Alexa: Happy New Year! The Singing Teachers Talk podcast is kicking off 2025 with the return of manual therapist Walt Fritz. Walt first came on to the podcast for episode 74, where we discussed how his approach to manual therapy had become influenced by the biopsychosocial model and the shared decision making between clinician and patient.
Today we expand on that, understanding how we can help someone to improve their awareness of a particular anatomical landmark, giving focus to the tongue in particular. Walt helps us to understand what we might actually be doing when we're engaging the tongue in stretch or exercise, and he takes us through a couple of those exercises too, with questions that might be useful to ask and considerations we might want to make.
So strap in for another year of the Singing Teachers Talk podcast, and we can't wait to meet with you every week.
Walt [00:01:00] Fritz, you are helping us kick off the new year here at the Singing Teachers Talk podcast, so thank you for coming on again. Thinking about the future, what does 2025 have in store for you so far?
Walt: Oh my goodness, well, you gave me this list of questions and you started off with a question that wasn't even on there.
Um, no problem. , 2025, gosh, , I have a lot of sort of internal goals for myself. I was able to publish a book, early 2023, it came out and I have strong plans to reissue that book with a lot of really good updates. Um, that's, that's one of my personal goals for this year. , I also want to update some of my online courses and just, you know, the last year for me has been really exciting. I'm kind of known for manual therapy, a certain version of manual therapy for voice and spelling disorders. But as I've been teaching this class, the classes that I teach around the world, which really come upon some really interesting, exciting, , sort of side [00:02:00] views of how touch can be impactful, including from that exercise perspective. And I know that's what, , you slotted in for us to talk about today, but that's really, it's really one of my passions to really just explore how this mushroom can grow, uh, how touch can be impactful, whether it's touch from a manual therapy perspective or touch from the perspective of awareness and knowledge that, you know, maybe your voice, , your voice coaching or voice teaching community can avail themselves of. So, um, yeah, that's some of my goals for the year.
Alexa: And what's the book called? So we can keep our eyes out for that.
Walt: I've not named it yet. So, , in, you know, sort of a half joking, half serious fashion, it seminars throughout the last couple years, I've joked that the name of my next book is Humans Are Wonky, and I may need to be to somehow stick to that, at least as a , title or subtitle. The humans are wonky as a reference to. You know, theoretically, so many clinicians and [00:03:00] professionals have this view of the human body as an ordered structure. That somehow everything should be in this theoretical alignment, whether it's a physical alignment or this metaphorical alignment that if we can only get posture perfect, technique ideal, then life would be wonderful.
But the human being is really a very unordered unstructured type of a concept and every person being unique and I use this human just wonky more of as a metaphor to say, we think that everything should be stacked perfectly, whether it's the posture or the technique, but it's never going to happen. And sure we can work toward it. I think sometimes , we spend so much time holding the carrot out in front of the horse, trying to get it to walk towards order, , to balance, to idealism, that we miss opportunities in the meantime, that okay, we'd like to get this human being stacked lovely and everything ideal. And, um, but what about the meantime? I think that's where [00:04:00] our work comes in.
Alexa: In the last two and a half years, how have your thoughts on your work and the approach changed still, or how has it solidified in that camp?
Walt: Yeah, I think there, there is change in terms of evolution towards being more, um, convinced that shared decision making should be a part of what we do, period. And I don't care whether you're a physical therapist or a speech pathologist or a voice teacher. , I do think shared decision making is, , the optimal setting , for learning and for pedagogy, et cetera. , I did a podcast last year with, um, , I'm sorry, I can't remember, , voice coach. , and I do, I truly apologize for not remembering her name. Kari Ragan, there it is. , where we talked about that, how shared decision making, , In my mind puts me at an equal level at my patients.
Yeah, I bring in this wealth of experience and education, et cetera. But they bring in this wealth of lived experience, their own unique view on life. And Kari and I were talking a bit that, , in voice coaching, voice [00:05:00] teaching, there is the set, the sense of in a pedagogy, pedagogical model that the teacher is viewed as the expert and there's aspects of that we don't want to diminish and that's certainly true in a clinical model that i'm a part of but on the other hand Yeah, you know, I do have education.
I do have experience. They come to me and you and us for help and look up to us for that. And , it's sort of this delicate balance of not diminishing yourself in the eyes of the person who is paying you money to learn from, but then the recognition that, Each person comes to us with a unique past and present that we don't want to diminish at all.
And I think , that's a real fine line that we need to play. How do we maintain our sense of expertise without looking too much as an expert who should be followed no matter what? , and , I really looked at that and thought about that a lot, that I do want to be viewed as that expert. But I also don't want to [00:06:00] trample on my patients views that they have importance bringing their story into my room, right? So in a lot of ways, , I, in most ways, I've not at all diminished or moved away from it biopsychosocial model or shared decision making or, , patient driven model at all. In fact, I think it's just being driven home. ,, , two days ago, I was invited to teach a, , a module to a massage school that's very close to where I live here in upstate New York, all about shared decision making.
As in the massage world, shared decision making is , very uncommon. People see themselves as expert, whether it's massage or physical therapy or speech pathology or possibly voice teaching. And, um, in all our continued education, all our further education only elevates us to that sense of being an expert.
And while I recognize that as part of our world, I think it really, I think it sometimes puts us in an ego driven place where we forget about the fact that we don't know everything about this human being that we're [00:07:00] working with. So, , yeah, Alexa, I don't think I've at all come down from that pedestal of needing to see shared decision making in the biopsychosocial model as a necessary condition for the work that we do.
Alexa: In that shared decision making, you help your patients to bring them into the feel of an experience and that can help them develop this idea of their own self awareness so they can trust their own sensations.
What sort of language have you come across from the people that you've worked with describing their experiences of fatigue or tension or pain and then how do you interpret that to offer an exercise?
Walt: Yeah, so this has kind of been my M. O. , in my teaching as well as working with patients here in my clinic is the language is really important, but it's also important not to have a structure to the language or, um, to, here's the word that I use because that word may not at all resonate with you, my client, , what I would try to get you to do is if you came into [00:08:00] me with something that you knew, Or someone else, whether that someone else is an actual physical person or it's Dr. Google, Dr. Google says, , you've got tongue tension, right? Well, , those are really abstract concepts, even though , we use those phrases, tongue fatigue, tongue tension, we use it as if it's a, if it's a definable thing, but I want to know from you, Alexa, , what is your tongue tension feel like? , and that's where we would go into some role playing. Um, maybe I'd actually have you sing or speak or imagine yourself at the end of a performance. What does it feel like to you? , when you feel that fatigue and it could be a very physical feeling, , it could be pain. , it could be a sense of weakness, it could be a sharpness, it could be a more ill-defined type of concept.
It could be more of a psychosocial, concept. , I feel defeated when my tongue feels fatigued. I want, I wanna role play and play with this back and forth until you can come up with not just a word , or a phrase for it. [00:09:00] But to have a sense of the feeling inside of you so that when we start our work, whether it's my work with manual therapy or self express self stretching so that you have a clear concept of here, what that feeling like is here because my work is all about connecting you with that.
And some people think, well, does that mean you want to replicate it? It might be. , I use a concept of continuum of relevance. The continuum was, , we really bring that let's stick with tongue tension. We really bring that sense of tension to your awareness, not to make it worse, not to make you hurt, but to do something with you, and whether it's hands on or hands off, where you can say, yeah, that's that feeling right there. Or continuum of relevance could be totally the opposite. You're in a state of tension And we do something where you say, wow, that, , that really makes it feel better or different. I call that the continuum.
I want to see if we can bring you into an awareness state where you say, yeah, whatever we're doing right now, I feel like we're [00:10:00] connecting with that because by connecting, we create that link where it's not just about what we're doing out here in the periphery, which is how manual therapies and stretching are often thought of your tongue's too short, your tongue's too tight. We need to manually stretch it and make it longer. Which is, it's just such a seductive, simple type of concept. But there's really no evidence to show we're actually changing the tissue at that histological level. Are we changing its true resting length? Probably not. We're changing other factors. We're changing pain, fatigue, tension. But we're also, I think, changing awareness perspectives. Alright, um, I don't know whether I completely danced around your question in terms of the language or not, but the language I used to use the word familiar. Is that familiar to you? Is it relatable? Is it something that you've noticed at the end of a performance? Is it something that holds you back? I need to be a really good linguist in order to [00:11:00] get that sense of the physical or the emotional, the psychological manifestation that you come to me for, to something that up here cognitively makes some sense to you.
Alexa: You've got a video on your YouTube channel from a recent visit that you made to Edinburgh and you'd worked with a particular person and you ask him a question along the lines of, so how do you know when that intervention has worked for you? So in the same vein, how do we know when we've improved? our sense of awareness or connection to a particular anatomical landmark.
Walt: Improvement is as much objective as subjective. In my health care profession, all of our changes are supposed to be objective. They're supposed to be measurable, right? So we've come up, we've copped together a lot of these objective. tools, whether me as a physical therapist or a speech pathologist doing, , time based work, et cetera.
, . But a lot of my, a lot of my goal setting [00:12:00] should be based , on your lived experience, your problem set, your problem base. And we need to figure out , how are you going to measure this, Alexa?
And that's where I start off with benchmarks. I say, tell me about this. When does it manifest? How does it limit you? How does it affect the quality of your life? Which is so much more than the word tongue tension. Right? How does tension keep you from being the singer that you want to be, that you'd like to be? How did it feel? Did it feel like we made some change? , that short video that you talked about was a real, um, it was an impromptu opportunity during one of the labs demos we were doing with the gentleman who agreed to allow me to, , place him on YouTube with that video, because it was very, I thought it was really poignant how he was able to express how the work we did through through hands on work, right, whether it's the stretching, but also then that exercise component, that it took him to a place where he felt that changes were more definable than some of the [00:13:00] more, , traditional exercises that one might do for tongue weakness, tongue training, tongue strengthening, et cetera, et cetera. . Also, I sort of slapped him down once, not physically, but I asked him a question and he started answering me, , like a clinician. And I said, no, no, no, stop for a second. How does it feel? How do you feel? I can't quite remember the wording, but I asked him to sort of reframe his response into that , as the person with the tongue issue, right?
. I started noticing this like A wall that especially healthcare professionals put up between, um, manual therapy, massage, whatever you want to call it, right, , and exercise that it's, it's as if they're seen as two completely different problems they're addressing and completely different people.
Two complete different interventions that they're addressing. But through all my career as a physical therapist, I've noticed, and I've been strongly influenced by manual therapy since the early nineties. Not that I don't believe in exercise. Um, we incorporate a lot of exercise in, in our practice, in my [00:14:00] practice here.
It's just not that traditional physio gym type of a workout, you know, we'll do a lot of functional exercises. Um, the wall between, well, you're too short, you're too tight, or you're too weak. Um, there seems just this complete different language and mindset. But as I've been working over the decades I've been using as a physical therapist, I've noticed a lot of times when we do manual therapy, when we do stretching, we often get an improvement in function.
Function, whether it's function abilities, um, function when it comes to the fineness of articulation, or sometimes , even actual measurable demonstrable strength changes when we do stretching, so to speak. And that's been a real fun thing for me to explore over the years, and there's not a lot of literature, , on this out there right now that really talks about that overlap with it. But it's begun to sink, to sort of, , sink into the classes I teach, especially when we do the tongue work, right? While we're doing stretches, , I'll ask the patient, my patient or , my demonstrator to actually go ahead and give me [00:15:00] resistance to my stretch.
And the differences have been really profound where we're seeing strength come . , as a result of stretching and the combination has been , really phenomenal to me.
Alexa: I think another thing with the awareness is noticing or bringing to the client, the singer's attention that say a month ago, you weren't able to answer that question on what does that feel like? Where does that feel that is? What's the sensation? But now asking you a similar question in a similar area, you're able to now answer that. So that can be a nice awareness marker. Now you're seeing progress in what you've got actual sensational or an idea of in your experience.
Walt: What you just said is something that I've not really thought of before, but it's almost not just the in the moment feeling, I can feel that, but that sense of understanding that feeling in your body. I mean, , let's face it, , in voice pedagogy, in, , all these other [00:16:00] treatments, et cetera, , there are so many different schools. Right. There's so many different opinions. There's so many different beliefs on what's the proper way to, to stand, to move, to sing, to hold , your breath to earth, to breathe, etc.
And I mean, are we all really right? Meaning, is every person who teaches breath? Um, are they right? If they are, then there's, then everybody else is wrong. I don't know that there is a, a correct way, a perfect way to breathe, or stand, or express, or whatever. I just think us, as whether we're therapists or teachers, we're saying, , here's some things that have worked.
Will they work for you? , and I know this is a question to come, but the question of proper tongue resting posture. Proper. Correct. I don't know whether we've got, , a manual on that yet that says here's where your tongue should be based on these parameters. Now, I know in the orophacial malfunctional world, , there's a proper tongue resting posture [00:17:00] where the tip of the tongue , is resting on the roof of the mouth and the lateral aspect is sort of in contact with the, , with the palate, et cetera.
But does that make somebody whose tongue doesn't naturally go there more prone to problems. I don't know whether I've really seen that, that research yet. Um, but , what I find interesting to sort of skip over that there might be not, there might not be truly a correct tongue posture. And if you're not there, then you're suboptimal.
But what we've been able to do with a lot of the tongue, this new tongue stretching and exercise is to, for instance, when we go in, I'm going to use my hand for a moment, right? And if I go in with my thumb and the tongue. And maybe we press down, and then I ask the patient to begin resisting me and elevate their tongue.
When we do finally bring it up to the roof of the mouth, , and my thumb is captured up in that palate, the hard palate, , and then I'll say, okay, now resist me. And what, when they try to hold their tongue, I'll notice that certain parts of their tongue aren't necessarily [00:18:00] working like other parts of the tongue is typically the back of the top.
And what's so cool to me is someone could say, well, that tongue is weak. It can't elevate properly to be in contact with the roof of the mouth. But all I'll do is I'll go in there and I'll tap that part. That's not really paying attention much. And in most of us, , short of post surgical, post radiation, or some sort of an injury or trauma, most people, when you give them that mild little stimulus, they say, Oh, you mean right there?
And all of a sudden, that back of the tongue becomes able to accomplish what they didn't when I just said, push your tongue up, , and. Also, what we'll, what we're seeing , in more of the speech pathology, not me, cause I'm not a speech pathologist, but people who are working with the tongue in terms of resting posture or facial malfunctional is they're seeing better tongue approximation of that proper position.
Did we stretch it because it couldn't reach it? No. Did we strengthen this thing because it was so darn weak, it couldn't get up there? Not really. We simply gave it a [00:19:00] sensory stimulus that went up to the person's brain and said, I know how to do that now, and to me it's all about awareness, it's building awareness so we have choice.
Alexa: So to help us understand our tongues a little bit more, can you take us on a little bit of a tour of the tongue and what you look for or look at as a manual therapist?
Walt: Yeah, so I saw this question, , Alexa had sent me these questions beforehand and I saw questions on the questions and I saw questions that I don't feel like I'm necessarily the expert in answering those, but I chose not to say don't ask those questions, right?
Um, in terms of tongue anatomy, , yeah, we, I could take you on a tour of all the different intrinsic and extrinsic muscles of the tongue. , I could take you on a tour of, well, if a tongue, if a person's tongue shows you this, then you might suspect that, which is sort of that detective work that certain clinicians follow, , you'll find, Alexa, that as we go on, it can really be frustrating because I'm pretty darn good at evading questions in [00:20:00] terms of, but I'm speaking to you as an apparent expert, but yet I'm not a tongue expert, right? I'm more that manual therapy person who hands this work over to people who might view themselves as tongue experts, singing experts, swallowing experts.
Um, it's, again, I'm not totally unprepared to respond to some of those questions, but which hat do you want me to put on, right? When it comes to geography, what part of anatomy matters to you? , we could talk about muscles. One of my favorite, one of my favorite annoying responses to, , people who think that, well, it's that specific muscle that's in, that's having a problem.
Let's just move down for a second to the diaphragm. You're not using your diaphragm properly. We need to, work your diaphragm. We need to strengthen your diaphragm or from a manual therapy perspective, we need to loosen that diaphragm. But in my incredibly frustrating way, I would ask that therapist who feels that we need to [00:21:00] isolate that diaphragm and treat it.
I'll say, can you treat the diaphragm in isolation? Can you treat the genioglossus in isolation? , and I say annoying because , my annoying response is you cannot without a scalpel, right? You cannot separate the human. From that muscle to isolate that muscle for treatment without a scalpel.
We can go in between the maximum on the Mandela and find where the medial lateral pterygoids are. Right. And even we can even sometimes feel that muscle, maybe it's tighter, maybe it's contracting. Um, but are we treating the pterygoid? Or are we treating the nervous system on the skin that feeds possibly right up to the brain or the overlying fascia of that, the nerves, etc.
I think that we've been, , tricked into thinking we can be a lot more specific than we truly can be. And, , I get a lot of pushback from this, , from people who truly feel they can be specific to a muscle [00:22:00] or specific to a dysfunction without recognizing that we're treating a human being, we're not treating their what Muscle tension dysphonia.
Well, , we're treating that, right? But we're treating that through the massive skin suit of a human being. And the skin itself possesses enough neurons, cutaneous nerves and receptors to feed directly up to the brain to give our conscious brain the sense of, well, maybe just that skin contact can be the start of an intervention without feeling like we have to dig in so deep to get to that muscle.
All right.
Alexa: . I think from a singing teacher's point of view, what I'm interested in is that we can give one instruction to the back third of the tongue whilst another instruction can be given to the front parts of the tongue. So how we can help that function to its optimum for a singing activity. for a speaking [00:23:00] activity from a swallowing point of view. So, I guess the next question for me is, with the tongue having so many functions, in swallowing, in breathing, in articulation, in shaping our sound, how do we know when our tongues are functioning well for us and the activity we want it to do?
Walt: Yeah. Oh, gosh, that's such a good question. Um, and I don't have a complete answer to that. I come in from my lens to see will touch help articulation. Will touch help bolus movement in the mouth to get the food down or intraoral hygiene, right? What's limiting that? and whether it's touch from a stretching perspective touch from an exercise perspective, right?
I had a class a couple of years ago, we had somebody who, one of her complaints, if you will, she was a therapist, but she couldn't roll her tongue. She couldn't do right in terms of getting things done.
And she said, , can [00:24:00] this work help with that? I said, I don't know. Let's try it. Right. I had never, ever had anybody challenged me with that. And we did a few things, right? Um, I not only said try it, but what does it feel like not to be able to get it to roll, right? What is that feeling? And in her case, it wasn't as much a physical, it was an emotional. It's frustrating. I feel like I should be doing it. If I'm teaching my clients to do it, and I can't do it, I'm a failure, right? So, you can see that psychosocial aspect of the biologic inability. And it was just, it was really cool because in a relatively short period of time, we tried a bunch of different, we had a number of different tongue sequence stretches and exercises that we do in my seminars, right? Kind of worked her through it really quickly. And what was fun was at the end of it, I mean, she wasn't a perfect rrrr, right? She wasn't a perfect roller. But she came closer to that. She was able to get a couple, , rudimentary rolls off before it flattened back out and she couldn't accomplish it.
And, you know, I asked, what did it feel like [00:25:00] now? And it was about, again, it was almost like from the psychosocial sense of accomplishment. It's like, you know, something changed. Did we make it looser so she could do it? Did we make it stronger so she could do it? Did, we gave. brain, the sense of, well, maybe this isn't as hard as I thought it was. Maybe we can just come at it from a different perspective. You know, the analogy of let's throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks. I include myself in that, um, that category. It's like, I have no idea if I can help you with this tongue rolling, but here's what I have to offer you. Let's see if it works.
Alexa: And that's great for you as a manual therapist, because you can actually go in and do the touch. Us as singing teachers, we're probably not going to be doing that. And I know that, well, I'm hoping that you'll take us through maybe some of the exercises that we can do to maybe guide the singer in doing it on themselves.
But I think I just have one more question, which is based on [00:26:00] physiology. , and this is from something which I shared on my own social media platform about the tongue and singing, giving a tip if you like. And a friend of mine commented, , quite jovially, , that I have a fat tongue. I was tongue shamed, Walt.
But what does the size, the shape, the physiology of the tongue say about function and things?
Walt: I think you're going to get a different answer from absolutely every person you ask, whether it's an expert or somebody off the street. Um, in my, , now 11 or 12 years of teaching this voice and swallowing work, I've had a chance to observe thousands of tongues. And, you see people with little tiny skinny little pointy snake tongues, and you see people with this massive Rolling Stones tongue, right? You see people that, um, or you touch a tongue and it feels very thick and dense and you feel others that feel really, like, loose and flexible.
But I would really [00:27:00] struggle to try and create correlations, right, or in terms of a person with this kind of tongue is more apt to this kind of problem. Now with tongue tie, , it's more definable function, functional issues. Yeah. I think you might be able to see a more clear path to say the person with an extreme tongue tie has difficulty with protrusion might have different kinds of difficulty with various sounds and articulations, et cetera.
But when we're dealing with a more normal population, um, and , you might get , some responses from this totally disagreeing with me, and I'm fine with, absolutely fine with that, because I'm sure there's tongue experts who could say, here's a profile that if the person has this kind of tongue, they might be more prone to this, but I think humans are incredibly adaptable.
And I can't turn a person's tiny little snake tongue into the Rolling Stones tongue, but do we need to, right? , that's to me, like I talked about at the beginning of the talk here, it's like holding the carrot at the end of the stick for you, Alexa, to say, Oh, your fat tongue will [00:28:00] never allow you to be that performer that you want to be.
And it's like, boy, did you just, , take the wind out of the sails for this person. Let's see if we can take your fat tongue, , I don't mean to be insultive to your tongue, and still make you, Or allow you to do what you wish to do with that. Right. Yeah. Um, a story from patient perspective. This was 25 years ago, before I was really focusing on in this work and had some parents brought their daughter in to see me because she had some issues with eating. She was born with a hereditary issue where she had no true TMJ joint. So she had very little mouth opening, , and closing, and inability to chew. She brought her in to see me as a physical therapist to see if I could help with chewing and I failed miserably. We didn't do anything because she really had no true joint to allow that to happen. But in the process, , she came in with reports from the, , the therapist and how she was working at school. And she had [00:29:00] very poor articulation. , and the parents said, well, is that something you can work with? And again, that was, this was early years for me working , with tongues, et cetera. It's like, I don't know, let's give it a try. So we started doing some tongue work, , tongue stretching. Now this little eight year old girl, she wasn't really keen on letting me grab hold of her tongue and pull. And 25 years ago, I was pulling tongue. And I mean, , like, . Excuse me, any opportunity I can get to use my tongue model, right? I was literally pulling tongues back then. What I would do now is relatively aggressive, but that's kind of how I was exposed to it. And that's how I witnessed other people teaching tongue stretches while doing with others. She wasn't about ready to let me do that. So, , what we accomplished is I basically held her tongue.
, I held her tongue. I gave her the most minimal stretching that one could imagine. Picture, , a rubber band, right, where you take the rubber band and it's at slack and then you take it until it's just under tension so it's flat. And then just adding just, , a half a gram to [00:30:00] the point where somebody who is expecting aggressive work might say you're not doing anything.
But this little girl allowed me just to hold her tongue in that manner. And I did that for a series of, I don't know, maybe two or three sessions. And, , measurable, measurably, I think maybe she had a slight bit more range of motion of the tongue out of her mouth. But what was really appreciated was the change in articulation, the intelligibility of her language from just literally holding her tongue and doing the most minuscule amount of stretching- that was a real gain. That was a real plus for not just this little girl and her parents, but people who are working with her on language skills, etc. I really sort of reframed how I look at my work, even before I was coming from the perspectives that I do now. It doesn't necessarily have to be aggressive to be helpful, and whether it's self applied stretching or me doing the stretching.
Alexa: How has exercise actually changed for you [00:31:00] over time? What, and what's the aim of exercise for you now?
Walt: Yeah. So as a physical therapist here in my practice, I see patients with head to toe issues, right? I am a manual therapy based practice. If they're looking for exercise based practice, I send them somewhere else.
Okay. Um, we use movement. We use functional movement. We use movement suggestions and often it's applied during the course of the manual therapy, right? So if I'm doing some very gentle tongue traction outward, we get this baby again, because it's fun. If we're doing some gentle pulling, I might say now, what do you feel?
Are we connecting with that tension issue? And then I might say, now what I'd like you to do is to go ahead and pull your tongue back in your mouth. While I'm stretching, I'm giving resistance to their activation. , strengthening is something that we often simplify things. You need to have a stronger tongue, but how do you define that?
Are you actually measuring tongue strength with one of [00:32:00] the, there's a couple now, tools out there. That actually measure functional strength of the tongue. One is called the Iopi, one is called the Tongue o meter. It's basically you put it in the mouth and the patient pushes up against it. I don't know whether you can go in different directions.
And that certainly gives you somewhat of a, out of an objective scale. But is the goal really to make the tongue stronger? Or is it to make it more functional, right? And I think that it's, in most cases, it's to make it more functional, because without being ridiculous, , how often are we asked to, lift a heavy weight with our tongue so your tongue can be stronger?
.Most of the time, when we talk about weakness, though, we're not talking about measurable strength. We're talking about weakness as sort of a translated metaphor for they're unable to do this. So therefore the tongue must be weak. Let's make it stronger. All right. And that's where, in this whole new realm that we're working with not just stretching the tongue, which is how I did it for the first eight years of teaching this work to other professionals, , it's now moving to understanding that, , [00:33:00] strength is just, it's a word we use to substitute in for other functional deficits that we're trying to overcome.
Alexa: And this alludes back to what we were talking about with the language side of things, because the lovely Kerrie Obert would maybe say, Tongue tension, that phrase needs to go in the bin because it's about what's left after singing rather than what's happening during singing. So I guess what's your viewpoint on that?
How do you think about tension during an activity?
Walt: Well, I think words like tongue tension, tongue fatigue, and we can expand that into a lot of different things, are so subjective. They're just, but yet they're objectified as if they're a thing, right? What is tongue tension, right? Well, it's, it tends to be something that's negative.
What I'd rather do instead of using that word is, well, what does that tongue tension feel like to me? Make it more of a personal thing, versus me as the expert telling you, my student, oh, you've got tongue tension, we need to work on that.
If patients come in to see me [00:34:00] and say, you know, my voice teacher said, I have tongue tension we need to work on. It's like, well, tell me about that. What does that feel like to you? Not only what does it feel like to you, but how does it limit you? And here's where that, the contradiction or the opposition sometimes comes.
Cause they'll say things like, well, my teacher says it's keeping me from doing this, but I don't feel like it's much of a problem as they do. Right. , just like I get somebody who's seeing a strength based PT and they say, well, my, my PT said that my weakness is the reason for my pain, but I don't understand that because I work out all the time.
Right? So you've got these basic conundrums that we're involved in. You know, is tongue tension a thing? I suppose you could define it as that. Um, pain in the tongue. I think that gets a little bit more objective. But yeah, I kind of agree that we, we've overly focused on tongue tension, just like, Oh my God, we're overly focusing on the vagus nerve now.
And people thinking that biotensegrity is the key to all this thing and all these buzz words. And I'm old enough now where I've been through enough of these, these [00:35:00] cultural shifts from it's all about your so as to it's all about your vagus to it's all about your, fill in the blank to see, , they're really just, myopic views on how to capitalize on, a new market and a new concept.
I'm guessing that's kind of what Kerrie, , is referring to when it comes to, we just need to bin , these tongue tension concepts and maybe just get down to what does it feel like that keeps you from expressing yourself the way you wish to.
Alexa: Could you take us through something or a couple of things that we could do for ourselves on our tongues and guide our students through? And I know materials might be something that we can, I mean, I tend to either get the kitchen paper out or the sleeve, but what is a good tool to use?
Walt: Yeah, , kitchen towels are my least favorite because they stick and you have to pick all that little bits and pieces off.
You know, , clinically, , we use a couple different things. Um, gauze, right? , that's probably pretty obtainable for most people. I'm a bit of a gauze snob when it [00:36:00] comes to gauze. Um, I much prefer, I don't know how well this is going to show up, but this is a product, and it's not the brand that we're looking at, but it's non woven gauze or non woven sponge, which is so much softer than woven gauze.
For most people, it doesn't matter much. , for people, post surgical, post radiation, or just a heightened level of sensitivity, woven gauze is rather coarse and it can feel real abrasive. Non woven gauze doesn't do that. Um, more recently, we've been using these cool little things, and they're called cotton finger cuts.
Um, and I don't expect any of your voice teachers or listeners, et cetera, to run out and buy a bunch of these, but these are really cool because it's a fabric, just like the non woven, sponge that you just put out, well, with gloves on, but put over your fingers. What I love about the finger cuts over and above the gauze, is it definitely improves my dexterity when I'm working with somebody and possibly even your dexterity if you're working with your own tongue.
But for the most part, we don't really need those things. Um, the one thing that I make a suggestion for [00:37:00] is, I think they're called flannels in the UK, right? We call them washcloths here in the United States, flannels in the UK, but those little baby ones, right? The microfiber baby washcloths, which are much, well, first of all, they're a lot smaller, but it's almost like those things that, , that The, optometrist gives you to wash your glass or wipe your glasses with.
It's a very fine fabric that it's not course that to me, that's kind of what I reach for. If somebody is trying to do tongue work on their own, although just , a thin piece of cloth works fine. , I don't know about your sleeve. That's kind of creepy to me because then you're going to have a big old wet sleeve when you're done and definitely not the paper towels because the dryness of those will cause it to stick.
All right. Ultimately, it's whatever gives you a sense of grip or I call traction. Okay. , you know, from self stretching versus, um, other stretching, right? Self stretching versus somebody else doing the stretch for you. I would never want to say that self stretching isn't as effective as allowing somebody to stretch your [00:38:00] tongue, but cognitive and behaviorally, There's actually some interesting research on self touch versus social touch, and I talk about this. We actually do a little quick lab in all of my seminars where a person experiences self touch. And I ask them, I take them to a series of questions while they're stretching their face. Right? About what they're feeling, what they're not feeling, where they're feeling it, why that feeling might be coming true to their brain to say, Oh, that's why it's happening.
And then we have them do social, it's called social touch, right? Reaching out and touching somebody else. And how an individual perceives those two groups. In terms of being similar and different, and it's almost always, um, 100 percent where touching yourself, whether it's on the face or on the tongue, has a very different input to your central nervous system than social touch, right?
And I think some of that can be put down into the lack of prediction. I don't know what somebody's going to do, even if I trust them. When they reach out and touch me or pull me or stretch me or do things [00:39:00] with me. Um, but it also opens up parts of a person's central nervous system parts of the activation centers of the brain when social touch occurs That actually aligns a lot with the therapeutic goals that we're looking for. We're looking for attentiveness alertness which Manual therapy has always been said to be, and not that they use these words, but we're fixing some issue in the tissues, right? I'm so good at what I do that I can pull your tongue and stretch a problem in your tongue to create change. And, you know, manual therapy massage, it's kind of how they're often viewed, that somebody is fixing an issue in your tissues.
But the new research says that's not really what's happening. If it is happening, it's way, way down in the hierarchy of what's happening, with why it creates change. And I don't want to say that self touch isn't as effective, but it's often differently effective, , but that doesn't mean I don't teach my patients self stretch.
I do. ,
, when I work with somebody, I might say, okay, here's the kind of pressures that I often start [00:40:00] with, but what do you feel right now? Does it feel like I'm using too much pressure? Would you like me to use more? Does it feel like we're doing something therapeutically or functionally? Have shared decision coming in, um, to the degree of pressure, instead of having the expert dictate, here's the correct pressure for you, Alexa.
Even though you don't feel like it's enough, or it's too much, here's what's best for you. There is absolutely zero evidence to support that, even the people act like it does. So what I'd rather do is say Alexa, does it feel like this is safe? And if so, does it feel like it could be helpful for you? And if not, how can we modify these pressures to make it feel like to you it's safe but effective?
That's how I sort of work my way around this. How much pressure should we use? But I think it's a lot easier if you're working with yourself because internally you say, Oh no, that hurts. But yet some person might say, that [00:41:00] hurts, but it feels good. The next person might say, ooh, that hurts, that feels too much, right?
Allowing you, if you're teaching self stretching, not to just say you should pull to the point where it hurts. I would rather say, you should pull to the point where it feels like you're doing something, but not doing too much. Remember, we're looking to connect with, again, we're going to go back into what we talked about before, that tongue tension, that experience of annoyance at the end of a performance. I want you to reach in there and grab hold of your tongue until you start having a conversation with that feeling.
Personally, I think the therapeutic moment is not how we make that muscle longer or stronger. It's when we bring awareness from peripheral to central and allow the person some sense of control over this, where you connect them with them, so they have options for change.
Alexa: Can we do a little bit of role play where I can give you a couple of [00:42:00] scenarios and you can maybe guide us into how we might react? to the stretch or what instructions we give?
Walt: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're just shooting from the hip here. So this is fun. And if I say, I don't know, don't get offended. Okay.
Alexa: I won't, I promise. So imagine that I am someone who is a professional singer, but during singing, I feel an ache underneath the chin, the floor of the mouth. , and it just feels uncomfortable.
Walt: Got it. And is that something that you can actually relate to?
Alexa: Yeah. I would say I feel it. Yes, I do feel it during singing sometimes, but also at rest.
Walt: Got it. Perfect. So if we can, we're going to role play as if I'm actually working with you. So right now you feel it at rest, correct?
Alexa: Mm hmm.
Walt: Yeah, and where is it?
Alexa: I would, if I had to point, it's directly under my chin and maybe just [00:43:00] over to the sides.
Walt: Yeah. So when you do what you're doing right now, right? You're going middle, you're going to the sides. Are you actually connecting with that? And I'm sorry, did you use the word pain or fatigue or what did you use?
Alexa: I used ache.
Walt: Ache. Okay, good. Okay. I, my memory is poor and I talk too much and I believe, um, I need to make sure that you feel listened to, so I wrote the word ache down so I can look down at my cheat sheet and remember, because what I want to do is I want to keep connected to your experience, not substitute in my views, right?
So if I kept saying to you, okay, Alexa, tell me what that pain feels like, immediately you're feeling invalidated. It's like, gosh, he's not even listening to me. I said it was an ache, but, um, when you poke yourself there, do you change that sense of an ache? Can you actually palpate or poke at your acheyness?
Yes.
Alexa: Yes.
Walt: Yeah. And when you do that, does that acheyness increase?
Alexa: No, it actually decreases.
Walt: Got it. So, , Here's how I'll often do intervention. And [00:44:00] if I'm teaching self treatment, so, if you held your fingers like that, where you said, it diminished my acheyness, what would happen to you if you held that for a while?
Right? What would happen to that ache if you stretched it? I try and Okay. So thus far in this almost an hour of our talk, you'll notice an abstraction in my concepts and abstraction, my avoidance of things. But what I don't want to do is be totally abstract to you, my client or my patient, right?
If you poked yourself here and stretch that a bit, does that feel useful to you?
Alexa: Yes.
Walt: Yeah. Um, does it feel more useful if you pushed even harder upward?
Alexa: Yes, and I think I mentioned this in our last one, I do like it harder.
Walt: Yeah. And I firmly believe that I need to share decisions that you may like a level of pressure that me as an individual, I don't like that kind of pressure. But I believe I need to negotiate with you something that your past and [00:45:00] present experiences says, okay, we're finally doing something he's pushing or you're pushing hard enough versus me saying, Oh, don't do that.
You might hurt yourself. First of all, do I trust you? Do I trust you cognitively, sensory wise, et cetera, not to hurt yourself? Because whether I'm doing treatment with somebody or teaching, um, self treatment, I need to make sure that you are trustable. And if I don't trust you, I'm not going to tell you to poke hard in there.
Okay. Um, but that to me, this would be a potential starting place, or we might say, because I do a lot of work outside and inside the mouth. To get my little tongue model out here again, we might do work where we compress the tongue downward, but then we come in from the outside, kind of that same spot there, , where you're reaching in like this with a thumb pushing down and fingers pointing upward, right?
So I might guide you, if I was working with you through Zoom, to put a tongue, a thumb on your tongue and press downward. You don't have to do that. You can certainly do it. Right. [00:46:00] So, um, what I want you to do though is I'd like you to take your thumb. First of all, don't go back too far. Because if you go back too far and then start depressing, you're probably going to start blocking your airway.
So what I do is I'll have you come fairly close to the tip of the tongue, and then I'll have you start dropping down. So you feel like you're taking up the slack in all the submental and the genioglossus muscle, right? So go ahead and push down into the floor of your mouth right now, Alexa. Okay. Now, I know you're not going to be able to give me verbal feedback, but with your other hand, can you give me thumbs up, thumbs down, right?
Do you feel right now you're connecting with that ache?
Alexa: It's much deeper down there than I was expecting.
Walt: Yeah. When I teach this as a technique, People, I'll do a demo and I'll say you really need to go in deeply, not to hurt them, but then when I come around and help the group, they're all like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe how far down you're going. Not to provoke you, but I want to take up the slack into the floor of the mouth, right?
So right now, [00:47:00] if you're connecting with that acheyness, in a way, You're doing a stretch right now. It may not be the stretch that we envisioned for the tongue, but you're creating an input that's connecting you to your acheyness. Um, again, thumbs up, thumbs down, Alexa. Did it feel like it had any therapeutic value just holding that stretch?
Alexa: More so afterwards than during.
Walt: Okay, got it. So can I add one layer to this? Good, and I don't know whether you're going to be able to do it on yourself, but with your tongue depressed down, with your thumb like that, right? Now, I know the people on the camera, that the camera's not going to be able to see this as much, but now can you come in with a finger or two on the outside, not at the jaw, But well past kind of that spot that you pointed to before, and you kind of squeeze, right, you've got the thumb, the tongue down, and you're coming in like this, can you squeeze your fingers upward?
It's almost like you're trying to find your thumb, right? And then not just hold that, but maybe [00:48:00] wander around a little bit on the underside of that on the floor of the mouth, that submental region, can you find a place where the little bell goes off in your brain to say ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, there's my acheyness right there.
Right. Can you find that? So hold that pinch for a bit. I call it a pinch, but we're not talking major pinch, right? You're compressing. Um, hold that stretch in a passive way for a while. Does this feel therapeutic? Maybe at some point You want to add activation. Maybe you want to take your tongue and actually push it down farther, not with your thumb, but push the tongue down into the floor of the mouth.
Or maybe you want to resist, start pushing up against your thumb. Now self applied isometric contractions are not the same as isometric contractions provided by another person. Meaning, if I asked you to push your tongue up against my thumb, it's a very different experience than pushing up against your own thumb, okay?
But, not to say [00:49:00] it's less than, but it's going to be different. What happens when you try and elevate your tongue against your own resistance? Do you start connecting with some of that acheyness? Maybe, maybe not.
Alexa: It feels too easy to lift my thumb. I don't feel like my thumb is giving enough resistance.
Walt: Right, so what, what would happen if you would give yourself more resistance? You're not letting your tongue win. Your thumb. Yeah, there you go. Right. And this is, I think it's a little easier to accomplish when someone else is applying the pressures, but I don't want to say that you can't do it doing it yourself.
Right. Already we're moving from that stretching component into that movement, that exercise call it strengthening component. But what I look for throughout those, whether it's that passive stretching or the active activation of the exercise, Are we connecting with your ache? Are we doing something where you're saying, Oh yeah, there it is right there.
And does it feel therapeutic? Does it feel safe? Because I feel like [00:50:00] it might be helpful. And some people pick this up really fast, and other times it's a really long process of learning, um, until they get the idea of what words we're trying to accomplish. I'm not trying to make your tongue stronger in isolation.
I'm trying to connect you with that feeling, the negative of the ache, to see if we can begin to overcome that.
Alexa: Yeah. I particularly found it when going with the counterpart underneath. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And trying to find the thumb. I felt like I could find that there I actually do feel a sense of dissipation.
Walt: How do you prove that? How do you prove that the ache is less than the function is better. Boy, boy, those are hard ones. You know, , when it comes to my profession as a physical therapist, we're supposed to be using objective measurements, but within those objective measurements are that zero to 10 scale.
That people, patients hate. Zero to ten, how bad is [00:51:00] your pain? I hate asking that when people ask me that. I'll say good answer anyway, right? But we could have done something. Sure, there's subjectivity into it. How bad does that ache get, Alexa? And now, when you move forward, how bad does that ache get? Um, for you now there's objectification.
Maybe that's not the best one. Maybe we're looking for an outcome that's more function based performance based, right? Can you measure it in terms of those performance ideals? Or is it your own lived experience? Of what's happening because one of my favorite homework assignments to give my patients is we've done all this stretching and et cetera, et cetera, and they expect me then to pull that sheet of paper out of my drawer and say, here's the exercise you need to do. You need to do these 14 times a day or you're going to fail all those stupid things that physios do, right. , but I can give you that if you want. I can give you some stretches if you want. But one of my favorite things is right now, Alexa, did you say that that ache feels a little less?
Alexa: Yeah, it does.
Walt: Yeah. , [00:52:00] well, so your homework between now and the next time I see you, can you envision your envision yourself capable of change? That's almost a behavioral goal. It's almost like moving. Gosh, that's almost into psychology. Right. And I know my lane, I stay in my lane, but can you envision yourself capable of change?
Because if you're a performer who every time you do a certain thing or sing for a certain length of time, this happens. And right now it's like, gosh, I can, it feels different. Right? I think part of what creates change is not because your tongue's more flexible or stronger, is you reframe what's possible up here.
That right now, I feel difference. Our goal, you and me, is to create a lasting change. But in this moment, You feel like you've not felt before. We need to leverage that. You may say, well, is this going to last? I'll say, I don't know. But that's why we're working on this together. Right now, in this moment, though, you feel different.
Can you take that forward and see if we can, if that can create a change [00:53:00] in your life?
Alexa: This reminds me of something that we spoke to Jennie Morton about and she was saying sometimes if someone's having an issue with maybe a high note or belted note or whatever. Sometimes she'll just say, sing it upside down so she'll have them bend at the waist, and then all of a sudden they can do it.
And she's like, it's not necessarily because you're bending, you have to bend every single time, maybe there's something there to do with, , air pressures or posture, whatever, however you want to look at it. But she's like, your brain doesn't have that attachment to you singing that note in that position.
So it doesn't have the same pathway, I guess, to go down. So we've just, as you say, we've just changed something, we've reframed the activity.
Walt: That reminds me so much of, yeah, that reminds me so much of something I do here with my patients and a gait deficit, right? Somebody is limping, maybe it's due to back pain, maybe it's due to surgery, right?
And they go through recovery and the problem , is doing well, but yet the limp [00:54:00] remains. Often what I'll do is I have them change up their walking. I'll say, I want you to walk backwards for a while. Make sure it's safe. I want you to walk exceedingly slow or exceedingly fast and start burying all that stuff up and often when we offer different scenarios, much like you just mentioned about doing that passage upside down, we give them an idea of what it might be like not to. And then we start to work backwards from there to see if they can express a more normalized gate. At a more normal walking pace, much like I'm guessing, um, whoever was that, that talked about turning upside down would try to then train the person to get that to evolve into your normal singing position.
Alexa: Yeah, absolutely. For another scenario then, Walt, a lot of us will probably have used and continue to use the stretch that holds the tongue straight out of the mouth, so when, when is that useful, even though I know that we've spoken about, , it could be useful to anyone for anything.
Walt: I think it's a really, it's a great introduction to [00:55:00] tongue work.
It's, what I learned back in the early 1990s for tongue stretching, although it was kind of ill defined in terms of the why that we're doing it. But that, just that general top bottom, , hold. , the couple of tips, all right. , when it comes to grabbing the tongue and whether you're doing it yourself or teaching somebody to do it, what you don't want to do is have them grab right here at the tip.
Because if they do and if they want to begin to pull, what they're going to have to do is squeeze harder or they're going to fall off, right? So if you just, Basically invite them just to reach back a little bit. I'm a bigger fan of two hands versus one hand, because what happens with that one hand is the tongue invariably comes in at midline.
Midline of the tongue is less flexible, tends to be a bit more sensitive over time. I might work my way to center, but what I prefer is a bilateral approach to hands and just move away from that midline frenulum part. Right. , and I'm going to teach a patient. Not just to stretch their tongue for the sake of [00:56:00] stretching it.
I'm gonna, therapeutically, I'm gonna say, Okay, Alexia, you talked about that aching right here. Can you take hold of your tongue and start to engage it? I love the word engage instead of stretch, right? Engage your tongue, lightly engage it to the point of tension. Can you do it to a level of tension where you start to feel the ache?
Or you start to feel the ache being affected, right? And being just a straight pull may not accomplish that. Maybe you need to pull slightly downward, pull slightly upward. This one you gotta be careful if someone's got a tight frenulum because it gets a little uncomfortable. Or maybe pull with a little bit of lateralization or lateralization.
Can you do something now from that basic framework of top bottom stretching where You can start to connect with that issue of aching. You can certainly play around with how [00:57:00] hard you want to pull. There is no correct level of stretch you should do. There's a huge bell curve. What I'd rather have you do is, Alexa, find a level, a degree of tension that feels safe, but feels like it's doing something.
Can you connect with that aching? Maybe you want to hold that stretch for a minute or longer. Now, once you've stretched that for a bit, what happens if you hold that stretch? And maybe begin to elevate your tongue. Maybe begin to pull your tongue back. Maybe actually go ahead and shove your tongue, stick your tongue out while you're stretching.
Alexa: This is the Fat Tongue Reveal.
Walt: This is the what?
Alexa: The Fat Tongue Reveal.
Walt: There you go, okay. Okay, nobody laugh. She's, being vulnerable here. Alright. It could possibly be, I may actually ask you to begin singing with your tongue under tension. Right? Maybe release the tension. So a bit. I want you to not just do these different activities, but [00:58:00] remember the goal.
The goal is to do something about that acheyness. How many different scenarios can I work with you with until you said, Ooh, there it is right there. My work is about getting to yes. Getting so that whether I'm stretching your tongue or you're stretching it, Alexa, to a point where you say, Oh yeah, that's really good.
It's really having a conversation with that ache, whether it's making it a little worse or making it feel oddly better.
It's so much easier for me to, or for you to say to somebody, okay, I want you to stretch your tongue to make it more flexible. Um, and often that's where I'll start the conversation. If there's tightness, if there's tension, will stretching help that? But then we start drilling deeper. The goal isn't just to make your tongue more flexible, it's to start to dissipate that sense of ache you feel at rest, as well as in performance.
So not just are we going to stretch it, but we're going to stretch it in a way where you say, Wow, okay, now I'm really feeling that ache right now, or we're having a conversation with that acheyness. [00:59:00] That's really my goal when we do any of this work.
Alexa: For me, having my tongue out, and down. I feel that stretch more useful.
Going up didn't really do anything for me. Straight, um, just straight ahead was It's quite good as well. I don't know if it tuned into the achy feel, but there was something that happened at the back, which I liked.
Walt: So in my bag of tricks, I've got five, six, seven different ways we can approach the tongue.
We do a lateralization where you sort of squeeze together and you try a similar thing with some hooking, et cetera. We do that compression thing with a lot of different variables, et cetera. We do some tongue elevation with a roll. And again, um, If you're interested, they're in that TongueTips, you know, relatively cheap little online course.
But it's about me using all the tricks that I have to say, Okay, Alexa, you tell me which one feels like it's connecting with it. Versus me, [01:00:00] the expert, saying here's what you need to do. See the difference there?
Alexa: So before we actually intervene with these exercises, is it more useful to have the singer have a some form of awareness or have a connection to a sensation in those areas?
Like somebody, you might be able to hear someone who's using a lot of lateral medial narrowing or APN as Kerrie Obert talks about, but if that person doesn't recognize it, is this going to do anything?
Walt: Well, everybody's got a different opinion, and I may conflict with what Kerrie says, but I, in my role, in my model, I need to connect you with that issue, make it more personal, instead of more theoretical, , we're the expert telling them what we're, what we think, but then I want to get them in touch with the feeling of that problem, and a lot of times what I think is going on, Doesn't have as much bearing on their issue.
Once we bring that felt sense into the model and whether it's, you know, more of a pedagogy model, whether it's a manual therapy model or an exercise [01:01:00] model, I want to get them well connected to the feeling of their problem, not from what I tell them it is, but from tell me about that experience at the end of a performance when You just break down.
I want to know what that feels like. And then we use that experience, all those words and emotions, and we then turn it into, when we do this work, stretch, exercise, or, cognitive behavior work, can you feel like we're making a connection, an impact on that issue?
Alexa: Yeah, I really like that phrasing.
Does that feel helpful?
Walt: Yeah,
Alexa: and I
Walt: use the word, yeah, does it feel therapeutic? Does it feel useful? I want to make it as bare bones as possible and not make it too complex and medical sounded or theoretical sounded. Does this feel like it might help you? What an easy thing to translate and have them translate that to themselves,
Alexa: you know, when I, when we came into this conversation, I thought, , we'll probably get some, we'll get a landscape of the tongue will understand what , the [01:02:00] correct science says about function and position, and we'll get some exercises, but actually it's been a really good reminder of.
It's not that simple. It's not as simple as the tongue goes here. That's its only role. And that we can't isolate muscles that we could be, we could say, Okay, I'm massaging the tongue route, but for some people, that is not a thing. It's just a placement and an anatomical landmark And how we can actually reframe the thought of an activity through a touch, asking the right questions or asking helpful questions like does that feel therapeutic?
Does it feel helpful? Does it feel safe? That is actually what we're doing as teachers, not trying to give tick boxes.
Walt: Yeah, , and to me, and certainly we only got to a fraction of some of the things we can do from a self stretch until here and they'll say, let go. That's too much. Or they might say, you're not doing anything.
Pull harder. Right. [01:03:00] Think along those lines. 'cause I know that, the way I often see this express when I have people demonstrating tongue work on me is. Man, I'm really internalizing a sense of danger and threat right now, because they're not really checking in with me as a human being, as an individual, on whether they're squeezing too hard or pulling too hard or pulling too softly, right?
Um, open up this landscape. It's not diminishing your view as being an expert, people's view of you as being an expert. In fact, I think having uncertainty. , actually increases your sense of expertise. 15, 20 years ago when I was an expert in myofascial release, everything was explained in fascial terms, connective tissue terms.
And I sounded really smart. Because I was telling people things that they didn't know. But the more I learned, the more I learned that it's never just about your fascia, or the muscle tension, or your posture, or just one thing. The more uncertain I got. And, um, I'm comfortable expressing that [01:04:00] uncertainty, is my posture the cause of this problem?
And I'll say, you know what, some people might think so, but there's other Performers with , really lousy posture who have incredible voices, right? Can we take you and not make change contingent on you having perfect posture or perfect tongue range emotion? Can we take you as an individual and forget about, not forget about it, but not make that carrot or that stick so long that I'm going to keep you enthralled in my services for the rest of your life, because we got to get your posture.
Perfect. Can we instead work on. You're the things that you're dealing with the problems you're dealing with it without make them making them so unapproachable.
Alexa: Walt Fritz, you are the gift that keeps on giving because you are offering our wonderful listeners 30 percent off of all of your online courses with the code BAST2025.
That's B A S T 2 0 2 5. What sort of courses can we get our hands on and where can we go to get them? [01:05:00]
Walt: Um, well they're all on my website, which is easy to find, waltfritz. com, , and you have to sort of jiggle the menu up there to find all the online offerings. I offer full length online courses in my voice and swallowing disorders, my advanced voice and swallowing disorders, what I call balancing the body, which is manual therapy for more, posture, even though I talked about posture, et cetera, et cetera.
But I also offer some shorter courses, tongue tips, one tongue, just specific on oral motor, et cetera. I also have a number of free courses on there too, that aren't necessarily, things that you have to pay for, commit a lot to, as your, if your population is voice coaches, voice teachers, they're going to need to find their place in that.
If we have just, Two or three minutes to talk about this, and I can't remember we talked about this in the last time, but there's often this wall between manual therapy and what a voice teacher is allowed to do, right? In the United States, they're pretty clear, right? You've got these definable boundaries of who can do what, who can't, but other countries, it's a lot fuzzier.
Who's allowed to do touch? In the UK, [01:06:00] is a voice teacher allowed to touch a client?
Let me be more specific. What about touch based queuing? Alexa, if you see somebody who's like this, are you legally allowed to reach out and touch them?
Get your shoulders down.
Alexa: I think with consent. If you say, can I touch? And they agree, then yes.
Walt: Yeah, exactly. So, what I, an example that I really like to give is that, I call that touch based cue, right? Get your chin back, get your head up in alignment, right? Maybe tuck your chin, just that reaching out with, uh, That, that touch.
And it's almost a behavioral education cue. And it's seen very different as, let me be hypothetical for a moment. You want to reach out to that person's shoulders to say, try and relax a bit, get your shoulders down. And you just do that. And you see the behavioral responses. They get their shoulder down.
Me as a manual therapist, I might reach out. And push the shoulders down and hold them for a period of time in my brain. I think I'm thinking I'm stretching the [01:07:00] muscle. I'm reorganizing the fascia. I'm freeing up the nerve root. I'm doing all these medical things that you as a voice teacher, you're not allowed to do that.
And the wall is pretty well in place in most people's mind that This is very different from this, but when you really look hard at the new evidence for manual therapy, the length of time we spend in that may not be as important as a lot of people think it is, right? So my point in bringing this up is you're reaching out and just touching that person, maybe having a very similar or almost identical result as me sitting here and holding that for a while.
All right, which I think it's not going to want to give voice teachers permission to think they're doing the same thing theoretically in reality, you might be doing a very similar thing, which is I'll roll it back into the courses. You might see us doing stretches where I say, okay, I want you to pull like this, or we do a lot of different things.
We do a role where we do an elevation of the tongue. We do [01:08:00] lateralization and hooking all these things. You certainly could try and have your client do that via instruction, whether it's person to person or Zoom based, all right? So from a benefit perspective, I think some of your, listeners, your watchers might gain value from some of those courses.
I'm not here to hard sell things at all. I want people to stay in their scope. But I think there's a lot of overlap in the things that we can learn. I just, I was just in, in Newcastle last month in December, teaching at the 2024 Newcastle Voice Conference. And, a number of the people there are not professionals who would view themselves as having the ability to do this manual therapy bit.
But you're talking about the roles that we're talking about here right now as somebody at least understanding that manual therapy may not just be about changing things within the tissue. At the top of my Facebook page. I have a quote by one of my favorite authors. His name is Tommaso Geri. And it's something to the effect of it's time we start thinking of manual therapy as simply [01:09:00] another way to communicate with a person's brain instead of something that's done in secrecy or in specificity out there in the periphery where we're reorganizing the structure.
It is really just another form of what you as a voice teacher does when you try to Get your concepts across to somebody and whether it's manual therapy from that, let's hold this for five minutes, or let's just touch that tongue and give that person a sense of awareness of, Oh, I think I know what you mean.
Alexa: Walt, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for keeping us company today and for helping us kick off the new year.
Walt: You're welcome. And I'm glad to be the honorary, new year's person.