In this unit the voice exercises will gradually move you on to vocalizing in your Better Voice without the use of the hum. ‘Great – then I won’t need to hum any more,’ you may be thinking. But please do keep humming!
The hum is your friend. Not the sort you send a Christmas card to, saying ‘We really must meet up this year’ but then never do. The hum is the kind of friend you enjoy spending time with regularly, the kind of friend who supports you.
That’s because humming the way you have learned to do here is not an introductory exercise you grow out of. Humming will always be the best way to keep the focus of your voice in your head and away from your throat.
And, every time you do it, it will help fix the Better Voice technique in your mind, and make producing your new voice easier and more automatic.
Humming will help you at every stage to develop and maintain your Better Voice.
For example:
In fact, hum whatever you like, whenever you like – it’s a great way to keep your voice and your head cavities (paranasal sinuses and nasal cavities) healthy.
Anything that stagnates in the body tends to lead to ill health, so to keep the sinuses healthy it’s important that stale air and mucus is moved through the system as quickly as possible. This is where humming comes in. A Swedish study in 2002 found that in one outbreath humming exchanged 96% of the air in the maxillary sinuses (the ones behind the cheekbones) compared with just 4% in normal quiet breathing. The researchers concluded that ‘humming is an extremely effective means of increasing sinus ventilation’.
This increased ventilation will not only keep your sinuses infection-free, but can help deal with any infection that does arise. When you have a cold or chronic sinus infection the mucous membrane lining the head cavities becomes inflamed and overproduces mucus. The mucus then fills the cavities, giving you a ‘stuffed up’ feeling and often pain. Humming can shift the mucus through and out of the system, thus reducing the symptoms. There are many documented cases of a course in White’s Technique clearing the symptoms of a serious sinus infection in the pre-antibiotic era.
Humming therefore supports not only Better Voice production but your general health as well.
Q: How do you think you could incorporate regular humming into your life?
In this unit the voice exercises will gradually move you on to vocalizing in your Better Voice without the use of the hum. ‘Great – then I won’t need to hum any more,’ you may be thinking. But please do keep humming!
The hum is your friend. Not the sort you send a Christmas card to, saying ‘We really must meet up this year’ but then never do. The hum is the kind of friend you enjoy spending time with regularly, the kind of friend who supports you.
That’s because humming the way you have learned to do here is not an introductory exercise you grow out of. Humming will always be the best way to keep the focus of your voice in your head and away from your throat.
And, every time you do it, it will help fix the Better Voice technique in your mind, and make producing your new voice easier and more automatic.
Humming will help you at every stage to develop and maintain your Better Voice.
For example:
In fact, hum whatever you like, whenever you like – it’s a great way to keep your voice and your head cavities (paranasal sinuses and nasal cavities) healthy.
Anything that stagnates in the body tends to lead to ill health, so to keep the sinuses healthy it’s important that stale air and mucus is moved through the system as quickly as possible. This is where humming comes in. A Swedish study in 2002 found that in one outbreath humming exchanged 96% of the air in the maxillary sinuses (the ones behind the cheekbones) compared with just 4% in normal quiet breathing. The researchers concluded that ‘humming is an extremely effective means of increasing sinus ventilation’.
This increased ventilation will not only keep your sinuses infection-free, but can help deal with any infection that does arise. When you have a cold or chronic sinus infection the mucous membrane lining the head cavities becomes inflamed and overproduces mucus. The mucus then fills the cavities, giving you a ‘stuffed up’ feeling and often pain. Humming can shift the mucus through and out of the system, thus reducing the symptoms. There are many documented cases of a course in White’s Technique clearing the symptoms of a serious sinus infection in the pre-antibiotic era.
Humming therefore supports not only Better Voice production but your general health as well.
Q: How do you think you could incorporate regular humming into your life?
