Voice Therapy
A person’s voice can be essential to their work, their social life, and their sense of self. If you’re in a job where you use your voice on a daily basis — be it teacher, call centre employee, sports coach, performer, or something else entirely — then your voice is your livelihood.
Sometimes our voices get impacted by how we’re using them, our lifestyle choices, or a medical condition. They may start fatiguing, feeling strained, or sounding rough, weak, or breathy. Voice therapy provided by SLPs can support people to take care of and use their voices more optimally.
Examples of goal areas we might work on together:
- Learning strategies for taking care of your voice and optimizing your environment for voice use
- Using vocal exercises (e.g. semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, flow phonation, resonance therapy) to make it easier and more efficient to use your voice when speaking
- Incorporating warm-ups and cool-downs into your routine
- Using self-massage and stretches to support relaxation of tense muscles
Frequently Asked Questions
about Voice Therapy:
- I don’t know what’s causing it, but my voice has been bothering me — it’s been feeling rough/hoarse/scratchy/
fatigued/weak/strained lately. Is there anything I can do to deal with this problem?
A great place to start would be for us to set up an initial session to figure out the possible factors that could be affecting your voice, and do some specific voice evaluation tasks. Based on what you report, what I hear in your voice, and your results on the evaluation tasks, I may recommend that you see an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) Specialist to get a scope of your vocal folds done.
This is when the ENT puts a camera in your nose/throat so they can see the vocal folds, and look for any structural or functional abnormalities. As I can’t see what’s going on in your larynx, getting this ENT evaluation done can be a very important step towards understanding what may be causing your voice issues, and guiding our therapy.
- I’ve been having issues with my voice for some time now, including tight muscles and feeling like I need to strain to talk. I saw an ENT and they’ve diagnosed Muscle Tension Dysphonia. Do you help with that?
Yes! Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) is a common voice disorder, and there are strategies and exercises to reduce the negative impacts of MTD. Voice therapy can help get you feeling like your voice is working with you, rather than against you.
- My voice isn’t causing me any difficulties, but I’d like to be able to use it more effectively to engage my audience as a public speaker. Is this something you work on?
I do! Please see my Professional Communication page for more information.
