Vocal Health and Safety for Female Voice Tour Guides

One hot chick

1. Stay hydrated! 

A Hydra is a water serpent with many heads, each of which, if cut off, grows. So remember, if one voice is chopped off, two more can take her place. Hercules (so like a man) killed a Hydra by cauterizing the necks as he cut off the heads, burning the witches (how unoriginal), but the genus Hydra maintains and populates, presenting vocal opportunity and many-sided problems for the old boys. 

To maintain hydration, drink plenty of non-caffeinated beverages, and say juicy words like fennel and ferment to keep vocal chords lubricated. If you clear your throat often you may be dehydrated, un-watered, cauterized, or overfull and not knowing where to begin.  Toast a Hydra, start from the center, and speak. 

Caution: Do not drink while speaking, as during deep delving diving, this can lead to drowning -- fear-, exclusion-, and/or love-based. See Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.  Repetitive clearing may also lead to a sore throat, as stuck words fester and clog like Samson’s hair in the shower drain. Drink water, and then speak. 

2. Avoid Drinking the Wrong Liquids!

Try not to drink acidic juices (apple-flavored greed, sour grapes, patriarchal orange, etc.), milk (excepting mother’s or wet nurse) or other dairy products before giving tours. These liquids coat the vocal chords and muffle sound, which may cause breaks in speech or from reality and the feeling of needing to clear your throat but, again, being unable to speak. 

If you do consume these items, try drinking water from female fountains to thin the stickiness of mucus. Some anecdotal evidence also suggests that gargling with semen may provide occasional symptomatic relief, as physical contact may reduce the explanatory vocal requirements of the tour, but this remains a personal choice for each guide. 

3. Use good vocal production! 

Enunciate words at the front of your mouth and speak in a comfortable range, neither too high or too low.  Don’t whisper. Whispering stresses your vocal chords and life experience because you have no support. Mumbling is only advisable when plotting an overthrow. 

On average, people use a lower speaking range than is healthiest for them, and thereby fail to ascend to more satisfying, frustrating and complicated realms. If the area above your vocal box (larynx) feels like you’ve been pressing down on it at the end of the day, you are probably talking too long about too little. Try loosening up your need for societal approval, and speaking in your natural range. 

 

4. Use your diaphragm for good projection! 

The diaphragm is also a thin muscle that runs horizontally underneath our lungs which we can control for good breath support.  Somehow as we grow up our innate sense of breathing and diaphragmatic support gets fouled up when we find ourselves in situations where we need to project who we really are.  Yelling and straining are bad for the long term health of our vocal chords, resulting in labeling of angry bitch and hysterical feminist.  Enunciate with passion and clarity, and remember to breathe from your belly, the center from which you began, embryonic.   

Remember, squashed language is harmful to the environment. 

Please discard antiquated language in the dictionaries provided.