Here the presentation (the two workshops will not be published) at Pan-European Voice Conference PEVoC14 on the central topic of how body’s joints far from vocal tract are directly implied into voice production and development. Does posture relate to voice? Yes but the how is the conundrum and I am opening since some years a path toward a rationale unifying all the practices with what science and research says about the subject and how to implement it in vocal practices for vocal health, voice development and training, career and artistic research and achievements, for amateurs. For confidentiality reasons the two one hour long workshops will not be published but I will publish some practices and exercises. At the end in the video you find my notes, this is just a path toward a model of voice including the interrelations of overall body (big box) on vocal system (small box into the big box). It does not pretend to be complete or correct in all its sides, just a useful work model that has helped in more than ten years my practice and students and general population and voice teachers and singers and that has a solid scientific background and confirmation. Enjoy.

JOINTS AND VOICE: DOES VOICE PRODUCTION REACTS TO JOINTS DYSFUNCTIONALITY FAR FROM VOCAL TRACT? SOME CASES AND AN HYPOTHESIS
Copyright all rights reserved Lucia Cossu
Vocal system is into the body and into specific segments of the body, it uses muscles and structures having multiple functions, you know better than me probably on those, today we focus on the respiratory and vocal and postural functions with a joint to joint approach, and the questions are HOW THEY correlate in PRECISE terms? In here I would open a path, I hope, to more sophisticated thoughts and directions of researching and getting specific in WHAT HOW WHY WHEN of those correlations, and IF as an effect on the vocal system or a direct contribution SO to be the vocal system thought in a less narrow way (I know it is more precise the more restricted a system is, but if we get specific we can expand). I think of it as a big box and a smaller box, being the smaller the vocal one, the smaller is into the bigger, they are independent in some ways, share some parts and even something more tricky as the cervical segment, as we will see what this can mean in the joint by joint approach.
(I anticipate that I look at posture and overall all body as the environment in which the vocal system can operate and develop, we know it happens also the other way around, but I remain focused on this direction in here).

From static alignment and managing the breath air to compensate for a not naturally gifted voice to a dynamic alignment and an hypothesis on how asymmetries, defensive stiffnesses and joints dysfunctionality or underdevelopement can be directly worked and change directly voice production. Many methods exist to help body connection, relaxation of defensive veto, help alignement. They are useful and sometimes fundamental, what lacks is a systematic and rationale on the precise mechanism related to voice production, and if there is one. This is a presentation with some examples of work on Sacroiliac joint and transversus abdominis, examples that present a discontinuity in voice production, some with medical control of it and a couple with the level of performance achieved. I make an hypothesis of this specific relation using the joint by joint approach of M. Boyle and G. Cook, the functional findings on SI joint of G. Cook and B. Contreras, some insights from C. Weingroff and the fascia system as a suggestion of a worth field to research. I use their work because in physical therapies and athletes training the literature and research is vast and rich; the body is one and the biological rules and muscles kinetics do not change, then the joint by joint approach can give insight on how joints are reciprocally related. The defensive system will be presented as a blocking and braking system, sometimes a veto system and sometimes a decelarating and expressive system, and it is presented with an hypothesis of its muscular structure and gestures with strategies to manage it with positions and exercises. C. Weingroff says citing Dostal, Soderberg and Andrews ‘the hip musculature changes dramatically through various range of motion and some muscles can reverse their function depending on the positioning’, so no surprise that if a muscle reverse role in the SI tract the expiratories will be affected and they will affect the diaphagm etc.
Here some links for a general view of the examples, in the presentation clips not publicly disclosed of the exercises will be presented.
https://youtube.be/CLcL_buf9tc
https://luciacossu.com/2016/09/13/cos…
https:/youtu.be/OUH9sXqKjRw

Lucia Cossu Voice teacher online/in person
Rue Charles Morren 9 – 4000 Liège BELGIUM
TVA: BE0723776188
Mail: cossuvoiceteacher@gmail.com