Resonant voice therapy has proven itself an effective solution for treating various voice disorders. The approach involves training patients to feel vibrations at the front of their faces (i.e., anterior alveolar ridge and lips) during easy phonation as well as voiced and voiceless sounds.
Teaching clients how to implement this technique into their everyday conversation can be challenging. Adherence and generalization are crucial in order to successfully complete any treatment program.
1. Listen to the Vocal Signal
Resonant Voice Therapy is an evidence-based method of improving vocal quality and harnessing its power for maximum impact in all settings. It has proven highly successful at treating various voice disorders, including muscle tension dysphonia. Reducing strain on the vocal folds reduces fatigue while simultaneously increasing stamina for improved communication across settings – leading to more confident and impactful communications in all situations.
Resonant voice techniques train patients to speak with forward focus and easy phonations, striving to produce a resonant voice with sensations of vibration in the lips, teeth, upper lip and nose of a speaker – as opposed to production that involves vibration in their throats (laryngeal adduction). Furthermore, these techniques optimize breath support, reduce speaking effort, increase phonation flexibility and improve voice quality.
Nodules or polyps can make producing a resonant voice difficult for clients with difficulty, making speech production an ongoing struggle. In such instances, adding a silent hum at the beginning of words and sentences may help accentuate its sound, eventually subsiding as clients produce natural glottal onsets without added strain or vibrato.
Lessac-Madsen Resonant Voice Therapy (LMRVT) is one of the most frequently employed resonant voice therapy protocols, used for treating vocal nodules and polyps and overuse patterns. Furthermore, LMRVT is proven to reduce strain on vocal folds while improving stamina.
In this free webinar, we will introduce the basic concepts of LMRVT and demonstrate step-by-step instruction for performing it in practice. Emphasis will be on teaching clinicians to listen for vocal signals to guide patients in developing resonant phonation and voice production. Furthermore, we will cover adherence and generalization challenges within LMRVT therapy – two major hurdles encountered by voice therapy clients that must be navigated successfully for maximum efficacy of treatment outcomes.
2. Listen to Your Breath
Resonant voice therapy helps individuals develop powerful, effortless voices by optimizing resonance while minimizing strain on the vocal folds. Through various adaptive strategies such as vocal placement exercises, breathing exercises, and resonant humming exercises, Resonant Voice Therapy improves your quality of voice while decreasing throat tension and hoarseness, giving you confidence to speak in even difficult environments with clarity and ease.
Resonant voice techniques aim to bring vibratory sensations into the front of the body, such as buzzing or tickling sensations in lips, nose, teeth and anterior alveolar ridge of the mouth (or “mask”) as well as airborne. Vibrations should feel balanced when practicing easy phonation (voiced versus voiceless sounds); when moving through vocal range vibration will feel more focused on the sternum and ribs than larynx.
Practice Resonant Voice Techniques You will learn to quickly switch between disordered and healthy voices, helping reduce fatigue and avoid injuries. Your voice will also resonate more freely and sound more beautiful!
Many individuals suffer from issues related to pitch and tone that lead to hoarseness, weakness or breathiness in their voice. This issue often stems from excessive muscle tension or poor breath support; through Resonant Voice Therapy we learn techniques for relieving unnecessary tension while supporting the voice properly for greater strength and stamina.
Resonant voice therapy offers many advantages for improving both professional presence and interpersonal relationships, as well as building stronger bonds within families. Not only can it strengthen vocal technique, but its benefits extend far beyond this; resonant voice therapy can boost your confidence, assist with speaking more clearly in challenging circumstances, and foster harmony within the home environment. To find out how resonant voice therapy could benefit you further, speak to a qualified speech-language pathologist; they have expert guidance that can help you master these techniques to unleash your full vocal potential!
3. Listen to Your Mouth
Resonant voice therapy is an extremely effective solution to vocal fold nodules and muscle tension dysphonia, teaching patients to speak in a forward focus that shifts power away from vocal folds, thus decreasing tension levels and tension-related voice disorders. Resonant voice therapy demystifies anatomy and techniques while targeting common disorders to unlock one’s true vocal potential and unlock it for everyone involved.
Resonant Voice Therapy utilizes vocal cues to increase patients’ awareness of their own vocal production. This may involve simple sounds like “bum humming” to help patients sense vibrations in the front of their mouth and face, as well as exercises designed to practice feeling resonant voices such as lip trills, tongue out trills, y-buzzing or straw phonating. Therapists will also instruct their patients how to monitor their own voice production by placing fingers under their nose or in front of their mouth which indicates continuous airflow during production of resonant voices.
Once a patient has acquired the ability to find their resonant voice, they will be able to use this skill in conversational settings. Therapists will gradually introduce more complex sounds and phrases designed to transition RVT into functionally relevant speech, such as questioning the client using their own resonant voice (e.g. “What did you have for breakfast?”). This will enable the client to build self-efficacy with this form of speech while feeling more secure speaking in real-life scenarios.
Resonant Voice Therapy (RVT) is an evidence-based practice proven to improve both the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of voice, including resonance, intensity and loudness. RVT promotes healthy voicing patterns while treating voice disorders such as muscle tension dysphonia, vocal nodules and glottic insufficiency. For more information about this therapy visit ASHA’s Practice Portal page on Voice Disorders.
4. Listen to Your Voice
Resonant voice exercises when combined with other therapeutic approaches, optimize vocal resonance while decreasing strain on the vocal folds, enabling individuals to communicate more effectively in all aspects of life – for singers this could mean improved range and vibrant singing voice; for business professionals and everyday individuals this could mean reduced hoarseness and increased confidence when it comes to communicating.
Voice production involves the adduction and abduction of vocal folds during voice production, which impacts larynx vibration and harmonics/formants production. If these mechanisms become impaired, vocal strain increases further leading to muscle tension dysphonia or vocal nodules forming in response to muscle strain. Resonant voice techniques may help alleviate symptoms associated with these conditions while also helping prevent or lessen future nodule formation by decreasing episodes of fatigue/stretch thus helping prevent or lessen future nodule formation.
Resonant Voice Therapy (RVT) is an evidence-based clinical approach that involves using resonant humming, voice placement and breathing exercises to maximize vocal resonance and promote optimal vocal health. RVT has proven itself effective against various voice disorders.
RVT starts by emphasizing oral vibratory sensations during easy phonation and progresses through various vocal functions (vocal trills, voiced vs voiceless sounds, sentence level speech) until we achieve a strong clean voice with minimum effort required to produce it. Our RVT-specific laryngeal pattern maximizes laryngeal health and function.
RVT treats not only posture and movement of the head and neck but also vocal cord strain by targeting these aspects of movement. As RVT is an all-inclusive treatment approach, skilled speech-language pathologists will be able to implement it across multiple clinical settings.
Start Resonant Voice Therapy Now Speak to your speech-language pathologist about its benefits before embarking on it yourself. They can create an exercise plan tailored to your unique voice needs, while our shop contains patient handouts and other SLP resources.