Interviews on Voice Matters: Episode #18 with Chris Johnson

[@amandaschenk3306]

Hi Liz! Thank you so much for your interesting interviews! I Loved this one with Chris, as he is one of my mentors and I just wanted to add something to the straw anti-epiphany that might be able to give some assurance to teachers going through similar experiences. I was asked to help a professional singer, who struggled with severe MTD after having polyps removed. Of course my first go to was the straw and it had catastrophic results. Exactly, as Chris explained, the voice went into a mode that this singer has never experienced and it was not a good mode! Have to give her credit, because she stuck it through with me, even though her voice was going hay wire. To make a long story short, in the end, after having to explore an eclectic array of strategies to establish a solid technique, the straw ended up being the tool to bring everything together and is now her best friend. It is my belief that the straw not only fixes, but sometimes exposes the root of the imbalance and because we are so fixated on quick results, we tend to distrust a method that might not give us the immediate outcome we desire.

[@LizJohnsonVoice]

I completely agree. Straw work tends to expose all the ways we "work around" our technical issues, and that can be really traumatic. Thank you for sharing this story! I hope it will encourage people to stick with it, or at least give the straw another try after working through other challenges.