Vocal Repression

Did you know that with each year you're alive, your voice is taught to go against it's natural structure? As people grow up, society trains people's voices to behave in a certain manner, yet this manner adds tension to your voice and in the end, harms it. When people scream at a football game, their voices go hoarse. Yet, babies can cry for hours upon hours without anything happening to them.

This semester I'm taking an acting class that focuses on fixing these habits. Through different and strenuous breathing exercises, my class and I have been first finding our habits and have been working on correcting them. One of my habits is that when I speak, I don't always use my natural voice. I tend to speak in an upper register when my natural voice is lower. Most women have this habit. Other habits happen because social norms teach children when to be quiet, to stifle yawns and sighs, and more. 

So far the exercises have been pretty exhausting at least three students have had to stop in the middle of class because they have feelings of nausea and dizziness. We just have to tell ourselves the old saying: No pain. No gain. I have 21 years of vocal habits to correct.