Dr Edward: 0:26

Hello everyone, Welcome to this beautiful little teaser. This is an episode for the Pets People and Harmony podcast. I'm Dr Edward the Healing Vet, and I have got an extra special guest and a dear friend of mine today, Judy Rodman, who is my vocal coach and has been just such a profoundly beautiful influence in my life. So I'm really excited, Judy, to have you here today. Could you let everyone know who you are and how you got to where you are and what you do?

Judy Rodman: 0:55

Sure, first of all, thank you for having me on this awesome podcast. I mean, it's so nice, it's truly excellent and I'm glad to be a part of that and also part of your journey in making music and the things that you're doing with your voice. But I am a 50 year veteran of the music business and the voice business and I my sort of top hat or number one hat these days is vocal coaching. But I also am a recording producer and a songwriter and still a performer here and there and, you know, speaker. So that's kind of what I do and my work with clients to.

Judy Rodman: 1:36

You know, I work with mostly people who either are using their voice at a professional level in a career or and that means teachers too not just singers and recording artists, but or they want to be able to use their voices at the professional level. So, and I use my journey, my 50 years of actually being in the field and also teaching for the last 25 years, as the way I know the way things work and I teach in a practical way and I have a method that I teach which is like a three stranded cord of breath, open throat and performance techniques. And if you put that together, in the synergy of the way they affect each other. Then you have two things you have vocal health and you have vocal value, which means you're effective at delivering messages, which is why you have one you have this voice.

Dr Edward: 2:43

I probably should have said this at the beginning, but the topic of this podcast series is heal your voice, empower your life. And when I first came to you as a student, I Could hardly sing at all. I was deeply unwell, with chronic fatigue and and.

Judy Rodman: 2:59

I was excited.

Dr Edward: 3:01

You were excited. I had a whisper of a voice and now I've just recorded now on this year, which is sounding gangbusters good, and Judy actually sung backing vocals on it as well, which is very special for me. So in this teaser episode, what we want to, what we always do on this podcast, for this, this short, little, intensely useful episode, is that we have the one thing, and the one thing that Judy is going to share with you today is Active talking posture. So in the next five minutes or so, judy's going to teach you something that, if you put it into practice, can change your life in ways you cannot imagine. That's right.

Judy Rodman: 3:38

Okay, that is where you are in the posture, where your head is over your tailbone If you're sitting, or over your heels if you're standing. Why that's important is that it does two things it opens your throat so that your throat channel is clear for resonation and gives you all kinds of more tone, colors and and all that and also better vocal health, because you're not tightly constricting your throat, sending your voice through it. And the other thing it does is open your rib cage, which gives you breath control, which is the secret for singing and speaking vocal control. I say that's it.

Dr Edward: 4:22

Head back over your tailbone or your heel if you would have described to someone how to do this in words, because we're on a podcast and we can't see this posture. If you would just break it into the smallest teachable steps? How would a person arrange their body into this posture?

Judy Rodman: 4:38

Okay, if you're sitting, just balance your head. Don't lift your chin to do it, but balance your head over your tailbone. That might require you to pull your knees in closer To your desk and pull your head back, almost like a space invader coming at you with bad breath and the flu and you would kind of pull back a little bit you kind of your whole little head slides back and up a little tiny bit, but without a lot of effort.

Judy Rodman: 5:03

Yeah right, exactly, and one way you can feel it is to actually Sit or stand against a wall, so that you're putting your head touching the wall and your heel touching the wall. If you're sitting, you could sit on a backless stool and put your tailbone against the wall, so that's the way you can feel how that balance is yeah, you want to kind of gently touch the back of your head on that wall as well right exactly okay.

Dr Edward: 5:34

And For me when I do this, it's kind of a not just. I'm kind of stretching my whole. It's like my head's floating up and stretching my whole spine a little bit as I lean back.

Judy Rodman: 5:46

Well, you know why that is is when your head moves back over your tailbone, your upper spine straightens out a little bit, so you are taller, just a little bit taller.

Dr Edward: 5:59

Yeah, when you get this position, how does that affect how other people perceive you?

Judy Rodman: 6:05

Well, it's a very confident stance and people see that confidence because you're not guarding.

Judy Rodman: 6:12

Guarding is, you know, requires your head to kind of go forward a little bit and you know, or slumping that, that doesn't look nearly as confident. So, just visually, your body language is saying I've got something you need to hear, you know, and so it draws people in. And then it also creates a clearer, more resonant voice, and that sound also says this you know, I've got something, and it makes it easy for people to listen to it because it is very listenable, since it's not thin and even if you want to talk loud, you know, or or or soft, it doesn't matter what the volume is. As long as you're open like that, your throat's open and you have breath control with your ribs wide, your voice is gonna sound better and it's gonna communicate Better. You know where people's ears open a little bit more, and so you're gonna get more likely get the response that you're looking for from the one heart that you're talking to and the one heart that you're talking to is something that we're gonna cover in depth in the full episode.

Dr Edward: 7:23

So this has been our little teaser episode. We'd like to have just a little kind of snack to give you something really useful and something you can put into action in this. So our invitation is To come along and listen to the full 45 minute episode, which is all about heal your voice, empower your life, which will be dropping, you know, probably about a week after you've had a bad ability to this episode on all on the all the podcast channels. Also, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please, you know, give us a rating, give us a review, drop in and say hi, join our community. We'd love to hear from you. So, thank you so much and we'll see you in the full episode with Judy Rodman Very, very soon. Come on.