The Thinking Voice Vocal Health Education

Our three hosts, Stephen King, Robert Sussuma and Dr Jenevora Williams explore the what they might have said to their younger selves. 

This is an intimate conversation that pulls apart the past, present and future, as well as exploring what it means to “do the hard yards” in your career.

Acupuncture has been used and documented to help voice and throat problems since the Book of the Yellow Emperor in 180BCE. In this ancient tome, there is mention of “Plum Stone Throat” or as we would say, Globus Pharyngeous. 

Caroline Van Looy, a Masters level Speech Therapist from Belgium joins Stephen King as they discuss the inclusion of Acupuncture in their voice therapy work. 

Join the up coming Acupuncture for Voice training in July 2024 here: https://www.vocalhealth.co.uk/medical-acupuncture-voice-swallowing/

In this weeks, episode of the Thinking Voice podcast, Robert, Jenevora and Stephen discuss the complexities of gatekeeping and the lengths we go to to keep our education, titles and information truly representable. 

This episode also discusses the intricacy of ‘the journey’, be it to our studio, to work, to learn or heal.

Dr Jenevora Williams is in conversation with Maurice Goodwin SLP. There is much talk about ‘staying in your lane’ as a clinician or practitioner. What does this mean? Who makes the decisions? What happens if you wander over the line? If we are comparing the regulations in the US with those in the UK, is there really much of a difference, and what are the real practical necessities for us to remain ethically within our scope of practice?

In this episode, Stephen interviews Chris Johnson. Chris Johnson's performance career began in a casual choir, but then the joy (and, sometimes the fear) of stepping out in-front of hundreds of people got addictive. So addictive that it made him develop his own performance which led Chris into the professional world of singing for twelve years; years through which he learned a lot about himself as a performer.
Vocal coaching was inevitably born from that, embarking on a mission to help others avoid having to get a ‘real’ job. Through his coaching work, he's pleased to say that major label artists, West End leads, backing vocalists, singer/songwriters and vocal coach all put their trust in him to take good care of their instruments.
Chris also thoroughly enjoys the work he does with his teacher training company, TeachVoice.com, helping singing teachers all over the world to up-skill and navigate the overwhelming amount of pedagogical options. 
In complement to coaching, Chris has trained in laryngeal manual therapies, somatic work, and studied extensively with researchers in vocal acoustics. Through his popular podcast and blog, The Naked Vocalist, he has also had the opportunity to connect and share with many progressive voice researchers and pedagogues.

Join our hosts for the “Love Conversation”, where they explore how we might begin to love our voices, and the processes involved in becoming a vocalist. As ever, Dr Jenevora Williams, Robert Sussuma and Stephen King move around the realms of philosophy, music, pedagogy and psychology in order to better flesh out the theories presented in the present.