About the human voice

“L’oreille est le chemin du coeur”“, says a french proverb, meaning “the ear is the pathway to the heart”. And the last verse in a poem by Spencer Michael Free goes like this “....the sound of the voice sing(s) on in the soul always” .

Hardly anything is as fascinating and touches us as deeply as the human voice.  Nothing compares to the soothing comfort and relaxation I experience listening to the voice of a loved one.  Nothing compares to the goose bumps I feel when listening to the singing of a good choir.  And nothing is more surprising when a person that knows me well says “what’s wrong” based on what they hear in my voice even when I may not even be aware of it.

The word “person” comes from the Latin verb “personare” which means to “sound through”.  What we hear as the human voice is vibrating air sounding through. Yet so much more is transmitted on these sound waves!

The invisible power of the human voice influences our life from the first cry at birth to the last exhalation when we die.  Studies show that the sound of our voice impacts our careers and love lives.  Psychologists of State University of New York in Albany had 149 people test the beauty of the female voice.  The favored voices on top of the list were the one’s that marked having an active sex life on the questionnaire.  Another study revealed that hearing the voice of one’s mother equaled the comfort body contact can give.

The sound of our voice is often more informative than our face.  Computer programs have been developed to analyze voices to detect illnesses before they set in.  For example a number of neurological disorders begin at the finer muscles of the larynx.  Hence Parkinson’s can be detected in the voice before the illness is fully there.  The articulation of a beginning Parkinson’s patient is noticably soft spoken and the voice is overly relaxed, meaning the muscles already have lost tone before the illness progresses to other parts of the body.  Computer programs are also used by criminalists to find law offenders.  One can lie with words but much less so with the sound of the voice.

Another interesting phenomenon is that our larynx reacts to the larynx it interacts with.  You may have noticed that you start clearing your throat when you listen to someone speaking with a sore throat or hoarse voice.  Our vocal cords vibrate when we listen to another one speak.  Research also shows that when groups of people from different cultures get together for improvisation, they will always seek harmony with their voices.
And the strangest phenomenon of all?  When listening to a recording of one’s own voice we often do not recognize our own voice.  It sounds strange and different from our inner experience.

Generally speaking, a lower warm timbre of a voice transmits calm and experience.  A high pitched voice in contrast we do not take as seriously.

As with everything, there are methods to expand the spectrum of sounds within our voice, there are tips on where in our bodies to speak from, and there are voice coaches that can help us place and project the voice better.   Many people take advantage of these tools to be better actors, singers, speakers, teachers and presenters.

But the very individual tone that only your voice will have, has to do with how you have lived your life and continue to live it, what experiences you have gone through, how and what you think and feel, how you choose to serve your community, other less visible efforts you engage in that are specific to you and your well being.

There is a Chinese proverb that says “God respects you when you work but he loves you when you sing”.  Our voice and what it carries, on every level, matters...to us, to our families and communities.

~Claudia