Mailbag

than disaster victims. But ordinary people generally behave magnificently, taking care of each other and improvising rescues in the conditions of survival, connecting with each other in ways they might not in everyday life, and sometimes finding in that connection something so valuable and meaningful that their stories about who they were and met and what they did shine with joy. That is, I found in disasters a window onto what

so many of us really want and don't get. A need we hardly name or recognize, which she calls public love, the sense of meaning, purpose, power, belonging to a community, society, a city, a movement. Welcome to the podcast. That's all about the voice, which means it's all about power, Who has it, how we get it? How we sound when we have it. I'm your host, Samarrove, and this is permission to speak where we can throw all our best ideas about how to get ourselves heard into the pot

and start. So today's episode we are bringing to you from our respective homes because the last few weeks since Quarantine started, we've been able to use episodes that we already have in the camp and now we are flying free and not in the I Heart studios and finding a our home studio madness. But what's glorious about it, besides the fact that we're in the comfort of our own homes obviously, is um It's given us a chance to think about what we really want to do next

during this bizarre, bizarre time. And one thing that came up right away was a mail bag episode because we've gotten some great questions from people, and because really my intention with this podcast is to make sure that it's not just big, cool ideas about the voice and about power, but also deeply practical Micro's suggestions to help people in

their regular, actual lives. And by the way, our regular lives are weird as buck right now, but we can still use this stuff because either you know, we're dealing with newfound issues over Zoom, or with our families, or however we're conducting quote unquote business right now, or we can use this strange time sort of outside of regular life to work on what really matters to us in terms of how we present in the world, so that when we are able to go back into public again,

we're bringing a version of ourselves that feels more whole than we were bringing before. So I have my stunning friend and producer Katherine Burt Canton. I was gonna say with me in the studio metaphorically, when parkly with me in the studio, I can see you, I can see I know you. We're zooming, We're doing all the things cat him good morning. I think this would be an appropriate time to say top of the Morningtia. That is

something just for all of you out there. UM that I quite often like to say to Samara and she looks at me and says, Kat, we're not doing we're not doing dialect for this for this podcast, and UM, I don't care. Today we are. Maybe this is the episode where I finally coach you on how to make that sound slightly more irish. Oh that was That was Australia. Oh my god, oh my ears are really losing their

their touch. How can I not have known? No? That was there, goes Michelle, my next door neighbor, walking by walking her dog Taco. So yeah, Cat, tell people where you're recording from. Yeah, let's paint the picture real quick. So currently I am outside of my beautiful apartment in my Toyota Prius with a podcast studio that we've set up inside of it. Mark, our engineer producer, and my husband is inside Mark. Can we get a hello? Hello? Everyone?

How are you doing this fine morning day? You might be able to hear trolls in the background, samaraw, can you tell us a little bit about where you're I'm on the floor on a to be fair, on a pillow on the floor, leaning against a favorite blanket of mine that has cheetahs on it. I'll take a picture,

I'll post it. It'll be great. And uh, I'm, you know, trying to get the sound of bounce and only the right ways and not the wrong ways with a little bit of a jerry rigged set up here, and trying to embrace how chill it is and how kind of bohemian I feel sitting on the floor a cross leg and doing this. Um. It's great. We're getting back to basics, guys. It makes me think of something I posted on the Permission to Speak pod um instagram feed earlier this week.

I'm not going to read all of it, although you can go there to see it, but the last line is um. This is by a therapist, a licensed therapist, who says, when in the midst of trauma, just getting by emotionally and functionally is okay. Lowering expectations and being kind to yourself and is vital. I feel like our amazing podcast setups here are a perfect example of that. Alright, so let's dive into this party. So our first question

is from Carly. She's an anesthesiologist and she is currently working in the ICU, and she wrote in saying, Hi, I love this podcast. You're doing an amazing job and I find it's so thought provoking. The episode was Shaunton made me cry. I was holding onto a toxic friend group and she helped me to admit to myself that I was allowed the space to know that I don't need their validation. I just thought that was beautiful. So her first question, though, is I've been thinking about this

since the first episode. So I'm a physician and therefore I work with a lot of elderly patients. I've had mentors tell me in medical school that I need to lower my voice so that those with hearing lost, mostly elderly people, can hear me better. The reason is that we often lose our high frequency hearing first before a low frequency. But I'm starting to wonder if it's also a generational thing that a lower voice will be more healing to an elderly patient when I approached them as

a medical authority. What are your thoughts on that. I wonder what this lower voice means, if that's about pitch or about volume, but it sounds like it's meant to

be about pitch. I don't know about the losing the upper register, but I do know for everybody that when we're in a in a room with a lot of din a lot of you know, whether it's a party context or you know, a medical whatever, any any any room that has a lot of sound bouncing around, if we can go up a little bit, actually it cuts through, especially if you kind of consens what the general didn't sound in the room is if you can go a little above that it's a great way to be heard

at a party, quite honestly, But what she's asking about is obviously more complicated than that, because there's also an element of care involved, right, And and what she's talking about is making sure that people who are older are really understanding what she's saying. And this is truly about communication, right And my feeling about that is there's a few things. One we often and I think she has a question coming up about masks right now. If everybody's wearing a mask.

There's a second level of this, but it just in general, if we're approaching people who are hard of hearing, what we can do is remember that we I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but we can remember that we have mouths, and like we're often thinking about the sound just coming out from like the back of you know, from our throat out, but our lips. The amount that we actually what they say in the acting world is use your consonants.

The amount that we actually can use our mouth to make sure that we're communicating our thoughts is so much more than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. We actually do use our mouth like that. If we really know that we need to be heard if it's the seventh time that somebody has, you know, misunderstood us, and we're like no, What I'm trying to say is suddenly we realize, like, oh, I have all these tools at my disposal. I'll use them.

But but maybe in this context it would be helpful to know that you don't have to wait for the seventh time, right, you can actually just say to yourself, what can I do to make sure that I actually you use my lips, I use my tongue, I actually

am communicating the thought. And so Carly's in her residency right now, so she's really trying to set the tone, you know, during this wild time with COVID and having to be more protected, but also moving forward as a female physician and using her voice and standing in her power. And so she has a few questions here which I love.

So the next one is, I've been told by multiple people that I have a soft voice, and I think a lot of that has to do with my constantly being told by society to only take up so much space. As you have said in many episodes. But I was wondering if you would like to comment on my projection a little, maybe some tips and how to make a soft voice heard without feeling like I'm shouting or any

other thoughts that you have on that. I love this, and you know, without having her in front of me, I can't tell her exactly what the cure all is. But in general, for people, yeah, breathing makes a huge difference. And breathing doesn't just mean like hyperventilating. It means using the extra space that we have with our ribs expand,

ending with the stuff underneath our ribs expanding. If we can get that far down, which sometimes like yoga, running around the block like helps our body remember like, oh, I know how to breathe myself, I remember, you know that kind of thing. But it's not just about the breathing.

It's about the fact that when the breathing comes through our vocal cords, it vibrates in a way that suggests confidence, and if you don't breathe like that, it does just feel a lot lighter, like you're just cutting yourself off from your power supply, and that is a way to communicate.

I think having a soft voice has its benefit, but working on what is it to get this sound out, I think is something that she could do, like completely in the privacy of her own home, and maybe this is the perfect time to do it when we're all, you know, literally always in the privacy of her own home, except when we have children staring at us while we're trying to go but working on um moving around a little bit like this is going to sound very like

acting school, but really it just works for absolutely everybody because we all have bodies. But you know, moving around and actually making your body kind of vibrate a little like like dancing or just like like bouncing a little bit on your on your toes and while while breathing and just doing like a ha sound, you'll end up with like U, which sounds crazy, but what it really is is saying like, oh, my body has other ways

of making sound come out of my mouth. Because it sounds like what she's talking about is just patterns, right, that she's habits that she's fallen into for completely understandable reasons. But what we can do in the privacy of our own home that we then can sort of build up to the confidence to do outside of our own home

is I have other options. I have other options. Let me just try them out, let me see how weird they feel, and sit with that weirdness and become more and more comfortable with that weirdness over time, which is again not to say that softness is bad, but just to say you have more options at your disposal, and soft really works in certain context and then not in other's. And you really want to be as absolutely straightforward as possible when you want to be you know, Carly has

another question, one more question. She says, sorry by the way that she has so many thoughts. Don't apologize, Carly, No, not at all. Oh my god. Eyes. So Carly's and her residency and she just finished her I See you rotation. She has a week off and then she's jumping into the COVID I see you. And so in the era of this coronavirus, we are all wearing masks at the hospital. This has really created some disconnect and communication, and it makes me wonder how much we rely on lip reading

to understand people. Additionally, it takes away a huge portion of facial expression, and I have found myself trying to use my eyes more dramatically to get my point across. There's a few things. One, yeah, masks, I mean, you know, the whole idea of um communication if we have all of our faculties, uh, is that we are thinking about matching, as it were, our body language, our tone of voice, and the content of what we're saying. We talked about

this a little bit in the John Knaffinger interview. The dream is that those things feel like they're in alignment, right, that what you're saying and how you're saying it and what your body is doing are all telling the same story. When we suddenly don't have the use of our mouths, our tone of voices is maybe really muffled, then you know, what we have is the content of what we're saying in our body language. So what she's talking about is like,

you know, using eyes a little bit more. Obviously that can feel a little crazy making, but to the extent that that works, yeah, I mean, compensating is what we're

talking about here. The other thing though, content wise, in a fast moving situation where there's like, you know, a lot of what we're all reading about that's happening on the floor of these you know, hospitals, obviously, just do what's absolutely necessary to get the information across, whether it's just about literally being louder to get through the mask or whatever. But if what we're talking about is these nuanced moments when she really wants to reach out to

another human and make them feel heard. I think it's a little bit of the consonant stuff that I was talking about before, mixed with actually using phrases that maybe you've practiced ahead of time, stuff like you know, you can't see my mouth right now, but if you could, you would know that, right. I mean, we can just come up with stuff to acknowledge the weirdness of this moment that then doesn't feel like should I say something or shouldn't I They don't know I'm smiling, they don't know.

You know, we can do what we can't, even if it's just to say I have a mask on, but if I didn't, you'd better understand what I'm trying to say, which is you know. Um. The other thing is all of us have experienced mask wearing at this point. It is so it is so weird feeling, right, but it

is something we can practice. I mean, like, even if we wanted to, like have a FaceTime date with our best friend and both wear masks for two minutes, I mean, not for longer than that, because you know, one of the dreams One of the benefits of actually doing FaceTime is that we're not sharing terms, but you know, literally that's it's kind of a ridiculous and delightful exercise to put a mask on for two minutes with your best friend and see, like, how do I communicate? We can

turn that into a good game. I mean, I'd be interested if anybody wanted to try it and let me know, like do you find what do you find about how much more eyes or eyebrows you use? Or do you not need to? Does it turn out you don't need to, because actually, you know, we are much better communicators than we think we are. You know, just see what happens and see what you're getting from the person that you're talking to as well as what you're getting from your

own you know, internal signals well. And I think also, Carly, that's such a thoughtful question. The fact that you're actually you care enough about your patients to want to make them feel grounded and heard and connect with them during this time. That alone, in itself is such a gift that you're giving to them and that you carry with

you and to remember that when you're going in. I mean, these are real difficult times and it's difficult to relay news to patients and to make them feel at ease during this time, and the fact that you're taking that into consideration is is really beautiful. And also if anyone out there wants to create some sort of clear mask, maybe that would be helpful. That's that's what we need to spend our money on right now. But it does also make me think of what you were just saying,

which is true, uh and beautiful. It makes me think of the body language component as well. I mean, I was talking about facial expression, but obviously our actual bodies. You know, we we can all do things to seem more open and to see more closed, and we all we we sort of know generally socially that like crossing our arms in front of our in front of our bodies is a bit of a closed off gesture. Also totally acceptable to do when you're feeling closed off or

when you want to protect yourself. So I am not saying there's anything wrong with it, but I am saying that, you know, an awareness of what we're doing with our body is another element in in communicating to people who you really want to get through too. A six ft lean in um Okay. Our next question is from Sally. Sally is a loud woman. I've always been called loud. I have professionally been shamed for being loud. I made

fun of for being loud. If anyone I consider a friend or family member calls me loud or tells me to pipe down, I get so sad and so frustrated. The kicker is that I'm really not that loud. I'm not yelling or shouting or even and straining my voice. This is my natural volume. But I've been shamed for it from my entire life. That's my vocal drama. God,

let's take a second for Sally. I hear you. I mean there's there's two different there's two different things going on here, and I don't know, you know, without knowing her better, which which it is, or maybe it's both. But first of all, I just want to acknowledge for everybody listening in, who's like, is that me? You know, A lot a lot of us are A lot of us, I should say, deal with what Carly was talking about in terms of being soft, but a lot of us

are the opposite. We've overcompensated or we've just compensated, and people have told us our whole lives that were too much, too big, too loud, right, all the things, and who knows, who knows if that's because we're actually filling up the space more than we need to, or that we are just not what you know. Historically society deems a good

woman to be. So for all of us who heard something in what Sally just said, you know, I just want to acknowledge that and that we're all, um, there's a lot of us, is what I want to say. I'm one of them. I'm one of you Seally. The other thing, though, is it sounds, from the way that she's written this like she really has a trigger around this, a completely understandable one. It sounds like it's been a lifelong thing. But I wonder if that stopped her from

actually exploring a little bit with curiosity. Why it is that people are saying that. Is it because the content of what you're saying is unpleasant, and you know what, people can fucking deal with it because you know you're

the boss. Or is it that you are pushing too much out, whether it's you know, content or emotion or just sound, but that feeling of pushing which may be pushing through these this sort of scar tissue of years and years and years and years of people saying this about you that that may very well just not literally not be helping you get what you want. So on the one hand, we can say you can embrace yourself

and who you are. On the other hand, we can say, if you're doing things that feel out of joint with the room that you're in, with the people you're talking to, it's not helping you. And so I wonder if there's a little gentleness you can have with yourself around exploring what it is to actually just fill the space, to actually just throw the ball of thought to the person you're talking to, and not harder than it needs to be thrown, and not filling the space louder than it

needs to be. And just wonder, you know, without short changing yourself or your ambitions or your heart. Uh, just wonder what else can I do here? What else can I do with all of the tools I have in my in my body to actually get myself heard? And then there's also this other side of it. There's something

about teaching the people in your life. If you're interested in doing this exploration, teaching the people in your life that you're interested in exploring it and getting real feedback from them and saying basically creating a sense of allies ship up, saying I'd love you to help me figure out how to communicate better with you, because then we're all on the same team. Because there's something in that letter that feels very much me versus the world, and I so hear that. I mean, I so hear that,

and my heart goes out to you. But I wonder if there's a reframe there where you can enroll people in your team to solve this problem. Well, you know, it actually brings me to a question that I have myself lately that keeps coming up. As I've mentioned, I have an almost four year old son, Jack, who is dynamic and wonderful and vibrant, and with that, he speaks very, very loud. He has an amazing vocabulary and he uses his voice with power, and I'm proud of him for it.

But it's loud, and quite often I find myself and my husband, but I feel it more so myself asking him to be quieter, to use his voice lower, because we live in an apartment, because we have neighbors. Because it's just sometimes annoying. It's and it's something that I

find um becoming a broken record about. And I feel like with all this talk and working on this show that I don't want to damage him or or make him feel smaller or you know, what I'm trying to do is ultimately just let him know that we can hear him, and he doesn't need to, you know, be screaming. I mean, you just solved it. That's exactly right. I think we can all, whether it's to our children or or to other people in our lives, we can find

a way to reframe your being too loud. I mean, I wish people did that in Sally's life, because that's obviously not a helpful you know note that she keeps getting if they can reframe it in terms if we as parents in this case, can reframe it in terms of I can hear you. I'm listening, So if you're talking at a volume that really hits me but isn't too big, I can really hear you. When it gets too small or too big, I'm not able to hear it as well. I'm always thinking. I mean, I have

a five year old and almost five year old. I'm always thinking in terms of like setting him up for success in using me as a model for like what other people in life will be like to him. So I'm always saying, like, how you that's so, that's what you want? How would you go about getting what you want? Which is another way of saying please, say please? Right, But but think helping him think in terms of the sort of logic of it rather than just the roat

nous of it. So I think there might be something there. I don't know if it will work, you know, but something in terms of you're talking at a volume right now, that's not necessary if you're talking to me. If you're just wanting to make sound, that's cool. Maybe we should

go outside for a little while. Like I can tell you've got a lot of energy to burn off, but if you're trying to communicate to me, uh, you can actually do it a lot quieter and then actually modeling as well, you know, we can model like I've done a lot of Like I mean, this will probably work on the mike because this mike is so good that I borrowed from my heart. But I do a lot of like can you hear me? Now? Can you still

hear me? If you can hear me, then you don't have to talk that much louder than this, right, or even just like a little bit of a little bit of breath and vibration behind it, but really just showing it. And then it becomes game. You know, games, games are sometimes the solution and saying like can you match this this volume and as you said, and really want to

emphasize this for my own child. Uh, We're not in the business of telling our kids to play small, but we are in the business of helping them understand that there are options, that their first way is not necessarily their best way, and that reading a room is a

skill that they can work on even now. And you know, if they're in a quiet space with us, using only the energy necessary to get their point across and no lesson, no more is good communication, which is like a skill for life, it will help them get what they want from us, from whoever they interact with in the future. Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more.

And we're back cats, Who do we have next? So this is our next question from don I do have a question related to the use of my voice in my job. I am a fundraiser, for a symphony orchestra, and I'm in my early twenties. Getting one point two million involves a lot of talking and meeting with folks who are three to four times my age. But to be successful in fundraising, they have to one like me and to connect with me, and then three somehow view

me as a peer. Nobody wants to feel like they're donating a couple of grand and the person asking could be their grandchild. So there's like a lot going on there. But where it really comes to a head is when somebody is complaining and angry. What are your tips for tone and inflection where I can be firm with a lot of old as men and not lose my sense of self authenticity in dealing with them. Thanks in advance,

and stay healthy, strength and warmth. You know, we talked about this and the John F Finger one as well. It's so important for especially young women to realize that we can be as strong as we want to be if we're also investing in how much we care about the people were talking to write when when strang um doesn't work so well. I mean, these are obviously huge generalizations and and everybody has to put their own, you know, cultural stamp on it, which is a much longer conversation.

I'm happy to have it another time. But generally speaking, we can be firm. We can say no, that's not how it is, or I need you to listen to me. If we also add to it an element of I care about you and I want to make sure this works out okay for both of us. I sometimes call the strength and warmth. It's not a dichotomy. It's just like two completely different things that both can work at the same time as each other, or or an opposition.

I think of those two things for women, especially um it may be more helpful to think of it as not strong and warm, but assured and assuring. So when we're assured right, we can invest ahead of time, maybe before having a difficult conversation. We can invest in thinking about the ways in which we trust ourselves. I did

that one thing so well. I have this person who makes me feel great, right, all of those things that we really can This is not the same as like an affirmation into the mirror, where we're like looking into our eyes and saying I'm so great, I can do it. You know. Sometimes those works. Sometimes those make us feel more like a fraud. Right, It's not about saying like I'm the greatest. It's about really thinking about, like that time when that person said that, or that letter I

kept because it made me feel great about myself. I can just go back to that in my mind or literally read it and let those feelings take over. Right. We there's this there's this um this idea of code switching.

I've talked about a little bit on this show. It's it's a term that's used a lot in the African American community to talk about the ways that people have been systematically taught that they're sort of a white, white way to talk quote unquote, a white way to talk for job interviews, and then there's you know, a different way to talk at home so that people don't accuse you of putting on errors. There's a lot of complicated stuff in that, but the reality is that on a

linguistic level, code switching is something everybody does. It's a way of describing the way that we talked to the briest at Starbucks versus the way we talked to our mom versus the way we talked to a friend who just had a terrible tragedy. We all know how to sort of switch gears and reflect the you know, person we're talking to and the tone that that that is required in order to get what we want in that situation, whether what we want is you know, a latte or

to make them feel better. And if we invest I think, if we invest in thinking a little bit before a difficult conversation in um, God, that person makes you feel great, or that letter I got or that comment that I got, or looking at my dog's face or whatever it is makes me makes me connect with me, we can like kind of a little bit code switch that version of ourselves in to these conversations it seem a little difficult and might seem a little more antagonistic, so that we

can work on that thing I talked about with uh Sally, a little bit of of um enrolling them into our team. If somebody's mad at us, it's not necessarily the easiest thing to say, I hear you, and we're going to solve this together. But it does seem like that's probably where the solution will lie in terms of the age thing. I don't know how much that's projecting versus real, but I wonder if it will be more helpful for her

to reframe it as people love grandchildren. Right. So if yes, there is obviously an element of like, are you gonna take seriously a young woman on the phone who's asking for a lot of money? But I think you can bring in the assured in the assuring. The assuring half of it is saying I don't worry, it's going to be great, right. The assured is I know what I'm talking about. The assuring is I've got you, And you know, I think that kind of cuts across age. And if

it doesn't, then you're dealing with an asshole. And I'm so sorry, but you know, try to get as much money as you can out of him. You are the future. That's right, that's right. In fact, I will say this also, I have a friend who's in her twenties started a really, really awesome organization for young people, and she told me, I just feel like I'm too young. People are no

one's going to take me seriously. And I was like, you know, considering that what you're starting to do is actually create a network for people your own age and talk to older people about trying to you know, sponsor that sort of thing, I was so overwhelmed by the fact that she took her greatest strength, which is that she is a true representative of that generation, and saw it as a weakness. And I think there's a lesson in that for all of us. All Right, we got

a question from leanne Um. I feel like my speaking voice can be scratchy. It's not smooth with enough breath. I think it's nerves and stress. I think that I can sound good, but not always when I want to. I recorded a series of greeting on our organization's new phone system, and I really don't like how they sound. That's the scoop. Any tips, any tips there? It is very valuable, especially if you're doing a recording of your voice.

Uh to um not feel like you're sort of only thinking about your own voice and and um sort of like hovering outside yourself, lost in time and space, but rather who you're talking to. As soon as we're actually connected to who we're talking to and why we're telling them this information, we we all we all get better. So that is part of it, right too, That is part of it. Another part of it is breathing. Another part of it. I was thinking about this with an

earlier question. Um, but I'll say it here because it's valuable for her as well. You know, part of when our voice sounds scratchy. I mean, I will say some of that is, honestly just that the damage stuff that Dr Gupta was talking about. Like some of it's just inevitable from overuse, from yelling, from going out and partying whatever,

so you know, give ourselves a little break. But some of it is a combination of what I was talking about earlier, with not breathing enough, combined with there are two main places that we resonate in order to make sound come out of us. And you know, go with me on this. Basically, there's an opening between the um bones in our face called our mask resonance. It's below our eyes. Uh. Maybe I'll post a little picture of this um next to our knows that you can feel it.

I'm I'm putting my fingers on it right now, my my, my first two fingers. Uh. And it's a soft area and when you massage it, you can you often end up needing to blow your nose afterwards. So massaging this area with maybe a hum sound, uh, will open up this area. It worked, truly, I like already feel a difference. Um It's just a way to remind our body to vibrate in that area. And then you can also just put your fingers there and just feel, is am I vibrating? Um? Right? Uh?

Mask resonance it helps with our penniness. Pinkiness is just a word that some of us used to just mean like that that that really present forward sound. The other place that we vibrate is our chest, our chest resonance, and that you can put your hand on your chest right now and talk, Hi, my name is and see if you vibrate and stereo. Typically, UM, women have more

mask resonans and men have more chest resonance. Uh. The dream scenario is a is a perfect blend of the two, so that all sort of like all the parts of our body that can vibrate when we talk are all vibrating, and literally those sound waves are are leaving our body and landing on the people that we want to be talking to. UM. And what's interesting about it is that if we really do have too much mask resonance and not enough chest resonance. UM, here's my here's my example.

If we don't have enough chest resonance, we do sound pingy, We sound very forward and present and present is good, but we do tend to have this sound where we sort of cut ourselves off from our sense of power. We're often not breathing. It's a good solution for not you know, taking up any space in the world. We're just right here. The opposite, and again, stereotypically this is this is a male thing. But you know, obviously many

people are outliers for either of these. But if you don't have any mass resonance and your only chest resonance, you feel a little bit underwater. People don't quite know why you don't seem present, but you don't seem present. So ideally you have a blend of the two. That may be something that would be useful for her to practice before the next time that, you know, she has

to speak in front of people or on recording. And there are some sort of simple exercises that mostly have to do with kind of jumping around and dancing and just like breathing at the same time and making sounds happen. There's basically only three things you need to do ever

to warm yourself up vocally, three categories. The first one is to get yourself breathing, whether that is running around the block or you know, dancing to Beyonce or lying on your back on the floor and actually just trying to get your um body to sort of relax and and you know, actually use itself well about it then kind of get tight um. Then then the second thing

is connecting breath to sound. So whether that's often that's like if you are lying down on the ground, then you start to get up, you start to roll yourself up, you start to move your body a little bit, huh. And then the final thing is articulators. That's your lips, your teeth, your tongue, your jaw. Just seeing, liked, I have some jaw attention? Okay, yeah, I'm a human, so I have show attention and seeing does your tongue have some tightness? Right? You can pull your tongue out. Some

people even like to hold onto their tongue. Some people hate that totally fine other way. But if you hold onto your tongue and try to count to ten, none them right, you really realize that all those that your tongue is a huge muscle. It goes down to your neck and uh, and often it's it's really tightened the back and loosening that up gives you so much more flexibility and you know, ability to communicate with all of

your tools at your disposal. So that's really it breathing into connecting it to sound, which can help with this mask in this chest resonance stuff if you're just moving around and vibrating a little bit, and you know, you can even tarzan uh all right, really getting sound into these places that sometimes it's just stuck and hasn't gone into for a while, and then connecting that with you know, abc D E right, So any of that stuff is going to put her in a better position than just

not doing that stuff. You know, that's for all of us. This brings me to my next question from Karen. She says, how should we respond when a male coworker or supervisor treats us in a sexiest way but is either unaware or is choosing to be unaware of their actions. How should we coach our male coworkers on their problematic jargon? Yeah, girl,

I hear you know. I mean, this is obviously a collective thing, and it's a bummer that, you know, it feels like an individual thing because you know, those of us who are alone in offices with people who don't look or sound like us. UM, you know, inevitably half like added on s on us to solve the problem or to suck it up, And that's a bummer, UM, if you're interested in really solving it, which you don't have to be, you know, I mean, you can also just like suck it up or leave the job or

or you know, have a closet to scream in. But if you get to the point where you really are committed to doing something, UM, you know, everybody's office is different. If you have an ally who you know fits the description you're you're talking about, that's obviously the first person to talk to to get feedback from them on how

to talk to the others. UM. But the main thing is, you know, Shaunta told such an amazing story about a woman who said something sort of accidentally racist, and it was Shaunta's decision whether or not to call that out UM. And I think, you know, listen back to her episode to see how she dealt with it. But I think this strength and warmth thing really works in this context

as well. Assured and assuring right finding UM an opportunity you know, to be very clear to say, like I'm going to I would like to gather a few of us together to talk about something that's really been making my workspace feel less productive for me, which you know obviously frames it like this is about work, and this is about all of us getting on the same page about how to make something the productive it can be, and then saying you may very well not be aware

of it. And I'm you know, sort of like pleased for you that no one else has ever had to tell you this, that it must be nice, but um, there are certain ways that you're interacting with me that makes me feel like I can't bring my full self into the space, And if you're interested in what those are, I'd really like to tell you about them so that you can, you know, think about ways to make some changes.

And then you know, you're appealing to people's like best selves, and if they're not interested in bringing their best selves to the table, you know, it's a it's a longer term process. And you know, the other thing I'll say is that conversation will go better if you've done all

the other things I've talked about today. I guess beforehand, if you've danced it out, if you've worked on your breathing, if you've worked on speaking from a you know, in a way where it feels like the content and the body language and the tone of voice are all in alignment, because God, it's hard to have a difficult conversation, and especially in a work context because obviously, you know, there's certain intimacies and then certain elements of mistrust or of

just lack of you know, being on the same page with people, and there's an element of, you know, my livelihood is at stake. So what you're saying is don't call them a sexist asshole. You can do that part to your friends as you're processing what you should say, you know, or you can, I mean whatever, like try that. I don't know. I mean, like really the point of use your voice to get what you want is like

literally what works? I don't I'm not really interested in in what sounds like it would be flowery but won't work. You know, Like that's fine, try it out, go for you know, call people whatever you want. You know, I guess, But the reality is if what we're really trying to get what we want, then we're trying to be heard. And you know, there's all kinds of common ground lessons online you can look up like how to build common ground. Often it's about said the ground rules of we're all

trying for the same thing. You know, your intention is to you know, your the random do that you work with. Your intention is to get this project done as efficiently and as you know, easily as possible. That's my intention too, So that it's not you know, you're a bad person, because look, so many of the dudes in our lives who are not as evolved as we'd like them to be are just products of their own ship right there, products of the same societal stuff we've had to deal with.

So you know, yeah, it might be satisfying to call them out and say you're a sexy stasshole, but it probably will be more useful to say, I bet you want this to be as productive as possible. Me too. You know, here's something we could work on together, right, And I think that creates long term change instead of an immediate reactive response. And I will say also to bring it back to the Shanta story I started with.

You know, the book White Fragility, which everybody who's not a person of color should read, is really valuable for holding up a mirror to the ways in which we all get fragile when called on our stuff. And I bet that there's a sort of a sideways way into talking to the sexist people in your life by reading that book and thinking about the ways that we can all, um, you know, sort of communicate in a way that doesn't just ryle defensiveness right away, And with that, we're going

to jump to a quick break. We'll be back in just a minute. So we're back. This is a question from Nicole. She says, how do you deal with imposter syndrome? I was at a conference once and the woman who is the president, former president of Princeton University, who's the first woman president of any Ivy League school. She's like a decorated biologist, amazing woman. She raised like multiple billions

of dollars for Princeton during her time there. Um was asked when she felt like she was enough, and it was on this stage in front of three thousand women at a luncheon where we were all sitting at like circular tables, and she her answer was this. She literally took the longest pause in the history of the world, and it was like the penny just dropped for all

of us. We were in these circular tables looking at each other across the table going oh, this is just a thing, and it's I've read it's not even just a woman thing, you know. I think there's something so freeing about the fact that imposter syndrome is as universal as it is. And the you know, the more we're doing something challenging, the more we whatever it comes up for us and we think we're not worthy of that place. And to just hear that that voice and say, oh, hi, hi, hi,

you know, I hear you, I see you. I'm not going to believe you, you know. And it doesn't necessarily solve it in the moment, but it does allow us to begin to have a relationship with that voice that isn't antagonistic, that's just saying, oh, you're probably trying to protect me, you know. Anyway, that's my feeling about imposter syndrome. This question is from Michelle. I like this question a lot.

I like all these questions, but this is great when the show must go on and you're entering a space where you have to speak to a large crowd, or maybe have a weird, awkward conversation with a boss or a co worker, or go on stage to perform your stand up routine, but you have massive anxiety, or you're coming out of a conversation or a moment where the brain space that you're in is not in your calmst

most ideal space. How do you change your state so that you can deliver your message clearly and effectively the

moment before anything that's really high stakes. It's so valuable to take a second alone, to meditate for a second if you'd like to breathe um with no thoughts, but then to also have some really deliberate ones to think about the people who bring you so much joy, to think about what makes you feel more confident, not less, and to also do something with your body, you know, whether it's listening to you know, your favorite empowered woman's singer.

I actually I was thinking about this. I would love for people to send in what their favorite music is right now, and maybe we can make like a Spotify playlist of people's favorites, like, um, you know, as you're going onto the stage, like what's your you know, theme song, and it can keep changing whatever, but um, you know, dancing around a little bit like loosening up. I mean this can't not sound sexual, but loosening up your hips,

a little loosening up the space under your arms. When we're really uncomfortable, we often sort of, uh, you know, pin our elbows to the sides of our bodies if we create a little space there. What we're really trying to do is um the word trick came to mind.

It's not quite as manipulative as that, but trick our bodies into remembering that open is just as much of an option as closed, and closed feels like a you know, a go to place when we're scared, but open as a go to place when we're when we um, when we really want to show our hearts. And the gamble that I think many of us um can work our

way into taking. Whether it's a difficult conversation with one person or you know, a complicated talk in front of thousands, the gamble is, is that more open version of me, with that my heart revealed, going to get what I want more? And the answer is probably yes, because probably what you want is for people to you know, really hear you, whether it's about your product or about yourself

or about them. So know, what can we do in that moment before where we're feeling all that anxiety to just get our body to actually do some like opening stuff. I mean this is also where like the Amy Cutty power pose comes into play, Like, yeah, it's pretty delightful to put your hands on your hips and try to be wonder woman. But that's also just a thing that opens up that exact space I was just talking about between your body and your you know, under arms, like

just finding a way to go. Ah, I will reveal myself instead of conceal myself, or I will be open instead of closed. And we can do that with all the parts of our body, and we can do that with our fingers. We can do when we get when we get really anxious, everything closes up. So you know, on a physical level as well as a mental level, we can think about opening. That's all it really is. And the other thing is a little bit of nervous is okay we've all heard at this point, Like you know,

you can reframe nervous to be excited. Sometimes that works, you know. But also just know that we live in a society that is often telling us it's for to care less. And I'm really interested in changing that, you know, changing our mindset around that because we love to see people care, we do it. We'll all lean in when we see that someone cares. And nerves is another way of saying I care. We can be nervous about something that matters to us. We don't have to apologize for it.

I mean, I've I've definitely heard a lot of speeches that start with I'm so nervous. I don't know if it actually helps to say I'm so nervous, or to say who, I'm excited to be here, like everyone knows what that means. It means like, wow, I got lots of big feelings in my body. We can totally embrace I got lots of big feelings in my body. Hi, Hi, Hi everybody. Um. And then and then the other thing is, you know, if this is if we are talking about a talk, then uh, something that I love to remind

people of. Um, you know, obviously different for different contexts, but if there's any way that you can make the first thing that happens in your talk be a way of engaging your audience, asking them a question, asking for a show of hands, or for applause, or for you know, odds, if you know who's here because you know who just read about blah, blah blah, just getting everybody to be in the same room together and to know that like we're all sharing a space, we're all breathing together, and

we're all, you know, part of what's about to happen. We'll also calm our nerves because then it's less about us and more about them. I took this amazing online class from a woman I'm going to have on the pot at some point called Feminist Business School. And the first rule of Feminist Business school is you have a body. There's so much to be said there, but I just

remind myself of that a comical amount of times. You know, I think all of us have the ability to accidentally live too much in our heads and to try to sort of think our way out of stuff. And often our body has way more wisdom than we give it credit for, and we don't have to think we can like feel our way out of stuff. You know. We got some great questions that I think we can kind of jam through. Here a Samarrow speed round if you will. Okay, so this is from Brandon. How do you know so

many different dialects? Have you traveled a lot or something? Um? So, the secret with being a dialect coach is that you learn every accent as you go. It is not about keeping a billion of them in my head at once. It's about, um, knowing what the project in front of me requires and then doing like a little bit of

delightfully nerdy research. You know. I did a project most recently before everything got shut down for coronavirus, where I was working with two actors who were not from the US on a nineteen fifties North Carolina African American vernacular accent from two people who were educated and ambitious but living on a farmhouse. So that's not like, oh I got that one in my back pocket, you know, I

mean on purpose. The derive, the derive, the whole really, the whole idea of our voice reflects our life experience. Is that every single person, and this goes for all of us, every single person sounds different from every other person. And that's you know, really liberating. Especially I have to say when I work with actors for whom English is their second language, or who are British working on an American accent, which you know is the other other half

of of of the dialect work. Um, you know, if there's not one right way to speak, American English. We all know this because we don't sound exactly like our parents, and we don't sound exactly like our best friend. And that is fine, it's cool. I mean, it's revealing of how much we are all you know, globalized in terms of what we're seeing on our on YouTube, if not you know, traveling ourselves, certainly not traveling right now. Um. But yeah, so it is about breaking down all the

sounds of a native speaker. I find that seems like it's really telling the right story for the project at hand and breaking down those sounds using something called the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is delightfully useful and a bit of a secret code. I think that you actually one time wrote my name out in this way or sounded my name out in this way. Maybe that's something we can share. What's really cool about I P a international alphabet, not the beer beers great too? Uh? Is that? Um

it takes all the guests work out. So you know, there's twenty six letters in English. But if you look at the letter A in a word you don't know, say, um, it literally could be a like apple, all, like father, a like long a. It could be about or it could be all like, all, how cute. That's five different sounds with one symbol. So International Phonetic Alphabet solves that by having five different symbols. So it's really annoying to learn.

But once you know it, you can break down every single you know, sound word phrase in this UM secret code, and you know it's share able across cultures and linguists learn it. Dialect coaches learn it, a lot of actors learn it. UM you know, opera singers. I guess I'm uh speech pathologists. That's another place that UM International Phonetic Alphabet comes in handy and it's so cool. I mean, yeah, there's a learning curve, but so is like learning music

and then you can play music. Okay, Next question from Leslie do you have a mom voice and if so, what is it and why? And do you have any tips on how to speak with your children in a clear and gentle manner but also stand in your power when times get wild, especially in these days. Well, I did talk about a lot of that before, UM, but what can I add? I try as hard as possible to make my mom voice and my not mom voice match. I really have a physical discomfort with UM talking to

kids in a voice that feels really young. Uh, there's something biological, like they're like, there are studies that show that across cultures people talk to babies in the same way, and our voice goes up and we make you know, a little little cute sing songy sounds, so like whatever. I do not mean to demonize any of that, but when we're at the point where we're trying to communicate with them, like people, I think it's really valuable to not just ask them to speak in their strong voice,

but to use our strong voice back to them. And you know, I use the strong voice quote unquote because that was, you know, something that I picked up along the way. Now I should probably call the strong and warm voice. Right, So let's bring us to our next question, which has to do it children, which has to do with Gavin's question, do you think that birth order plays a role in the way that we speak and use

our voice? Now? Am I not? Totally? It's the same thing as part of the I should I should add that to my list of stuff I rattle off when I say that, you know, your voice is a reflection of your life experience. Of course, how did you need to get hurt when you were a kid, Literally, what did you need to do to get hurt if you're an only child? The answer is just different, you know. Next question Tomorrow's best opening lines for dating apps like Bumble,

where the woman messages first, Oh, I like that. I just love I just love that. I'm like, suddenly the expert in this is. But I will say I met my husband online dating, so um, I'll take it. I'm clearly an expert. Um. I think that I would love to get feedback from people who are on those dating apps right now to see what feels really empowering when

you post an opening. But um, I know that what worked for me, and that feels like it's very much like in keeping with my my ethos when it comes to all this other stuff is I would state my intention and also leave it very open ended. I would say something like, you seem really great, check out my you know whatever, my stuff, and tell me if you agree. So that you're you are being vulnerable up talk. You're saying I'm interested, but you're also saying, hey, you know,

take a look at me. If you're not interested in me whatever, I've moved on already. So there's a nice sort of give and take of being vulnerable, but not so vulnerable that you feel like you've given all your power away. And I think that's the whole idea with um. You know, for steps of a dating app is to say I'm I'm open, but I'm not so open you

can walk all over me. Permission to online date, I say, go for it, but not permission to like, you know, let it come to fruition quite quite yet, UM, So like, maybe don't make your opening so good that you know you break your your your social isolation. UM. Truly, I love these questions. I love that people are thinking about

their vocal drama. Obviously there's a possibility I did not solve every single person's problem UM with this, But I also I mentioned that not to apologize, but to say that, UM, even having a space to talk about this stuff to sort of um validate that this stuff is real, I think is very is very valuable because a lot of us just worried that we're the only person who's ever wondered about our voice and its power. So you are not.

I am thinking about it all day every day. UM No, but but truly, UM, I'm thrilled to have you guys on this journey with me and Cat. I'm thrilled to have had you. Um I want to say in my studio, but obviously um only in my in my mind. Thank you for joining me for this in your zoom chat. Yeah yeah, you zoomed with me so hard. Well, thank you for having me, and thank you. Yes to all of our listeners, please keep your questions coming, they're so relevant.

You're in this together. We're all in this together, and this is a space where we're creating a real community around our voice and how we sound and standing in our power. And it's important more than ever or to to feel connected and heard and we hear you and we we see you. And thank you tomorrow for being such a great voice and for sharing all your tips

my pleasure. I feel like you know what this what this, what this time has really felt like for me is a reminder, especially when some of our nations leaders are making so little sense and are so untrustworthy. It's really been like such a lesson in how leadership just is

not about the title you have. It's about what you're doing with your you know, communication, who you're bringing along with you, what information you're getting out there for other people and you know, just too for all of us to feel like Um, whether it's because of crisis or not, no matter who we are, we all get to say I can be of use to somebody, and I can be of used to myself by being of use to somebody.

And whether we're doing that on Zoom or on you know, I G t V or whatever right now, to the people in our own lives and our in our small spaces, Um, I just want everybody to feel like we have your back. We have your back, and what I love about some are all of your comments are built upon kindness, and that right now is so important to stay kind. So stay kind, stay healthy, stay sane. Permission to Speak Who, Thank you to everybody who sent in questions, and thank

you all for listening. I'm throwing a bunch of stuff we referenced in the show notes this week, and as always, check us out at Permission to Speak Pot on Instagram or at Permission to Speak pot dot com to submit questions for a future mail bag episode, or to submit good quotes for the opening, or just to tell me what you're feeling. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichtman and the team at I Heart Radio My family and cohort

and all of you. We're recording this podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land that used to belong to the Tongva indigenous tribe, and you can visit us d A C dot us to learn more about honoring native land. Permission to Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Vision, Executive produced by Katherine Burke

Canton and Mark Canton. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, listen on the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows, Jack, Mommy and Daddy. You're reporting, Oh hell well,