Voice Therapy
Compassion-driven voice care that works for you and your voice.
What you can expect from voice therapy at Toronto Adult Speech Clinic
At Toronto Adult Speech Clinic, we are passionate about voice care. We combine our unwavering respect for each individual voice with the most current research to provide a holistic therapy program for our clients.
We provide one-on-one sessions tailored to your specific goals. Using a combination of education and best practices in voice therapy, we will help you to not only achieve your goals but build independence in the long-term care of your voice.
*NEWS* We are also now offering laryngeal massage and manual therapy for the voice in person at our clinic in downtown Toronto with voice therapist Jordan Scholl.
How do you know if voice therapy is for you?
There are usually two main reasons that a person seeks support for their voice from one of our registered speech-language pathologists:
1) A person has noticed changes to the function or sound of their voice that have occurred suddenly or over time.
a. This may include an increase in hoarseness, breathiness, strain or even pain when talking, breaks in the voice, difficulty projecting, or a voice that gets tired easily.
b. This may include changes that don’t appear to have an obvious explanation. This person may or may not have been through something physical or emotional that resulted in the concerns they have with their voice.
c. They may have visited their doctor and/or an ENT who have either found a cause or have noticed no apparent reason for the voice concerns.
2) A person feels their voice is not meeting their expectations of how they want to communicate authentically and consistently.
a. This may include pitch or quality of the voice that feels inauthentic to them- even if they have never received any comments from others on their voice.
b. This person may find their voice changes depending on the situation or who they are talking to.
c. They may find it difficult to project their voice effectively while maintaining authenticity and a sense of confidence.
What do you do in a voice therapy session?
There are many different components to voice therapy and taking care of your voice.
Your clinician will do a comprehensive assessment of the factors that may impact the function of your voice. This will include any relevant medical history and any previous experience you have had working on your voice. You may be asked to complete some tasks involving stretching, breathing, or making certain sounds that give an idea of how your voice is functioning and how we can best help.
In therapy sessions, you will discuss how to consider lifestyle factors that may be impacting your voice and what specific exercises may help in achieving your goals for your voice. Then you will learn the exercises and practice them with your clinician so that you can feel confident to practice them on your own. You will learn how each exercise you do works and how to make sure you know when you are doing it right.
How does voice therapy work?
At Toronto Adult Speech Clinic, our voice therapy works using a two-tiered approach.
1) Increase awareness. Understanding your voice better is always the first step. It can help you feel more in control of your voice because you are more mindful of changes when they happen. This is an incredible asset in any voice work and when you are using your voice throughout the day. We are big on helping to facilitate trust in what you feel and experience with your voice rather than always telling you what you “should” and “shouldn’t” feel.
2) Build new habits. With great power comes great responsibility. We use an increase in awareness and pair it with the exercises you need to reach your goals for your voice. We use our understanding of how the brain builds new movement plans to create a treatment that takes exercises and transforms them into new patterns so that they can become everyday habits.
What you may not know about voice therapy
You do NOT have to be a singer. This is one of the most common misconceptions about voice therapy. While we do offer singing voice therapy for the trained singer at Toronto Adult Speech Clinic, voice therapy is designed to be accessible for anyone. Regardless of whether or not they have any singing or musical background.
Consistency is the key to success with voice therapy. The voice is created from multiple muscles and systems working together. That means there are many things that can impact how it feels and sounds. It also means that we can create compensatory habits when one part of the system or a certain group of muscles isn’t working as well as it could for us. Consistency in attendance at sessions and practice can help to reprogram these compensatory habits so that your voice can function optimally for your needs.
You don’t have to have a diagnosis or a disorder to benefit from voice therapy. Our voices are a key component of how we express ourselves and are perceived by others. The bottom line is that if your voice isn’t working in the way you need it to in order to express yourself in the way you want (i.e. pitch of your voice, quality of your voice, projection of your voice, etc.) then voice therapy may be able to help.
