Anna: Welcome to Yap Sesh with VoiceProEd. We're your hosts. I'm Anna Diemer.

Maurice: And I'm Maurice Goodwin.

Anna: We are excited today because if you are listening to this before 12:00 PM Eastern Time, we have a course today. But if you miss out, you can catch it in the replay. Maurice, tell us what we're about to do.

Maurice: We are giving, currently as you're listening to this—some of you—we are going live with Voice Notes, which is a course all about documentation as a voice clinician. This came as a result of a ton of our learners reaching out to us and asking, how do we build voice goals? How do I document the voice qualities that I'm hearing? How do I use my documentation to advocate for maybe rediagnosis, or if something feels off, how do I do all of that in my notes? Anna and I put this together to help answer those questions and really provide a resource for not only learning clinicians, but also growing clinicians and even clinicians who have been doing this for a while. We're excited about it. And like Anna mentioned, if you do not catch it live on the 27th, you're able to catch it in the replay for at least the next 12 months.

Anna: We have something special in today's episode—we have our first-ever guest on the podcast! Welcome to Yap Sesh, Clare Henderson.

Clare: Thank you. I heard you two like to yap—is this true?

Anna: You have come to the right place.

Clare: I love to yap. That's why I'm here.

Maurice: We have another yapper in our presence!

Clare: Triple yaps.

Anna: Today the yaps are three. What a beautiful day. Clare, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you're doing right now?

Clare: I'm Clare Henderson. My pronouns are they/she. I'll start with some intersections: I'm a neurodivergent, non-binary, queer, white speech-language pathologist. I specialize in voice, but I didn't start out there. I began my career in acute care and worked as a certified brain injury specialist.
Currently, I work in private practice at a voice and upper airway specialty clinic called Center for Vocal Health in Colorado. Interestingly, I live in Seattle, Washington, and see people exclusively through telehealth in Colorado.
I sort of sub-specialize in gender-affirming voice care now—it's become a bigger part of my caseload, especially given the current environment and the urgency around that work. Right now, that's probably about 60% of what I do.
I also treat the full range of voice disorders—Parkinson’s voice therapy, Speak Out, LSVT—and singing voice is part of my practice too. I’ve gotten more comfortable with it and there are times where I think, oh, I did something there—and that’s part of what we’re here to talk about today.
I also run a Mountain West Regional Voice Collective, which is free to join for anyone in the Mountain West. We welcome students and CFs too—we’re not trying to gatekeep. We hold quarterly educational meetings, and we've had some really great ones recently.
I’m also a parent of two small children. Oh, and I'm now a chorister—I joined a chorus!

Maurice: Oh, wonderful. You are cut from similar cloth. Anna and I often reflect that we are many things—and often all those things at once. Thank you for being here.
 As a speech pathologist who has also worked across the wide scope of practice, I’m curious: coming from acute care and brain injury work, how did that transition to voice happen? And does any of that earlier work inform what you do now?

Clare: Great question. I really think it's a big part of what’s best about me as a clinician—looking at the big picture and across systems.
A lot of that comes from the interdisciplinary work I used to do. In voice clinics, we can get really siloed, but in acute care I was doing co-treats with physical therapy and occupational therapy. I’d be doing speech or voice while also physically supporting someone to help them work on sitting—it was fantastic.
My journey here was very unexpected. It started during COVID. I was working in acute care at a hospital that specialized in long-term tracheostomy and ventilator-dependent patients—people who had been hospitalized for four weeks or longer.
During that time, the hospital got bought by another company, and they didn't really understand what we did. They cut my hours to four per week—at the peak of the pandemic, when we had people being proned for severe COVID treatment. It was bananas.
I realized four hours wasn’t sustainable for patient care—or for me personally or financially—so I decided to look for something else.
I applied for a job listing that just said “outpatient adult speech pathologist,” and it was near my house. I thought, outpatient probably sounds boring compared to inpatient. No trachs? No codes? But I figured I'd try it.

Clare: It turned out the job was in a voice specialty clinic!
At that point, the only “voice work” I had done was helping brain injury patients come out of comas—getting them to say anything at all. Sometimes we aimed for swear words because of the way the brain processes language.
I said during the interview, “This sounds fascinating. I will become obsessed. I will learn everything I can and become good at it.”
Holly Kosanovich, who owns the practice, took a chance on me—and I kept my promise. I became obsessed.
It was the year everything was online—Fall Voice, conferences, webinars. I went to everything I could. A lot of it was over my head at first, but I had great mentorship. I worked closely with the laryngologist, Dr. King, and just soaked everything up.
I also got on Instagram—because that’s how I meet my friends.

Maurice: Yeah, Instagram really exploded during that time, especially for all of these niche professional spaces. Do you remember when specifically we first interacted—or when you first connected with Anna?

Clare: I can't remember. I was actually trying to remember coming up to this, but I—I don't think I know. We hadn't met in person. I know we were just like, like DM mates, and—and then I had said, hey, I'd really like to get more into singing voice and I'd like to work with a singing teacher. Like, do you know anyone? And you did.

Anna: And it was me.

Clare: And it was Anna. And what a delightful surprise all of this has been. I'll try not to get emotional, but—I might. Love it.

Anna: Oh. I guess this was like... 2021? Early 2021 when we connected?

Speaker: I think so.

Clare: I think so, yeah. But yeah, like Maurice said, like, like Instagram was just like—like we were all just starved for connection and meaning and purpose. And like, like getting really good at this thing was something that I could do.
There was so much that I couldn't do. And—and to really like invite this work in and to—to take in all these perspectives was just such a—a gift.
And—and same thing with like, you know, anti-racism work. It was some way—it was a way that I got to connect with a lot of people, not just in my field but people with shared values.
That in real life, it's—it’s hard to find this little subset of people. And like, voice people are very sub-sub-sub-sub-sub set of people. And then the nerd ones. The best. I love.

Anna: Nerds! So Clare, you have been my voice client for over 4 years now. That’s sort of wild to think about—that it has been that long. Simultaneously ages and no time at all.
What was it like coming to a voice studio? What experience did you have in voice before we met?
At this point, I'm like, I don't even remember because, you know, when we grow together, right, on this journey—I know who we are now. And it’s sort of wild to think about the people that we were four years ago.

Clare: I was thinking about that—just like life-wise and voice-wise and in all the ways. Like, what a distance four years is in some ways.
So coming into voice lessons with you, I had had, I think maybe one or two lessons with someone else. And so this was someone that was recommended by like someone at my kid’s daycare. And they presented to me with Vocal Faults.

Anna: James McKinney. We talked about him last time.

Clare: Yeah, yeah. Vocal Faults. And what is it? How to repair them? How to like smack them out of people? Whatever that was.
And I'm sure it's lovely—honestly, haven’t read it. But it lost me at the title.
And it was a lot of—

Anna: The Diagnosis and Correction, yes.

Clare: There was a lot of “should.” There’s a lot of like, you should be positioned like a duck, like—like there was like, and you know, should breathe in this way and should have your head in this position and—and—
And then that person just like went on maternity leave. And so like, I didn’t even have to like bail, which is great because I'm very conflict avoidant.
And—and I got the opportunity to link up with you.
So prior to that, I had sung in choir in high school. And I was in every choir that was available. I did jazz choir, I did madrigals, I did chamber choir, musicals—I did all the musicals.
Uhm, I was one of the nuns in Sound of Music.
So I had done, you know, every choir possible. And then you go to college, and I was going to major in English.
And I—I was never going to be a performer or like—that wasn’t, you know, something that I felt like was going to work for me or even really thought about as an option.
I think it just always seemed too rigorous. Like, it’s a thing that if you are going to be in college and be a vocal performer, you are serious about it.
And I was like, well, you know, I'm taking like 20 credit hours of like English classes. I like blasted through college—like I graduated a year early.
And I worked at the bowling alley. And it was like, you know, like—I don't have space in my life for being all about this thing.
And unfortunately, that resulted in me being none about that thing.
And it was this thing that—it seemed like a point where you diverge into like, either this is my thing or this is not, and—and so unfortunately it became not.
And I liked to sing in my car. During grad school, I took my voice disorders class, and they have you do like all the assessment tests on yourself.
And I was like, “Oh, that's weird. I do have a—I have a short maximum phonation time. Oh, it does hurt to sing.”
Did not register that I have a voice disorder, which I absolutely do.
I have muscle tension dysphonia and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which I know now. But I didn't know those things then.
And—and so, like, singing became less of a part of my life.
And then I started working with voice disorders. Which was bizarre—to like be a person with a voice disorder and like, not registering it as that.
And treating these exact symptoms in other people and validating them—but not doing that for myself.

Clare: And coming into your space was the first time where it was about my voice—and not my voice being a guide for someone else’s.

But I think I like sort of, you know, couched that vulnerability in like intellectualizing it. Making it an academic exercise.
Or saying like, I’d like to like understand singing better—thinking of it as like a series of cogs.
That if I just kind of figure this out, I’ll—I’ll be better at my job.
That was always the goal: to be better at my job.
And the goal was initially not anything about “I want to express something with this,” or “I want to feel this sensation of resonance that I describe to other people but don’t actually feel myself.”
And so it was—you know, initially I think I was a little backdoor.
Do you remember the first song that I picked to work on?

Anna: Was it—were we working on The Music Man?

Clare: Yeah, we picked Till There Was You, I think it was.

Anna: Till There Was You.

Clare: Yeah. And I am reflecting recently—that's the only... like, I had auditioned that song for a musical in middle school.
And I did not get cast, even though I sang it very well, because the choir director only liked the popular girls. Like, she was the cheerleading coach.
And I was not—I was not Mrs. Connelly’s kind of gal.

Speaker: No.

Maurice: Mrs. Connelly...

Clare: Oh, Mrs. Connelly.

Speaker: Oh no.

Clare: Yeah. She should know boundaries. She’d just like, talk about her kitchen. Like, “Ohh Drew was so bad he had a mattress in the backseat of the car.”
And we were like, “What?! Miss Connelly?”

Maurice: I love this. I feel like every human that has been in theater for any longer than a month has some sort of story about a director or music director where you’re like, “What’s happening?”

Clare: Yeah, yeah. That was my first “what’s happening?”
And then I had—in high school—I had the ragey one that like we would be warning each other in the halls to be like, “Mr. Yarbrough’s having a day, like watch out.”
Anyway. So like, I came into this process with like, not really a sense of self as a—as a musician, as a performer, as a vocalist in any way.

Clare: And I think that’s been just the most unexpected development for me—is to think about making music with my body as something that—that matters for me, myself.
And I think it’s helped me see my patients better.

Like, you know, I had—I had learned from the books: you have to meet this with empathy. Like, this is a big deal for singers. This biopsychosocial approach.
Like this is a—like a deep emotional wound when you're accustomed to your voice showing up for you and it doesn't.
And to experience that on a personal level really grounds me in that space with that person.
To have that feeling—of when you go to do something with your voice that you know it can sometimes do—and then it doesn’t.
And how frustrating, and how personal, it feels.

Maurice: I appreciate you highlighting how there's a transition that happens. Like, I'm making noise to make noise for my profession, my role as a speech pathologist as I help other people—to I'm now making noise for me, right?
 I'm using my voice in a way that feels helpful. I'm exploring my voice. And I'm going to use this term—I don't think it accurately describes what you were describing—but selfishly, for me, right?
 That I'm using my voice for me. And I found that also in working with Anna, that that was an important thing for me too, right?
 How do I use my voice for me—that in turn impacted the way that I interacted with my clients.
 There's a relationship that happens with either the students or the clients that we work with where, because I'm in the position that I'm in, people have a desire to please, right?
 They have a desire to do what I say because I've asked them to do it. And that's just the relationship between a clinician and the other person.
 And so much of my work, I believe because of my experience, is how do I make that not happen?
How do I use language that helps the person find intrinsic motivation for voicing that's outside of my direction?
It's not just because I, the therapist, have asked them to do it, but it's because they desire to make voice for themselves.
And then we find the path from there. And it—it seems small, but it's a huge shift in power. It's a huge shift, again, in motivation. It's—it, yeah, it changes the...

Clare: Absolutely. And I think, like, Anna, like again through the longevity and the patience and persistence of our relationship together, I think... I've learned a lot about how you approach a neurodivergent learner and the...

Speaker: Hmm.

Clare: The openness to taking the “shoulds” out of it. And—and—and like you were talking about, coming into a session. Like, I am—I am a client-centered clinician. Am I always: what are your goals for today? Is there anything particular you would like to get out of our time together today? There's therapist.
 And—and to realize what a hard question that can be. When you don't know the answer. When you're like, well, I'm—I'm here to get good at the exercises so that you'll tell me I'm good at them. I'm—I'm here for praise.
 But to come into it and say, like, I've been thinking about this thing. I want to explore this. I messed around with this, and I'm wondering about this.
 The openness to curiosity, and to a structure that is not set.
 And the ways that you invite me to reflect on my experience in a way that I don't feel put on the spot.
 But I did experience what it is to feel that, like, "Oh, I'm supposed to have an answer. Oh, they want to know what I want to do. What do I want to do?"
 And—and—and I think just—the patience that you show and the flexibility are things that I—I'm going to say it—treasure about you.
 And things that I've—I've taken into my own practice.

Anna: Well, I did not expect to be lovingly called in today on this podcast.
 I'm over here having like an existential crisis because—see, the thing where you want your voice to do the thing, and your voice isn't doing the thing? That's literally me today.
 Yeah.
 You know, I think about all these things on a conscious or subconscious level when I'm creating this space that I do as a voice clinician.
 And at the same time, it totally, like, hits different to have literally two people sitting here telling me, like, "This is how I perceive the way that you work. This is how this has affected me and the ways that I continue to work."
 Like now it's going to be my turn to get emotional because I'm like, whoa, like, this is literally why I do what I do.
 And it—it hits different to just hear it laid out like that.
 Because you get to see the successes that your clients have, and that honestly is enough for me to be like, "Wow, look what this person is doing now with their voice and how far they've come."
 But it definitely—yeah, you broke my brain today.
 I'm very humbled and flattered and—and—and so...

Maurice: One of the—you know, one of our motivations in doing this, and probably everything that we—like Anna and I do, but also that, you know, Clare and our relationship is that we—we so deeply—and I deeply believe that our interactions with our clients and our interactions...

Clare: Fandango.

Maurice: Our work can be shaped by our interactions with each other.
 And so my relationship to Anna shifts how I then interact with other people, because she has demonstrated something to me that I had not experienced before—from clinician to clinician, from friend to friend, right?
 And then we continue to do that with the other people that we're in community with.
 I mean now we're just going into like, yeah, this is all about community.
 It's about the ways in which we interact with each other that then impact the people that we interact with on a regular basis.
 Yeah. It—it helps me be a human. Thank you. More than just like Maurice, the speech pathologist.
 I—I am first human.

Anna: Well then.

Speaker: Hey.

Anna: And it's reciprocal as well.
 Getting to work with SLPs makes me a better voice teacher.
 And has brought me further into this sort of overlapping world of singing voice specialist, vocologist, but also challenges my brain to keep up with what's going on with related fields.
 To help me also realize—guys—I also had a voice disorder that I was not aware of.
 I also am neurodivergent—that I was not aware of.
 And so helping me hold more space for myself and be more patient with myself and...

Speaker: Mhm.

Anna: Grow myself in ways that I would not have ever expected to go in.
 So I feel like the yapper has been shut down.
 I'm like trying—trying to find words.
 There are no words. It's just all feelings.
 You can't put that in a podcast, though, if you're not feeling the entities that...

Clare: What's that? Authenticity. Authenticity, right?
 Like when we bring our authenticity into the spaces that we exist in—and not just work in—we make space for this connection to be real.
 And I think as neurodivergent people, there's some degree of delicate unmasking that we do.
 To not be playing the part of, like, Clare the speech pathologist, but to be—to be human in a space and community with others.
 And have the humility and the openness to take these things from these experiences.
 Because if you're not ready to receive it, or let this change you—it won't.
 You have to be open to accepting, allowing these things to change you and shift your perspectives.
 And I think that's what—you know, when I think about the clinician that I'll be at the end of my career, whenever that is—I hope they're very different.
 I hope that I always change.
 And I hope that I always look to other fields too.
 Like I think that's another thing—in our training, I don't think—and again, this is coming from like, I did not train as a voice specialist, I didn’t do voice center—this is not something baked into me from the beginning like so many people who do end up in voice.
 I don't think we are instilled with the value of collaborating with other voice professionals.
 I think there’s an elitism to the degree, at times. And...

Speaker: Are.

Clare: There are voice teachers who are doing things that maybe they ought not—and that doesn't mean that the things they’re doing aren't valuable.
 And Maurice, I know you—you all were talking about this in a different podcast and it just got me going.
 But yeah.
 It doesn't have to be: "I look at the formants and then they're here."
 Like, what if it was rounder?
 That's something that for me—I had to make space for that in my practice.
 And it helps me connect with so many more people.
 The way that you talk about voice having flavors, having shapes—the way that we talk about ways of describing voice differently, without having a moral value to it.
 Good, bad.
 I think that in speaking voice we can be doing that too.
 And especially in gender-affirming voice—thinking about qualities of voice simply being options.

Speaker: Yeah.

Anna: Choices. Like you said.

Clare: You want nasality? Make it a choice. Always make it a choice.

Maurice: Wait, you didn't just say that to me.

Speaker: You're sharing that with...

Clare: Everyone! They're getting out there. They're getting around.

Anna: Y'all are calling me out.

Maurice: We are often, you know, as clinicians—and Anna and I are pretty open—in sharing both our clinical successes, the things that we feel really strong at, and the things that have been going well with our practice.
 And also pretty open about some of the challenges that we have as clinicians.
 I think they equally motivate us to continue going on.
 Is there anything you have been experiencing recently that feels like a clinical win or a voice clinician win—that you're like, "I really enjoy doing this, I feel like I'm in my flow, I'm in the zone?"

Clare: Yes. So I actually like working with some singers lately.
 And singers who are working on things that like I previously would have thought, "This is beyond me."
 Like someone who's working on singing Christine in Phantom—I would have previously said, "I have no business touching this."
And—and to like, take what I've learned in my work with Anna, and to be able to effectively apply...

Maurice: Yeah.

Clare: Like—like just getting the voice flopping around. Like—like, just like, who cares about the notes? Just like, let's just get it.
 And you know, tongue-jaw independence.
 I did not learn about that in grad school.
 I didn't know it was a thing.
 And like, even—like—I don't even think, Maurice, in speaking voice therapy we have this, right?
 It's not a concept that we bring to our work.
 The idea that the tongue and jaw can be the bestest of friends—and maybe a little codependent—and maybe they need to learn to move through the world...

Maurice: We changed the title of the podcast. This is the Tongue and Jaw Podcast.

Anna: This is one of my favorite things. I think every single one of my clients will be like, "Yeah, I never thought about tongue and jaw."

Clare: I think you have a type.

Maurice: You do have a type. Absolutely.

Clare: But yeah, like this idea of the malanga. I don't remember which one of you brought that to me. It was either both. You know, it's at this point—the things that you learn—they end up kind of rare.
And then you apply your own, like, your own language to it. Like the tongue and jaw being the bestest of friends and being codependent.
That's how I think of it now, having had that described to me in different ways by different people. You sort of develop your own—you integrate that into your own clinical style, and the way that you talk about these things.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Clare: And uh... yeah. Ahmahlungahs. I love it. And I sort of took on the role in my chorus as the unofficial, like—can I say voice bitch?

Anna: Yeah, absolutely.

Clare: Yeah, like voice bitch or throat dude. We're both.

Anna: Oh my God.

Clare: Round.

Anna: I picked a bad time to take a sip of water.

Clare: My apologies. It's beautiful. I love that—throat dude. I'm going to put that on my website, yes.
 And I was like, this works great because I'm gender fluid. So like, take a look at me, assess—make a guess—am I throat dude today? Is this voice pitch in front of me? Is it someone else? Secret third thing? Maybe.

Maurice: Anytime we find ourselves at the crossroads of USA and... I'm sold. I'm sold. We are giving yes, and. Both yes.

Clare: Yes. So my chorus, Puget Soundworks—we had three shows last weekend, and we had Hell Week, and it was really vocally intense.
And I take the—I claim the opportunity to work with people that are experiencing voice problems.

Yes, I provide education about allergy management.
It's been a real gift to connect with people who would not have otherwise ended up in a voice therapist’s office.
A lot of them would, first of all, never have thought of this being a thing—the voice bitch, or the throat dude, or secret third thing.
And just sort of that prevention aspect of our field that we don't always get to do.
We don't always get to get in with people before they're having a big enough problem where they need to see a laryngologist or a voice specialist.
And so that's been a real gift.
And just the chance to perform—to do music in a way that is expressive—has been really powerful to reconnect to for me.
I'm so grateful.

Anna: So that is a great segue, thinking about throat dude, into our final segment of this podcast, which is Tool Time.
Wow—bonus special effects this time, yeah.

Clare: Power tools.

Clare: Exactly. I tried to work on my Tim Allen, but oh no, I can't do it. I'll work it. I'll come back.

Anna: Another time. The sound effects that you bring to this are impeccable, so thank you for that. So Clare, I know you have listened to the podcast before, but just in case you folks out there listening—this is your first episode—Tool Time is where we talk about vocal tools or exercises that we have been using. And just to share, because this information is not proprietary—and that's part of the reason why we have a podcast, to yap about the cool stuff that we're doing, like our conversation today—so that other folks can incorporate that kind of stuff into their own practice, can learn and grow.
So I'm just going to keep yapping while I have the floor, to give you all some time to think, just in case you were not prepared for Tool Time, and talk about...
The Ahmhalangahs that you mentioned earlier. I cannot remember from whence this came—maybe just from my own brain cells—but this is one of my favorite exercises for tongue and jaw independence.
Except for the "M"—we can get a little closure there on the "M"—but it's all on one pitch.
We're singing this vowel, and as you move through the different consonants—other than that M closure—we don't need to clench our jaw together, right?
So can we do that NG? Can we do that L independently with our tongue without getting the jaw too involved?
And this is something, if you are doing bel canto, if you are singing in a Western classical style, to continue the vibrato throughout all of that, to practice that.
So that even our consonants are getting the spin there as well.
When people talk about putting your consonants in the flow of the voice, this can actually be a way to practice that.
So I haven't actually put that in the lineup for a while—I'll have to throw that back in for my current clients. So who's up next?

Maurice: I'm happy to take next.
So yeah, one thing—and mine is not a specific tool—however, a reminder to myself: I was recently working with a client that had a pretty significant neurologic event and has, like, a mixed flaccid-spastic dysarthria.
And just the power and benefit of taking your time and repetition.
So we were doing a lot of speech-based tasks as well as voicing.
And these clients always remind me of the importance of time and repetition.
And that things can take time—and it's not purely, "Oh, I understand a thing," but I need to experience this thing to understand the thing, right?
It's one thing for me to say, "Well, the tongue goes here, and then we voice here, and then we breathe here."
But it takes experiencing a thing to really understand it.
And giving our clients the time to experience the thing can help them understand it.
And so, I always feel like I'm—with a lot of my clients—going 80 miles an hour, flying through content and getting through songs.
And then with some of these clients, I'm like, "Oh man, we stop to a slow pace, a snail’s pace, a walk."
And those sessions are impactful, and they're important.
So creating space for that with all types of clients can be really beneficial.
Slow down and take your time, man.

Clare: And I mean, honestly, I think I'm going to change mine based on yours, because you're getting into, like, these principles of neuroplasticity, which is, you know—we're getting into multi-sensory learning. How many of these senses can I engage? How much biofeedback can I give the body? And again, how can I let this person experience reps? And I think one tool that I've been using lately—and one that I use a lot—is a distractor delay. So it's: do the thing.
 All right, now I'm going to talk about something. You know, I love to yap. I'm a yapper. I'm going to take your brain out of that moment and then I'm going to...

Maurice: Mhm.

Clare: Say, "OK, do that again." And do three. Pick your favorite—not pick the best—pick your favorite.  Which one did you like best? What did you like about it, if you know?  And I think that's a favorite tool.  If there's time, I have another like... a specific kinesthetic thing I could talk about, but—

Maurice: Please.

Clare: So I'm really jamming on breathing lately because we're all struggling. And again, with a heavily gender-affirming caseload, a lot of people are under really intense stress. And so multi-sensory approaches to breathing.

Clare: I've been really into using a TheraBand—which, again, kind of coming out of neuro-rehabilitation—TheraBands are everywhere.
 Everyone's PT or OT room has some TheraBand they're using for different things.
And this one, I believe, comes from Kari Reagan and potentially others—who knows at this point—but it's the idea of placing some feedback.
Like, wrapping a band around the lower ribs.
And I usually let them play up and down and figure out if there's a spot.
And then: can you feel yourself breathe into that?
Can you feel yourself move into the band?
Can you feel yourself come away from the band when we breathe to depletion—when we fully, fully empty?
Big fan of the Hoberman sphere too, as a representation of what's going on as we breathe: inhale, hold, exhale for eight. It’s a nice focal point.
And I’m always wanting to engage as many parts of the brain as possible when working on breathing.
Because again, for some of us, it’s hard to feel breathing—or breathing doesn’t feel the way that we were told it should.

Anna: There's that "should" again.

Clare: It should.

Maurice: Those shoulds.

Anna: Down with the shoulds. Nasty stuff. Well Clare, thank you so much for being our featured yapper on today’s episode of Yap Sesh. It has been such a delightful conversation.
If you would like to be found by the listeners—where can folks find you?

Clare: Folks can find me on Instagram at @aclarevoice, and it's like Clare, not "Claire," and voice.
And also—I can't wait for the documentation course!
That is absolutely my weakest point as a clinician, is my documentation, and the things that you'll be getting into there—I can't wait.
I'm so excited, and I'm recommending it to anyone I can think of.
Because that communication with physicians, and getting all that stuff dialed in—it feels like a lot of pressure sometimes.

Maurice: Yeah.
Yeah. And I think for me, it comes from a lot of trial and error doing this work full-time.
You have always been someone who I personally enjoy being in community with.
I have a lot of respect for you as a human and as a clinician, and appreciate how open you are about the journey you're taking as a voice clinician.
And then of course, all the work that you do online—not just for voice clinicians, but in general—in sharing information and guiding people toward resources.
And so it's inspiring.
It's fun to be around.
And I feel like you are a human and a clinician that I will be able to look back on—the trail, the journey—and see, like similar to Anna, right, there's a ton of folks who have interacted with you who are changed for the better, in the words of Wicked...

Maurice: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're also—you’re a wonderful yapper. I mean, professional yapping—it's just great.

Clare: Thank you! Oh, the yap level is excellent. It's just an honor, genuinely.
And I've gotten to praise Anna a great deal, but I'm genuinely in awe of you a lot of the time—the ways that you not only use what you do to improve the lives of the people that you might work with, but the ways that you invite people into these spaces, into voice spaces that they might not otherwise feel welcome in. You have such warmth and compassion. And I'm just grateful to be in community with you. I've learned so much and can't wait to see what's next. Always.

Maurice: Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for joining us for Yap Sesh. We look forward to yapping with you soon.

Anna: Yap some more!  Join us for Voice Notes: Practical Documentation for Voice Clinicians in the replay, and you can always find our courses at voiceproed.com/courses, and on Instagram and Facebook. And wherever you find your podcasts, we are here. We are yapping. We'll see you soon. Byeeee!