It was 1 year ago, it came as the central topic it is, the topic I am successfully pioneering in practice since 15 years.
https://youtu.be/Lg7sg1Q-cG8?si=86kvRZ5EQa6-pnYj




It was 1 year ago, it came as the central topic it is, the topic I am successfully pioneering in practice since 15 years.
https://youtu.be/Lg7sg1Q-cG8?si=86kvRZ5EQa6-pnYj
https://www.facebook.com/reel/816446316614073?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V
Great intensive sessions with Cléo!
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How would you describe yourself to someone?
FUTURE IS HERE.
Future innovative super tool is optimising our yet existing biology; we are the innovative super technology and of yet now #ExploringPlusLearning its possibilities and resources.
I am in this for voices, and part of the future is here.
When you ask me if it is singing lessons or voice training or breath lessons or what that I do. I do what will exist as a voice specialist of the instrument and common/specific training strategies/programs for how biomechanics is.
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Italian/French born 1971, voice teacher for professionals and future pro singers, innovator in vocal technique specialised in training and personalised solutions, voice development and voice preparation for touring/recording, young voices development without forcing the delicate and respectful balance of young talents. The innovative approach has solved strain/issues and limitations of singers unsolvable by training or medical therapies. Those skills have 15 years of successful career and voice transformations in all styles; hospitals have sent her some desperate cases, all successfully. The perspective has been recently presented at the prestigious Pan-European Voice Conference PEVoC14 in one paper and two workshops, she will present three abstracts at The Voice Foundation 52nd Annual Symposium May 31- June 4 2023 in Philadelphia.
List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.
It is true, we faced a huge setback in connecting/discovering/finding each other’s and being found. Still we put good content to just be the seeds and little plants we are in the every day life and reality musical workers not in the central spot still being part of the team work behind that spot on scene and on socials. I enjoyed crazily the previous possibility of connect with other musicians/music workers in the back of stage light and we will find ways to find them again.
Posting good material is always valuable: it is our songs, our seeds, we are seeds, the knowledge or creativity to make a more beautiful Universe.
So Lullaby of IG, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp, TikTok, SoundCloud, WordPress, Blogger.
Here the three abstracts of the Posters I presented at the Voice Foundation 52nd Symposium. Very happy to see that this innovative vision I apply and preach and research about is coming out of the controversial shadow and be in its first steps in the sun.
To have future development and collaborations between voice technical and training specialists as I am and biomechanists and kinesiologist so to build knowledge on the common mechanisms well studied in other fields and voice production and nuances for artistic use. The first steps are here, feel honoured and happy being the pioneering of that and opening at such high science/pedagogy places as The Voice Foundation.
1.
Sitting on Sacro-Iliac and Hips Joint: Effects for Singing, Strategies, Management in Professional Voice Requirements. Biomechanical Tools for Professional Voice Requirements.
For a Biomechanical View on Voice Production.
Lucia Cossu MM
ABSTRACT Singing career is a demanding one on many aspects, minimising the tolls of lifestyle impact can be crucial. One overlooked aspect is the impact of joints biomechanics on voice production: 1. As a disfavourable element directly impacting technique, development and stamina, well sustained by the joint by joint approach and biomechanical research and practices correlated (in its direct translation for voice production my presentation at PEVoC14 2022, on YouTube) 2. The other way around is also true, meaning that we can contribute to voice improvement, maintenance and longevity by using the biomechanical correlations of joints work and actions. Joints present some kind of hierarchy of importance that vary according to frame applied: developmental, biomechanical or fascial. The hips joint is specially high positioned in all those frames: it is the joint to be properly developed to get to upright posture (and maintain it), it is a central, complex and very specific system to all postural activities of the body, it is at the crossline of fascial and skeleton/skeletal muscles system with an anatomical cohabitation of both (and a study from 2020 has assessed the presence of smooth muscle as skeletal muscle in the same muscle of pelvic floor, posing so a more nuanced view of interactions and control of muscle actions). It is well recognised the adverse role of prolonged sitting on hips and lumbar segment on muscles functionality, its effects migrating to the lumbar segment in the form of mobilisation to it. Also sitting in usual chairs interfere with the ligaments of the sacro-lumbar segment of the spine, and as found by Solomonov the lack of proper agonist/antagonist coactivation is a common consequence of ligament deviation from proper norm. I will give some biomechanical rationale, sitting tools easy to implement in daily life, example of exercises to reverse the adverse adaptations and age related changes adapted to singers specificities with a joint by joint approach and research informed logic. Results of this approach on this specific joint are here in some examples on professional voices and general population. https://youtu.be/CLcL_buf9tc https://youtu.be/OUH9sXqKjRw https://luciacossu.com/cossu-method-program/ https://youtu.be/FOC05-9iYZk
2.
Breath in a Biomechanical View: Breath as an Elastic Springlike Energy into the Eccentric/Concentric Functional Work of Respiratory/Postural Muscles.
For a Biomechanical View on Voice Production.
Lucia Cossu MM
ABSTRACT Biomechanics, training and rehabilitation is showing a complex and opposed system of muscles activations when it comes to skeleton/skeletal muscles systems, valid for the same structures involved in breath management. Research on not relaxed or underused contexts and in functional systems shows system of opposed functions which activate (functionally or dysfunctionally) according to: position of the joint, intensity/speed of the force, state of the ligaments of the joints involved. Attention and understanding of the opposed function is revolutionising the approach to training, development, longevity and injury prevention in athletes and rehabilitation protocols, putting the accent on the specifics of tissues, adaptations and neurologic kind of activations in the contracting states of muscles if concentric, isometric or eccentric. In here I will focus on the eccentric work of breath muscles, giving a rationale of different schools of breath management in this biomechanical view and making an hypothesis on the multifidi muscles action in breathing and strategies to work others than the well established Alexander technique. What does this tell about our breath management? Breath relies on a skeletal muscles and skeleton joints components that can be viewed and trained in their contributions. One of these contributions are the spring like quality of the eccentric action of muscles, the neurological reactivity of this state according to duration/load of the eccentric phase and grade of elongation of the same that makes a great difference in medium/long term adaptations of the soft tissues.Is it all breath an elastic muscles force? Of course not but it is a crucial contribution, style/individual context specific that managed and rationally planned can give tools in making the difference between a medium or high skilled voice and a more pronounced style/individual asset so important in determining the level of success/artistic satisfaction of a career.
In here I will focus on the eccentric work of breath muscles, a rationale of different schools of breath management in this biomechanical view, an hypothesis on the multifidi muscles role in breathing and strategies to train and functionally develop it, other than the well established Alexander Technique
3.
Singing as a Plyometric Activity: Rationale and Utility of this Point of View. For a Biomechanical View on Voice Production.
For a Biomechanical View on Voice Production.
Lucia Cossu MM
ABSTRACT Singing requires an alternation of dynamics, accents, changes of words, consonants style specific production that translates in a different opposed functions, changes of rhythms and character often in short time, alternating more rhythmically or tessitura demanding pieces to more legato and “on the breath” ones. All those are different from a biomechanical point of view and the firsts present a challenge in voice production and training.The firsts can be translated as plyometric activity (defined as the shortening and lengthening during the same action of a muscle) into a range of motion of the joints involved, into or outside the vocal tract, requiring the coactivation or opposed action of agonist/antagonist muscles involved (laryngeal or not laryngeal) in the biomechanical logic of concentric/eccentric/isometric. Plyometric with its high demanding/high gains quality involved, is one of the most challenging training tasks, especially how to develop it safely and into the favourable adaptations desired. The emerged concept of how agonist and antagonist work in a functional system of constant eccentric/concentric work is of the utmost importance for training and developing systems and apply also to us, not only in the correlation body joints/voice production (see my PEVoC14 presentation on that, on YouTube) but also in the deepening of the understanding of intrinsic/extrinsic larynx muscles that work in this way even if with some specificities to the system due to the small size of the structure and the specific material/structure context of the vocal system. Great steps in training the plyometric’s sports have been made in the functional training movement, those can be paralleled with studies and research on coactivations, gender specifics of ligaments in coactivations, soft tissues adaptations following precise protocols of eccentric, load and periodisation a new door is opening for both:1. working on joints involved in voice production out of the vocal tract; 2. understanding mechanisms or developing strategies of traditional or more contemporary strategies in voice training or rehab. This view can integrate the musical aspect or phrasé and dynamics in a joints/skeletal muscles biomechanical view so to start separating lungs and respiratory system from skeleton/skeletal muscles contributions.
What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?
All!!! 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️😊😊 If I can and if I am not busy I just look at everything, a binge Olympic enthusiast. Are you also?
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?
A Voice practicing room, to remember and cherish this pioneering of voice practice and model integrating precise joints biomechanics that is mine and cossumethod
Last week a voice teacher in a group of professional teachers I follow wrote a witty and brilliant post with a list of points he follows in its lessons. I wrote that all the ones from his point 2 are mine and this takes away all the other points but the last. The last was on having a perfectly clean bathroom, yeah everybody still in lockdown and online lessons.
What was his second point to take away every other one? He does not accept students who do not sing in pitch: and as him many others do, as those who not have yet a voice. He asked me about my answer and I told him that basically I have all the students out of pitch the others did not want, the singers who start losing their pitch or never solved it really and have by that some career problems and I have had also many teachers when they start losing something and they do not know what to do about. In my concept they have to be treated in the same way, because they have something in common and it is the main reason teachers historically do not accept them.
To explain that I do a little diversion: some decades ago, as teen, it was discovered I could bring back into balance horses got dangerous. I am a pretty serious soul and I spent then summers in Uk to perfect my training skills and also there they gave me school horses not happy with kids anymore, or with various stiffnesses inexplicable or after surgeries while I did refine the technique. What I thought was that I could use some movements that were typical of a happy and joyful situation to change the emotional state of the horse, so to destress him and take away the preventive fear, and open back to what they mostly love: playing and collaborate with us. Also the joyful and happy gesture will improve and condition muscles and muscular chains and patterns so to have them present in every moment more than before. The origin being a physical trauma or not skilled kids moving heavy on their back or a not respectful or violent or inappropriate trainer? If repeated with no other input they would go in burnout as we do. So I was just putting back functionality and reopening the thing horses love most doing with us.
Why do I talk about horses? The voice is a horse and reacts as a horse. So is the student the horse? Not exactly. The student or the singer is both the horse and me, meaning by that the one the horse live playing with. Why teachers do not want the kind of singers we said previously? Because they have a bad horse? Not exactly, they do not refuse the horse but something the person clearly have shown of not being able to do: they have a burnout horse. So again: is the horse?
Do you remember bullies at school? Were they fragile or strong kids? We well see they are kids with a huge energy that has taken a bad flip, we see and experiment them as fragile as violent. Violent, not aggressive; their energy is not well expressed and it becomes the frustration of it in burst of violence. When do they save themselves, they discover that this fantastic energy they have inside is a hell of a gift. Taking care of their burnout horse is easy and will give some fresh air and good vibe to the other part, the smell of what they can really be and have inside. They will then have to learn not to always escalate but reopening easiness for their horse and by that the dialogue and playing with the other players. They have to learn to restrain themselves not to act the bully actions, suspending them for a certain time and thus letting the place for other things.
If they do then they will be the singers ev’ry teacher and musician want, as many of my students or professional have become. It is not easy and sometimes really annoying, and as teacher you must not have a problem in being profoundly straight as profoundly respectful of the human inside and fond of his qualities, with the vibe of the admiration of the true soul you have in front, acting protecting the horse but not loving less the non horse of that person. How this: not teaching the person but teaching on focusing and freeing and respecting the horse, that at the end is what we call in music listening and playing. Because a happy horse is sign of a hell of a rider ;).
In the group I will only write of how to free technically the horse. Have a good weekend everybody.