The best vocal warmup to do before you speak

Did you know that a good vocal warmup is one of the best ways to feel confident when you speak?

In today’s episode I am sharing with you my favourite voice warm up to get you sounding your best.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll know:
• The 8 essential ingredients to your voice warmup
• Why it’s so important to warm up before you speak
• How a voice warm up can attract more listeners, followers and clients

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to the All American Actor's Podcast, episode 53. In today's episode, I'm sharing with you my best vocal warmup to do before you speak that's coming up next. Ready to learn what it means to have a voice for business, to utilize your voice to create the influence, impact and income you desire. Join me Catherine back voice actor and voice coach, as I show you how to show up and stand out as the voice of your business. Learn my best tips on how to uncover your true voice to speak with authority and establish a personal connection to your audience that will leave them wanting to hear more. This is the voice for business podcast. We'll get started with today's episode in just a moment. But first I want to give a big shout out to Diane who says this speaker is fantastic. Her presentation on goal setting does not just apply to actors, but it transcends to every other type of activity, sports education, personal development. Well, thank you so much, Diane. And I will be back next week actually with a new episode on goal setting for 2022, which I know you will love. So stay tuned for that. And hey, if you've been listening to this podcast and loving what you hear, go ahead make sure that you click that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. And tap those five stars. Leave me a review and let me know what you think of this podcast. So if you're loving these episodes, go ahead and leave us a review. Now this episode is all about voice preparation and warming up. But first, I want to check in with you and ask how are you doing? If you've been listening to these episodes live, we've just finished Christmas. We've got a few days left in this year before we hit the new year. It's been a wild couple of years. And I don't know about you. But I am very hopeful and optimistic and excited for 2022 2021 started off great here in Sydney, we were very fortunate we had many months where we were pretty free and not really thinking too much about the pandemic. But then in June, bam, everything changed. And without a moment's notice, we were feeling free one moment. And then the next moment, we were in a hard lockdown, which we were told was going to be one week and ended up being four months, four long months. But you know what? We survived, we are out of the lockdown. And now I'm very thankful and looking forward to the start of a new year. And I'm sure all of you around the world are feeling the same way too. And so for me, as we head into 2022, it's all about preparation, I start preparing for the new year in my business in November and December. So I've already started my preparation. And because my business revolves around voice, I always tell my students, it's important to prepare your voice. So that's why I thought this would be a great time to talk about voice preparation and preparing your voice before you speak. However you use your voice, any sort of voice performance, because we never really want to be warming up into our speaking voice or our performance voice. We don't want to warm up our voice into an audition, for example, or a job interview or a live launch webinar, public speaking presentation or a Zoom meeting. You see, I believe the preparation happens before then. And when we do an intentional warm up an intentional preparation, we are setting up not just our voice but our body, our breath and setting ourselves up for success. So I'm going to walk you through a quick and easy warmup you can do to get yourself prepared and ready to go to use your voice. So let's get to it. Okay, so first thing I want to do is warm up the body, we're going to shake it out. So I want you to stand up and start shaking your arms. Just shake out any tension from your fingertips, your wrists, your arms on both sides. Just shake it out and let those limbs go loose. Shake out the legs, your feet, feel your body get nice and loose. Just let those arms and legs move however they want to do just shake out any sort of tension you feel and if you feel any sort of tension maybe in your neck and shoulders to start doing some nice easy circles with the head just gradually just loosening up that neck just nice and free. Just gentle circles with the head. You can imagine like you've got a pencil at the tip of your nose and it's like you're drawing with to your pencil, you're going to circle the head clockwise, just gently, little circles. And then you're going to reverse that circle and watch that pencil drawing a circle in front of you. And then you can even take that head and figure eight position, and watch that figure eight getting drawn in front of you. And so now we've released a little bit of tension, and that body feels nice and loose and ready to go. So then we want to focus on our breath. And maybe, if you put your hands on your diaphragm, on your belly, or even on the sides of your ribcage, you want to feel that breath drop in, breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. Feeling that expansion as you breathe in and out, you want to feel that in that lower belly. Feel that expansion in your ribs as you breathe in and out, giving yourself a chance. So just pause and breathe at your own natural pace. And so once you've given yourself a chance, just to calm your breath, tap into your breath, we're now going to move into our voice, we're going to start to gently warm up the voice, an easy way to do that is with a little hum. Unknown Speaker Um, Katherine Beck now when I have I'm thinking about creating internal space within the mouth, so I'm opening up the jaw just a little bit, the lips are closed, but I'm not clenching the teeth, right, I'm creating some space there, I'm releasing any sort of tension that I might feel in that jaw. And I'm thinking about nice open space in the back of the mouth. And you can hear it when I hum another thing you can do to warm up the voice is you can go up and down your range. Think of it kind of like a siren like a fire engine. You can go up and down your range as you harm and explore all of those notes in a very gentle sort of way. These are really great exercises. Because again, if you don't have a lot of space, yourself a quiet space, you can do some of these exercises really gently and easily when you don't have that capability to do it on your own if you're in a room with some other people, or you just need to do a really super quick go to warm up. These are all exercises that you can kind of just jump into before you speak. So that's a really great one for the voice articulation exercises. So when we talk about articulation and the articulators, we're talking about the lips, the lower jaw, the tongue, we want to get all of these areas moving, releasing tension. So with the jaw, you know, just gently taking your fingertips and just massaging around your jaw hinge and down along your jaw line. Just a gentle massage with your fingertips, releasing any tension you might feel that can be really not only nice to release that tension, but relaxing as well. So if you're feeling nervous that can often release some of that nervous energy might feel as well started to relax you a bit, just a nice John massage, then with your lips, and exercise you can do is horse lips, goes like this, which I'm sure you've done and hear how I'm adding in the voice as well. So I'm just blowing out through the lips. But I'm also adding a little sound. And you can also go up and down your register as well. So see I'm multitasking doing different exercises all at the same time. And with your tongue, you could do something easy like tongue tip swirls. So imagine like you've got ice cream on your teeth and you're licking ice cream off of your teeth. It's on the outside of your teeth. So you're gonna do circles with your tongue tip inside the mouth, swirling your tongue tip one way and then the other. Or you could stick out your tongue and point your tongue tip to your nose. Then point it to a cheek. Then point it down to your chin and point it down to your other cheek. And then keep doing that one way and then go the opposite way. And that's a great way to wake up different parts of your tongue. And then last but not least your mind. It's got to prepare the mind as well to speak don't wait. So if you're feeling nervous or apprehensive to use your voice or to speak up my favorite go to thing to say to myself, you can try it out loud and then to yourself before you speak. Is this I have something to say and reminds me that what I have to say is powerful. Someone needs to hear my words. And it's okay for me to use my voice. I have something to say. So try that today. Alright, so that is my very simple but amazing. Go to warm up for your voice. So again, you're gonna want to warm up your body, your breath, of course, your voice, your articulators, which is your lips, your jaw, your tongue, and your brain can warm up that brain with I have something to say. And if you're ready to finally stand out as a voice of your business, then head over to Katherine beck.com/waitlist. And you'll be the first to be notified when we open the doors to voice for business in January 2022. All right, and remember, if you loved today's episode, go ahead. Let me know take a screenshot of the show. Share it with me on your Instagram story and tag me in it at Katherine underscore Beck underscore you can find me there. If you've got any questions or any topics you'd like to hear on the podcast. Go ahead and let me know. And coming up next week on the show. We are going to be setting your voice goals for 2022. And make sure to share this show with all your friends. Let them know what's coming up next week and invite them to tune in with you and learn how to show up, speak up and stand out as the voice of your business. Until then go on get out there and use that powerful voice of yours and I'll see you back here next time.