Resting Your Voice

Musician Health and Wellness
For Singers
Rest

When you talk or sing, the surfaces of your vocal cords vibrate against each other 100 to 1,000 times per second. The active support muscles switch on and off multiple times per second to position the vocal cords and shape the various sounds of speech.The vocal mechanism is built to handle these jobs, just not all the time, with no chance to recover. Even the most talented, best-trained voices need rest as part of general preventative care. Your voice will stay healthier when allowed opportunities to rest, recover, rehydrate, and relax. This can simply mean taking short breaks throughout the day. If you’ve been talking or singing for an hour, don’t use up you entire rest break talking, even if people really want your attention. Your voice needs attention, too.

When you have a big vocal demand coming up, build in rest periods before and after. If you have extremely heavy vocal demands, try to set aside one full day per week for silent rest. After all, star athletes have built-in rest days, or they play in rotation. If you are a vocal athlete, your throat needs the same care.

What about resting the voice when there’s a problem, such as vocal nodules? Medical opinion on this has changed over the years; you can search online and find every possible recommendation. In the early days of voice care, when there was a problem with the voice, doctors would often prescribe complete silence for a month or more. That might have worked for people with servants and no children, but it is no longer considered realistic or necessary in most cases. Extended silence can even lead to a fear that the voice will “break” when speech resumes.

Vocal rest recommendations are now more individualized. The physiological benefits of voice rest are balanced with its psychological, interpersonal, and vocational costs.For diagnosed problems related to overuse, vocal rest is usually combined with rehabilitation (retraining). Your own doctor and speech therapist will determine your best plan. This is ideally a process of negotiation and problem solving, not just being given a list of rules. For instance, if heavy use if built into your life, the speech therapist can help you sort through each speech situation by its vocal risks and demands, prioritizing so you use your “vocal allowance” on the most important tasks.

Sometimes, the “silence treatment” is non-negotiable. For instance, after vocal surgery your doctor may prescribe a week or two of strict voice rest so that the vibratory edges of the vocal folds can heal properly. Vocal-fold hemorrhages and some kinds of burns also typically need a period of absolute rest. It’s important to follow such instructions to avoid serious complications or permanent vocal damage. Even before you see a doctor, giving yourself complete vocal rest for a day or two may be helpful if you’ve had an unexpected vocal strain.

If it doesn’t feel good, don’t sing!
Routinely rest your voice for short periods throughout the day – for instance, five minutes per hour. This relaxes the muscles in your throat and gives the vibrating edges a change to rebuild.
Build longer breaks into the schedule of vocal rehearsals, performances, or other vocally demanding work.
When voice trouble strikes, negotiate with friends and professors about your needs for silent rest and how else you can communicate.
If a doctor prescribes absolute vocal rest for a specific injury, follow the rules to avoid more serious or prolonged problems.
Use vocal rest for mental rehearsal and other career-supporting tasks, as well as for silent reflection and self-discovery.
Nourish the cells of your voice box most deeply with adequate sleep. Get your 8 hours!

Even when you understand your doctor’s and therapist’s recommendations, reducing the amount that you talk or sing can be difficult, given the demands of school and friends. Especially now that cell phones go with us everywhere, it can be disorienting to stop talking. The central role the voice plays in our lives as social creatures is never so clear as when it’s taken away.

Isolation from your closest relationships or fears about not fulfilling extracurricular obligations can interfere with the subtler levels of healing. This is one reason that medical recommendations about extended voice rest have shifted. Partial, strategic rest helps you value your voice without damaging your most important relationships or developing an irrational fear of talking.

Nevertheless, friends may need to have multiple reminders about what you are doing. Reassure them that you still care for them, but that you need to stay connected without “using up” your voice. Wearing a sign that says you are on vocal rest is a step can be helpful in not having to explain yourself to everyone you come into contact with. Texting and email alternatives have made vocal rest much easier than in past decades, although they don’t make up for simply talking.

Do your best to cultivate patience, and learn from the experience of extended vocal rest so that you won’t need to go through it again. The more diligent you are with voice rest when it’s recommended, the faster you’ll heal and return to your network of spoken connections. Singers, actors, and professional speakers taking vocal rest can still rehearse mentally, as athletes do. Go through a warm-up routine or performance in your imagination. If you concentrate fully, a mental performance builds the same brain pathways as a “real” one. Quiet days are also a good time to study texts or music that you need to memorize.

Sleep is the body’s chance to rebuild cells and organs, replace worn-out tissues, and restore both mental and metabolic equilibrium. Your voice benefits from all of this. World-class tenor and conductor Placido Domingo was once asked whether he had a secret way to keep his voice in top form. He answered, “Before a performance, I make sure to sleep 11 hours!”

You may not need that much, but sleeping for seven or eight hours regularly may be an important piece of your voice-care plan. Sleep is also absolutely crucial for forming procedural memory and making advances in vocal technique. The dietary guidelines that appear in food – minimal caffeine and alcohol, no big meals before bed – will help you get good quality sleep.