
00:22:50.085 --> 00:22:50.295
Yeah.
00:22:50.775 --> 00:22:59.325
So what we're looking at with these elite sports coaches is by and large we do sport for pleasure, but sports are competitive.
00:22:59.325 --> 00:23:09.884
So are there any areas from those aspects of coaching and these theories that don't map across or need to be changed to map across?
00:23:10.454 --> 00:23:11.025
Yeah.
00:23:11.414 --> 00:23:12.855
That's the key difference, isn't it?
00:23:13.214 --> 00:23:20.474
With sport, it's very easy to show what excellence is by winning a competition, by getting a world record or whatever.
00:23:21.345 --> 00:23:28.305
It is far less easy to show what excellence is in music, mainly because a lot of it is subjective.
00:23:28.365 --> 00:23:28.575
Yep.
00:23:28.575 --> 00:23:37.875
You know, and I think that's possibly key because it's only, it is through somebody being truly.
00:23:38.295 --> 00:23:46.545
Comfortable and confident in their performance, in the way they deliver their singing.
00:23:46.785 --> 00:23:55.095
That enables them, I'm making this up on the spot, but enables them to be the best they can be.
00:23:55.095 --> 00:23:55.994
I never said that a lot.
00:23:56.265 --> 00:23:57.105
Just thinking it through.
00:23:57.315 --> 00:24:01.515
If you think, Michelle, if you think about the idea that music is self-expression.
00:24:02.039 --> 00:24:02.549
Yes.
00:24:02.970 --> 00:24:06.269
Then what they're doing is expressing themself Yes.
00:24:06.359 --> 00:24:08.519
To the best of their ability at that moment.
00:24:08.549 --> 00:24:08.849
Yeah.
00:24:08.849 --> 00:24:18.930
You talk about, Jeremy talks about maybe when he's working with someone on a, a performance, I want them to find their own best selves through Yes.
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.710
In the way that they deliver that performance, and you are really strong on that.
00:24:22.890 --> 00:24:25.859
It's one of the reasons why music is so.
00:24:27.569 --> 00:24:29.339
In a way easy to do.
00:24:29.339 --> 00:24:34.049
And that's gonna sound really weird because there's always a version that will fit you.
00:24:34.500 --> 00:24:34.650
Yes.
00:24:34.650 --> 00:24:36.329
There's no one right version.
00:24:36.329 --> 00:24:40.200
No matter the teachers at college say, there is no one right version.
00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:41.789
There are 58 right versions.
00:24:41.789 --> 00:24:43.200
And you could do any one of them.
00:24:43.289 --> 00:24:47.339
And in a way, the bigger goal, I think for a, for an artist.
00:24:47.670 --> 00:24:59.430
Is to be an artist so that they are themselves as much as they can be, or, or at the very least, they have a persona that is extremely polished and that they can live within for, for years.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:05.279
So if we break that down, what's needed in order for them to do that?
00:25:06.390 --> 00:25:08.970
They have to be comfortable within themselves.
00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:13.650
They have to feel that they are in control of what they're doing.
00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:15.450
Autonomy.
00:25:16.559 --> 00:25:21.660
They have to feel that they have the ability to do it.
00:25:21.809 --> 00:25:42.480
They know what they've got to do to produ, you know, they know it on a technical level, but enough that they can leave that behind and start to communicate what it is that they feel about the song or about the story, and they need to feel that is going to be received well.
00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:46.109
That they're in a space that that is gonna love, that people are going to love.
00:25:47.115 --> 00:25:58.125
Look as a person, not as a PhD researcher or anything like that as a person, I believe that good performance, good musical performance is soul to soul connection.
00:25:58.484 --> 00:25:58.724
Yeah.
00:25:59.266 --> 00:26:00.165
I love that.
00:26:00.596 --> 00:26:02.336
Soul-to-soul connection.
00:26:02.486 --> 00:26:11.695
100%. So in episodes nine and 10, we were talking about singing teachers versus speech and language therapists.
00:26:12.296 --> 00:26:16.256
And in episode nine, we were talking about the different diagnostic base.
00:26:16.846 --> 00:26:21.496
So we just wanna do this little excerpt because we think it is really important.
00:26:22.577 --> 00:26:28.097
Okay, so the speech and language therapy side will be working inside diagnosis.
00:26:28.097 --> 00:26:30.617
It's very much team-based care.
00:26:30.798 --> 00:26:44.688
Mm. So you have a whole team of people around you, all of whom may be contributing to the diagnosis and the speech and language therapist's job is to make sure that those things are put into place and also ongoing care.
00:26:44.778 --> 00:26:44.867
Mm-hmm.
00:26:45.198 --> 00:26:47.117
Outcomes have to be demonstrated.
00:26:47.117 --> 00:26:47.298
Yes.
00:26:47.298 --> 00:26:51.827
And it has to be by and large, based on evidence-based practice.
00:26:51.833 --> 00:26:51.843
Yeah.
00:26:52.768 --> 00:26:58.468
And the singing teacher or the Vocal coach is working more functionally, artistically.
00:26:58.647 --> 00:27:01.498
They're more likely to do one off or very short sessions.
00:27:01.498 --> 00:27:02.458
Short term sessions.
00:27:02.817 --> 00:27:08.548
And they're aiming to, on the whole, they are aiming towards performance.
00:27:08.548 --> 00:27:10.377
It's not always the case.
00:27:10.377 --> 00:27:12.298
There are non performative versions of singing.
00:27:12.448 --> 00:27:12.538
Mm-hmm.
00:27:12.778 --> 00:27:13.077
Obviously.
00:27:13.083 --> 00:27:13.333
Mm-hmm.
00:27:13.647 --> 00:27:16.317
But in a way, you are aiming to.
00:27:16.698 --> 00:27:23.478
Get somebody functional, usually over a wider range and usually with a bigger range of dynamics.
00:27:23.482 --> 00:27:23.603
Mm-hmm.
00:27:23.682 --> 00:27:24.163
Because.
00:27:25.022 --> 00:27:27.932
Singing requires contrast of some kind.
00:27:28.682 --> 00:27:39.123
So it is very interesting, and I put this into chat, GPT, everybody knows I'm a chat fan at the moment, and it came up with this phrase, medicalized versus functional.
00:27:39.932 --> 00:27:43.143
And I went, okay, I am not exactly sure what that means.
00:27:43.143 --> 00:27:45.992
So can you describe for me what it means?
00:27:45.992 --> 00:27:46.002
Mm-hmm.
00:27:46.002 --> 00:27:46.188
Mm-hmm.
00:27:46.268 --> 00:27:50.252
And it came up with two pages of stuff and I think it's really fascinating.
00:27:50.792 --> 00:27:51.107
So here we go.
00:27:52.667 --> 00:27:55.907
It's looking, it's starting from a different point.
00:27:56.147 --> 00:28:00.438
So medicalized means the voice is being viewed mainly through a healthcare lens.
00:28:00.647 --> 00:28:03.948
That usually includes diagnosis path.
00:28:04.008 --> 00:28:06.948
Oh, and by the way, diagnosis is not always done by the speech therapist.
00:28:07.337 --> 00:28:11.147
It's often done by surgeons or by people in on the medical team.
00:28:11.988 --> 00:28:19.067
It should be done as a result of scoping, at least, and a whole protocol of things that a team will need to go through.
00:28:19.548 --> 00:28:25.938
So they're looking specifically for pathology or underlying condition, red flags, tissue status.
00:28:26.173 --> 00:28:35.682
Surgical history, neurological factors, muscle tension, dysphonia, rehab goals, and the scope of practice and referral pathways.
00:28:35.952 --> 00:28:40.032
So they may be asking the questions that they would ask would be, what's the diagnosis?
00:28:40.153 --> 00:28:41.323
What's safe?
00:28:42.002 --> 00:28:43.532
What has been impaired?
00:28:44.163 --> 00:28:47.702
Does it need rehabilitation or does it need compensation?
00:28:48.212 --> 00:28:53.643
So the rehabilitation to get back to what would be considered standard function might not be possible.
00:28:53.792 --> 00:29:00.932
So you then need to compensate in some other way, or are they okay as far as I'm concerned and now need referral?
00:29:02.042 --> 00:29:06.002
And basically what outcome is realistic within this healthcare context?
00:29:06.002 --> 00:29:07.803
And obviously that varies country to country.
00:29:08.643 --> 00:29:13.653
I like here what you've looked at, which is with regard to function.
00:29:13.772 --> 00:29:13.952
Yep.
00:29:14.313 --> 00:29:15.423
And the bullet points there.
00:29:15.423 --> 00:29:16.472
Do you want to read those out?
00:29:16.502 --> 00:29:25.383
'cause I think they're interesting and then I've got something to say following a singing teacher or a Vocal coach might say to themselves, how is this voice currently working?
00:29:26.432 --> 00:29:27.992
What is the person trying to achieve?
00:29:29.208 --> 00:29:30.557
How is their efficiency?
00:29:30.557 --> 00:29:31.577
How is their stamina?
00:29:31.577 --> 00:29:31.667
Mm-hmm.
00:29:31.907 --> 00:29:33.317
How is their clarity?
00:29:33.528 --> 00:29:38.688
How is their range, the reliability of the voice, their expressive choices?
00:29:38.928 --> 00:29:44.117
Are they able to make expressive choices, habit and coordination across a much wider range?
00:29:44.567 --> 00:29:51.587
And how does this function carry over into speaking, singing, teaching, performing, all of the situations that you're gonna find yourself in.
00:29:51.593 --> 00:29:51.772
Mm-hmm.
00:29:52.008 --> 00:29:52.097
Mm-hmm.
00:29:52.367 --> 00:29:55.607
So they may be asking, what's getting in the way of the task?
00:29:56.343 --> 00:30:04.083
And I think as well, what I would add to those bullet points is how does the singer feel about their voice?
00:30:04.143 --> 00:30:04.593
Yes.
00:30:04.593 --> 00:30:07.323
Or how does the voice user feel about their voice?
00:30:07.323 --> 00:30:08.762
I think it's very important.
00:30:08.972 --> 00:30:17.403
I actually think this is one of the questions that speech and language therapists ask anyway, but I think also teachers should be asking this as well, which is what's changed.
00:30:17.522 --> 00:30:23.462
You know, you can hear somebody, particularly somebody who's a very experienced voice user, and they go.
00:30:23.728 --> 00:30:29.637
Oh, things have changed and you're listening to them and you go, well, I don't hear anything particularly going on, so tell me what's changed.
00:30:29.643 --> 00:30:29.883
Mm-hmm.
00:30:30.178 --> 00:30:33.807
And it's from that information that you can often work out what's been going on.
00:30:33.962 --> 00:30:42.722
I was in conversation with a speech therapist yesterday about a client that we share and something came up, which was about perfectionism.
00:30:42.722 --> 00:30:43.833
Oh yeah.
00:30:43.923 --> 00:30:48.752
And in fact, I've just re-released my article on I Am a recovering perfectionist.
00:30:48.843 --> 00:30:48.932
Mm-hmm.
00:30:49.173 --> 00:30:59.522
Because this is also relevant and it's the idea that at you must produce something as a performer that is perfect.
00:30:59.567 --> 00:30:59.627
Yeah.
00:31:00.678 --> 00:31:13.488
And perfect doesn't exist because you have, it's not like you are kept in a box with cellophane and then you take out, you take yourself outta the box, and then you sing, and then you go back in the box again.
00:31:13.817 --> 00:31:15.917
That life doesn't exist.
00:31:16.218 --> 00:31:16.278
No.
00:31:16.307 --> 00:31:24.377
So you are always dealing with whatever has happened that day, whatever's happened that week, how you're feeling physically, how tired are you, has anything happened, all of that stuff.
00:31:24.827 --> 00:31:34.667
And so there is a, a level of best I can do today, and that's a mantra that I have had for decades.
00:31:35.087 --> 00:31:36.738
I think this is really important.
00:31:37.127 --> 00:31:41.147
What is your sustainable best I can do today?
00:31:41.208 --> 00:31:41.417
Yep.
00:31:42.182 --> 00:31:47.583
And this is particularly important for people who are using their voices professionally, not necessarily in singing.
00:31:48.063 --> 00:31:48.182
Yep.
00:31:48.182 --> 00:31:50.762
Who belongs to a category of professional voice users?
00:31:50.823 --> 00:31:56.613
What is it that you are normally able to sustain and what is it now that you can't?
00:31:57.063 --> 00:31:57.393
Yes.
00:31:57.603 --> 00:31:59.373
What changes have you noticed?
00:31:59.702 --> 00:32:04.097
Something that, um, Laura signaled us to was what about time of day?
00:32:05.462 --> 00:32:09.333
Does your voice feel worse or better at different times of day?
00:32:09.692 --> 00:32:12.932
Because that can tell you something about sleep patterns.
00:32:12.932 --> 00:32:21.873
It could tell you something about possible acid reflux and again, how people are managing their general tension and and stress levels.
00:32:22.593 --> 00:32:27.962
And it can help you as a teacher or a voice ha rehabilitator if you're a singing voice.
00:32:27.962 --> 00:32:28.833
Ha rehabilitator.
00:32:29.087 --> 00:32:32.208
I think we are naturally, I think we've been doing it for ages.
00:32:32.597 --> 00:32:48.528
It can help you to help people to plan their day with little sort of breaks on SOVT bubbles and so forth and cool downs, and taking five minutes on the floor with your legs over a chair so you can just compress.
00:32:49.218 --> 00:32:52.998
Small tips like that can make a huge difference to someone's day.
00:32:54.258 --> 00:32:54.917
And the Vocal loads.
00:32:55.637 --> 00:32:58.548
And again, there are two things here which I think are interesting.
00:32:58.548 --> 00:33:03.857
One is that the moment you take away the, here is the performance that I have in my head.
00:33:03.857 --> 00:33:06.107
I must match it every single time.
00:33:06.137 --> 00:33:06.228
Mm-hmm.
00:33:06.587 --> 00:33:10.157
The moment you take that away, you take a whole load of pressure off yourself.
00:33:10.518 --> 00:33:18.317
And in with that is you need strategies to use when you are having a bad day.
00:33:19.477 --> 00:33:40.606
I really love that information about taking the case information before you start working with a client, and finding out, you know, what's been going on for them, what kind of a day they normally have, and what's the pattern that has led them to this place where they feel they have a voice problem.
00:33:40.936 --> 00:33:41.686
Absolutely.
00:33:42.317 --> 00:33:50.346
And we're gonna finish this one with overlaps and boundaries from episode 10, and this is about why boundaries matter.
00:33:50.967 --> 00:33:53.467
This is me and Gillyanne talking about boundaries.
00:33:56.115 --> 00:33:59.480
Can we just say something in terms of wrapping about.
00:34:00.434 --> 00:34:04.755
Why the overlap is important, but also why boundaries matter.
00:34:04.875 --> 00:34:05.325
Yes.
00:34:05.414 --> 00:34:13.425
So we as singing teachers have a lot to learn from the clinical precision, the observation and carry overthinking.
00:34:13.485 --> 00:34:13.574
Yep.
00:34:13.574 --> 00:34:15.135
From the medical profession.
00:34:15.255 --> 00:34:15.344
Yes.
00:34:15.434 --> 00:34:22.730
And I will say that a lot of our knowledge about Vocal function comes directly from that side of the voice profession.
00:34:22.949 --> 00:34:23.449
It really does.
00:34:23.449 --> 00:34:23.769
Mm-hmm.
00:34:23.849 --> 00:34:29.114
Some of the best courses that we've been on ourselves for our own education have been things like the British Laryngology.
00:34:29.420 --> 00:34:30.079
Association.
00:34:30.085 --> 00:34:30.260
Mm-hmm.
00:34:30.304 --> 00:34:30.500
Mm-hmm.
00:34:30.739 --> 00:34:40.610
And the speech and language therapy people, we learn so much from how they deal with voice problems and the union of European for nutritions, yes, that was a standout three days.
00:34:41.059 --> 00:34:53.744
Conversely, SLTs can gain a lot from practical singing based tools in terms of resonance, Vocal fold, fold coordination, register mechanisms if needed, because we do use them in speech.
00:34:54.349 --> 00:34:57.769
And also being able to adjust, identify.
00:34:58.235 --> 00:34:59.554
Adjust identity.
00:34:59.644 --> 00:34:59.735
Yep.
00:34:59.914 --> 00:35:00.994
And that's where resonance is.
00:35:00.994 --> 00:35:02.284
Super, super helpful.
00:35:02.315 --> 00:35:02.735
Yes.
00:35:02.795 --> 00:35:05.164
And understanding the performance context.
00:35:05.164 --> 00:35:16.655
There's something very interesting, particularly for worked with musical theater singers who have to change their style and genre, and often the sound that they make in order to inhabit that particular actor in that particular musical.
00:35:16.659 --> 00:35:16.800
Mm-hmm.
00:35:17.224 --> 00:35:23.224
That people are much more used to finding an aspect of themselves, but still sounding different.
00:35:23.230 --> 00:35:23.320
Yeah.
00:35:23.974 --> 00:35:37.025
That's a very useful piece of information to have, and it is not something that a speech and language therapist would even think about because the idea that you can hold more than one resonating shape and still make it work is really quite alien.
00:35:37.655 --> 00:35:44.945
So we had a lot of fun doing some demos where we were speaking in different, different shapes, different settings.
00:35:45.005 --> 00:35:45.275
Yeah.
00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:45.340
Yeah.
00:35:45.635 --> 00:35:50.014
And also the difference between somebody's speaking voice and their speaking voice can work.
00:35:50.594 --> 00:35:51.795
Reasonably well.
00:35:52.155 --> 00:36:02.414
And then they go in into an entirely different setup for their singing voice, because that's their singing persona and all the things that they were working quite well in The speaking voice don't work in the singing voice.
00:36:02.414 --> 00:36:06.105
So that's a another sort of disconnect that the singing teacher can help with.
00:36:06.195 --> 00:36:07.215
Overlaps matter.
00:36:07.425 --> 00:36:07.934
Yes.
00:36:08.054 --> 00:36:09.614
And so do boundaries.
00:36:09.675 --> 00:36:10.065
Yes.
00:36:10.125 --> 00:36:11.204
We singing teachers.
00:36:11.204 --> 00:36:13.875
We don't need to become clinical therapists.
00:36:13.875 --> 00:36:13.885
Nope.
00:36:14.295 --> 00:36:15.405
You don't have the training?
00:36:15.525 --> 00:36:16.184
No, you can do it.
00:36:16.184 --> 00:36:17.414
You can do the training if you want to.
00:36:17.445 --> 00:36:17.804
Yeah.
00:36:17.864 --> 00:36:19.394
But it's not part of your training.
00:36:19.514 --> 00:36:22.905
And a good therapist doesn't need to become a singing coach.
00:36:22.905 --> 00:36:28.844
Similar, we need a mutual respect for each other and for the boundaries.
00:36:28.965 --> 00:36:29.114
Yeah.
00:36:29.775 --> 00:36:38.085
But both of us can understand more about the instrument and the person and the goal in front of us if we allow overlap.
00:36:39.074 --> 00:36:40.425
I think the most important thing.
00:36:41.235 --> 00:36:46.244
Is that you recognize your own abilities and your own gaps.
00:36:46.275 --> 00:36:46.364
Mm-hmm.
00:36:46.934 --> 00:36:53.835
Because there's something very powerful about recognizing where your skills lie and where your gaps in the knowledge are.
00:36:53.864 --> 00:36:58.574
And not saying even to yourself, this singer in front of me has a problem.
00:36:58.635 --> 00:37:00.405
I am the only person who can solve it.
00:37:00.409 --> 00:37:00.679
Mm-hmm.
00:37:00.885 --> 00:37:02.175
I must solve it.
00:37:02.175 --> 00:37:03.974
I must be the person that they come to.
00:37:03.974 --> 00:37:04.065
Mm-hmm.
00:37:04.065 --> 00:37:05.925
We can't pass them on to anybody else.
00:37:05.954 --> 00:37:10.155
The SLTs are so used to working in a team where everybody has.
00:37:10.155 --> 00:37:19.454
Input and everybody has their skills and everybody has their levels of expertise and their areas of expertise, and we can learn from that.
00:37:20.175 --> 00:37:23.025
So we need to keep these conversations going.
00:37:23.054 --> 00:37:28.335
Yes, it's not about showing off, it's about choosing the right tool and the right person.
00:37:28.905 --> 00:37:28.965
Mm.
00:37:29.054 --> 00:37:29.565
That's it.
00:37:29.804 --> 00:37:30.295
Are we done?.
00:37:30.355 --> 00:37:30.724
We're done.
00:37:30.989 --> 00:37:31.280
Okay.
00:37:31.809 --> 00:37:33.045
We'll see you next time.
00:37:33.105 --> 00:37:33.585
Bye.
00:37:33.585 --> 00:37:33.644
Bye.
00:37:47.264 --> 00:37:50.684
This is a voice, a podcast with Dr.
00:37:50.684 --> 00:37:52.875
Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.
00:37:56.414 --> 00:37:56.914
This Is A Voice.
