My GAV curriculum is grounded in evidence-based approaches, including Water Resistance Therapy (WRT), Confidential Voice Therapy, and the Stanley Method. More than 400 clients have used my structured, step-by-step, “inside-out” curriculum to develop greater awareness and control of pitch, resonance, and vocal placement, while safely and effectively achieving their true voice goals.
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WRT is a type of Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Exercise (SOVTE). Research on WRT has suggested the presence of a massage-like effect on the vocal folds and vocal tract tissues, and changes in aerodynamic measures, electroglottographic (EGG) contact quotient (CQ), and vocal tract configuration. These effects help contribute to better laryngeal and vocal economy. Additionally, these effects provide restorative and rehabilitative aspects for clients with vocal quality issues related to various diagnoses such as acute and chronic laryngitis, reflux disease, laryngeal erythema, laryngeal edema, laryngeal scleroderma, etc.
Like Straw Phonation and WRT, the Stanley Method is a technique that emphasizes control of voice and breathing muscles. Clients use panting to engage the breath, moving it up or down, and to manipulate the tongue to isolate different parts of the vocal tract and better engage the false vocal folds and aryepiglottic folds that surround the true vocal folds, in order to produce different sounds during connected speech.
Confidential Voice is a speech therapy technique that involves speaking in a soft, breathy voice to reduce strain on the vocal folds. Clients learn to speak in a breathy voice with slightly abducted vocal folds, while engaging the false vocal folds. For fem voice clients, this reduces the force of the vocal folds colliding with each other, while moving the breath forward toward the soft palate and lips to teach forward resonance.
Straw Phonation is a type of Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Exercise (SOVTE). Straw Phonation, like WRT, allows the voice to explore different sounds safely by allowing the client to move sound and breath through the straw. Air pressure resistance is created through the straw, which flows back through the vocal tract, and holds the vocal folds partially open, causing less impact, collision, and stress on the vocal folds, and increasing safety and ease.
Conversational voices are socialized and developed based on the perceived gender identity of the speaker, and the dialects and inflections of the speaker's conversational partners. If a speaker was unable to identify authentically when young, they missed out on the opportunity to develop resonance placement and control that supports their desired voice. I teach to the concept that anyone can do anything with their voice via a learned set of behaviors that create an automated process.