Voice and Stress: How Mindfulness Can Reduce the Stress of Living with a Voice Disorder

If you’ve been following my work, you know that I am passionate about mindfulness as a tool for helping people with voice disorders. A few years ago, I ran a study on the subject, which was eventually published in a peer-reviewed journal as “Effects of an 8-Week Mindfulness Course in People with Voice Disorders.” Since then, I have continued to lead mindfulness courses and study the relationship between stress and voice. Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject:

Stress alone rarely causes voice disorders. It can be part of a perfect storm (along with viral illness, surgery, voice overuse, or genetics) that can lead to a voice disorder. However, it’s almost never as simple as “stress caused this.”
Having a voice disorder is extremely stressful. In their book Psychology of Voice Disorders, psychologist Deborah Rosen and laryngologist Robert Sataloff write that new voice disorder patients exhibited stress levels that “were comparable to that of newly diagnosed cancer patients in outpatient cancer care clinics.”
Stress can show up in the body in numerous ways. These can include physical tension, pain or discomfort, shallow breathing, digestive issues, and fatigue.
Mindfulness can reduce the stress of living with a voice disorder. It can help us respond differently to stress, which reduces suffering. Mindfulness can also make us more aware of our physical patterns of pain or tension. Awareness is the first step toward resolving these entrenched patterns. This may reduce some vocal symptoms.
Mindfulness can help us release the stress of other people’s expectations. By focusing on what is, we learn what we can’t control (other people) and what we can (our responses to others).
Voice disorder patients respond positively to exploring mindfulness in community with others who understand their struggles. My students frequently tell me that being part of a community is their favorite part of my mindfulness course.

Consistent Practice: Making Mindfulness Part of Your Routine

What do you do when you want to practice mindfulness more, but you find it hard to be consistent? Below are a few ideas.

Informal Mindfulness: Being Mindful in Everyday Life

Mindfulness is more than meditation, yoga, or formal practices for which we have to set aside time and space. We can practice mindfulness wherever we are. Formal mindfulness practices help build our mindfulness awareness, but we can tap into it at any time. Drinking my morning tea is my favorite informal mindfulness practice, but there are many forms this can take.

How Mindfulness Can Help People with Voice Disorders Cope with Grief and Loss

People with voice disorders often experience feelings of grief and loss around their vocal limitations. If they need to ration their voice use, they may experience social isolation as well as loss of professional and personal identity, income, and career. Mindfulness can help us cope with grief and loss.

Mindfulness vs Meditation: Is There a Difference?

We sometimes hear “mindfulness” and “meditation” used interchangeably, but they aren't exactly the same. Mindfulness is an umbrella term for practices, whether formal or informal, that help us improve our non-judgmental awareness. Meditation is one form of mindfulness. It encourages us to focus our attention on anchors like breath, body sensations, words (mantras), or sound.

Mindfulness Myths: Knowing What Mindfulness Is — and Isn't — Can Help You Stick with It

When I teach mindfulness meditation, I find that many people have tried it before and felt it “didn't work” for them. Often the feeling that mindfulness failed them — or that they failed at mindfulness — is based on common misconceptions.

Self-Compassion: How Showing Kindness to Ourselves Can Help Us Overcome Perfectionism

So how do we let go of perfectionism? Acceptance and self-compassion are antidotes to perfectionism. We can reduce our suffering by letting go of resistance to reality. When we accept what is, we stop fighting what isn’t. This allows us to release what we can’t control and focus on areas where our efforts can make a difference.

Catherine Kay Brown, photo by Mike Styer Photography

My Story: A Singer with Voice Disorders

Read more about my journey as a singer with voice disorders and how mindfulness helped me overcome muscle tension dysphonia. I now offer mindfulness classes for others with voice disorders. The curriculum is based on my own published, peer-reviewed research.

How Mindfulness May Help People with Voice Disorders

For people with voice disorders, stress can be a causative or an exacerbating factor, potentially worsening the disorder itself and impeding treatment. People with voice disorders often experience high stress levels; social and emotional isolation; and loss, including the loss of work opportunities, sense of self, and the ability to communicate. Mindfulness meditation may help.

Article: Effects of an 8-Week Mindfulness Course in People With Voice Disorders

I have spent the last four years studying mindfulness and its effects in people with voice disorders. My article, “Effects of an 8-Week Mindfulness Course in People With Voice Disorders,” has been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Voice. The full article is available online.

Benefits of Group Mindfulness for People with Voice Disorders

Did you know that practicing mindfulness in a group has been shown to produce better outcomes than practicing alone? The popular press frequently touts the health benefits of mindfulness, but rarely states that those benefits are almost always gained in group settings. If you've been practicing mindfulness on your own using recordings or an app, consider joining a class instead.

Singing and Mindfulness Meditation: Complementary Practices

If you’re a singer who is new to meditation, figuring out where to start can be overwhelming. As a voice teacher and trained mindfulness instructor, I’d like to offer some insight. Let’s start by looking at four ways that singing and mindfulness can complement each other. Then I’ll share some valuable resources that can help you start your own meditation practice.

Study: Mindfulness for People with Voice Disorders

Nearly every modern textbook on vocal pedagogy, vocal health, or the causes and treatment of voice disorders recommends stress reduction as both a preventive and therapeutic tool for voice users and patients with voice disorders. We know from extensive research in various populations that Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) can reduce stress. Yet I have been unable to find any studies on the effects of mindfulness in people with voice disorders. I decided to run my own.

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