It's Winter. Your voice needs extra care

A Gauteng-based Speaker friend of mine recently sent me a message:

“I’ve got a couple of days of training and speaking ahead of me and my voice is not feeling strong. It is very dry, I’ve got a cough and I’m quickly reduced to hoarseness. What can I do?”

Your voice is a physical instrument, part of the physical body. As the body might require extra attention at certain times, so does the voice. 

Winter requires warmer clothes, staying indoors more (although Covid has done that for us anyway), avoiding people with colds, upping our citrus intake, increasing vitamin and mineral supplementation to strengthen your immune system, taking warm drinks, avoiding very cold air and so on.

It’s the same with your voice. There are many ways to protect your voice – whether you are a speaker/trainer or not – but I will approach the subject from the point of view of the professional facilitator:

Stop talking! When you’ve finished your training – ZIP IT! Do not go home and talk or if you’re training online from home, just cut right down on the conversation. Your voice is tired, give it a rest. The best way to do that is not to use it.

Humidify. This applies particularly to people in a very dry winter environment but actually can apply to anyone. Humidifying both dampens and warms.

Steam. This obviously follows from the one above. Put a few drops of Tea Tree Oil or Eucalyptus Oil in a basin, boil a kettle, cover your head with a towel, put it over the basin and slowly pour the boiling water into the basin. Be gentle - slow pour and just a few drops – or it can burn your throat or nasal passages.

Gargle. Make a mixture of a cup of warm water and teaspoon of salt. Rinse round your mouth for 10 seconds and spit out. Then re-fill and gargle for 20 seconds. And spit out.

Drink. Obviously we are talking about keeping an area of your body ‘dampened’ - re-hydration is critically important (room temperature water). Have a thermos flask of warm water with a teaspoon of honey and squeeze of natural lemon nearby to sip on whenever required. Do NOT over-do the lemon and honey.

Scarf. Wear something warm round your throat particularly when you go out, but even round the house if you’ve got a cold house. It’s a protector.

Relax. We carry stress in the shoulders, neck and jaw, which is sometimes called the Stress Zone. Well, hello – it’s the Vocal Zone as well. If you’re already stressing about your voice, it can easily get worse – vicious circle. Do stress-release exercises morning, night and whenever you need to! These are designed to release the shoulders, neck and jaw – while standing, lift and drop shoulders, rotate head loosely on neck, drop face forward onto chest, lift your hands right to ceiling and then drop whole upper body from the waist – stay down and let blood flow to head. Slowly straighten up and repeat. While you lift arms, flick the hands out and get into a loosening dance. Purposefully loosen your body – flop around.

Breathe. The breath is the foundation for the voice, so it is critically important to employ deep lower-lung breathing and slow release breath to strengthen the vocal foundation. Once you’ve done the de-stressing exercise above, stand upright and practice breathing deep into your lungs without lifting your shoulders – ie focus on getting the breath right down into the lungs (sometimes easier to do this lying on the floor which supports your body and you can focus on breathing deep into the lungs area). Two important basic rules apply: Get more breath IN, Control the breath going OUT. Once you’ve taken a good, full breath in, hold it for couple of seconds and then breathe out through pursed lips or through an ‘ssss’ sound.

So, in a nutshell, here are the top 8 actions for your voice during winter:

1.      Talk less - after you’ve been using your voice a lot.

2.      Humidify – put a humidifier in your bedroom at night.

3.      Steam – couple drops tea tree oil in boiling water.

4.      Gargle – a little salt in warm water.

5.      Drink – honey and lemon in warm water.

6.      Scarf – keep the throat protected, particularly out of doors.

7.      De-stress – loosening your upper body.

8.      Breathe – deep-lung breathing with slow release.

From a medical intervention point of view for throat problems (if you feel it is necessary – eg post-nasal drip), I would do the following:

1.      Texa (or any other anti-histamine product – be cautious of the ones that make you drowsy).

2.      Homeovox – homeopathic, herb-based little tablets that you suck to help ‘restore’ voice (I have found them very helpful, but not that easy to find).

3.      Saline solution nose spray – if you have a sprayer, add a solution of 1 teaspoon salt in a cup of warm water; couple of puffs throughout the day. Be aware – have tissues handy it can cause quite a lot of ‘runny nose syndrome’.

If you’d like to know more about vocal exercises and how to get the best out of your voice, please contact Chris Voysey, Voice Coach on [email protected] or +27 787656623.