3 habits to change your voice

There are many habits to change your voice available for you that will improve your singing performance quickly.

To me, singing is a lifelong learning process. The more I know about singing, the more it seems there is left to learn.

This year (wrote this in December 2020) however I have been trying three new things that have been helping a lot and I’m sure they would help you too if you give them a go!

3 habits to change your voice 

1) taking my last meal 3 hours before bedtime

Acid reflux is quite common amongst singers. One of the things you can do to prevent this is to make sure you give yourself at least three hours between your last meal and your bedtime. This is one of the most important habits to change your voice and once you create the habit, you will notice the difference!

I have been trying it out this year and I can find a big difference!

If you suffer from acid reflux, you might feel that your voice is croaky in the morning and the sound is harder to produce.

If so, try this tip and see if it makes a difference.

Avoiding acid reflux is not only imperative to keep a healthy voice. If you leave it unattended it can cause general health problems that are not pleasant at all.

2) Reducing caffeine intake 

I was born and raised in Argentina. If you know Argentinians you probably know that we love a drink called “mate”, which is not pronounced like the English word mate.

Mate is an amazing energetic drink that although it doesn’t contain near as much caffeine as coffee does, does contain some.

I used to drink mate a lot during the day. However this year I decided to reduce my intake to half of what I normally take per day.

This has helped to keep my voice healthy and hydrated most of the day, since as you might know caffeine can have a dehydrating effect.

As a result, not only does my voice feel better but I have also found that it helps me to be more sensitive towards the signs of thirst from my body.

3) Giving myself enough time to prepare my body to sing before my daily practice

This year as I was preparing my free workbook to tune your body to sing, I decided that it would be great to follow my own advice and dedicate a good time every day to get my body ready to sing. Even before the voice warm-ups!

As adults, we not only deal with lots of emotions every day and lack of time, but we also tend to reinforce the habits built over the years. And because of this, some muscles get used to overwork and some others tend to underwork. Our joints become stiff. Our energy becomes stiff and stagnation happens.

Since the voice is a reflex of our mind-body-energy connection, it does get affected by this, and greatly.

So this year I decided to spend a good solid 5 minutes a day, which later on became 10 minutes and now they are becoming 20 minutes, in use getting the body ready. Softening the joints, massaging the jaw. Feeling what parts of the body are stiffer. Breathing. Letting go of tensions.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel after that! And it looks like my voice practice is way more productive too since the body is much more ready to produce healthy and free sound. 

You don’t know how to get started? There are lots of 10 min yoga videos on YouTube that you can try on just to tune into your body a bit better! And as I said, as you get used to it you will also get much more sensitive about the state of your body, your muscle tensions, and how that is affecting your body.

Would you like access to my full Workbook?

ACCESS TO WORKBOOK (scroll to the end of the page)