Liberating the Voice

A professional voice user all my adult life, I was devastated when I was diagnosed with laryngeal dystonia in 2022. This is an incurable neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable spasms in the vocal muscles and makes speaking an unbearable strain.

Laryngeal dystonia (formerly known as spasmodic dysphonia) is one of a number of 'focal dystonias' that affect individual parts of the body. While its cause remains a mystery, some neurologists suspect an occupational link in many cases. For instance, long-time professional voice users, like broadcasters or singers, seem prone to laryngeal dystonia. Here in Australia, singer Jenny Morris has it. In the US, National Public Radio presenter Diane Rehm is another victim.

Focal dystonias can also affect instrumental musicians and professional athletes. Concert violinists, pianists, flautists and guitarists can suddenly lose control of their fingers. Brass and woodwind players also can get dystonias in the mouth, destroying their embochure. Pro-golfers can get 'the yips' and gymnasts can succumb to 'the twisties'.

A Software Problem

In early stages, these symptoms are often dismissed as performance anxiety or a physical condition like repetitive strain injury. But dystonia is more a 'software' than a 'hardware' problem. Essentially, something goes awry in the brain's control centre, sending bad neural signals to frequently used muscles and causing them to contort in ways the user didn't intend.

When I was doing conference presentations and my voice started to sound strained, organisers would offer me throat lozenges for my 'cold'. But my throat and vocal cords were fine. This is a network fault between mind and body. When asked how it feels, I tell people it is like being strangled from the inside. And the more I try to control it, the tighter the grip on my larynx becomes.

The upshot is those of us with dystonia who have built our lives around exercising a particular skill at a high level – whether it be public speaking, singing, or playing an instrument, lose control of the very parts of our anatomies that allowed us to do what we love. It can be a brutal adjustment, destroying sufferers' confidence, forcing career changes and creating a state of almost permanent anxiety.

While there's no cure for dystonia, neurologists can treat the symptoms with regular (and painful) botox injections to the affected muscles. The botox essentially kills the nerve endings and stops the muscle hyperactivity for a while. In laryngeal dystonia, a side effect is the loss of the voice completely for a few weeks. The good voice returns for a little while, then the spasms start up all over again. Sometimes, the botox doesn't hit its target, forcing a return to the clinic .

A Back-Up Strategy

So while the botox provides sporadic relief, I needed back-up strategies and started to research alternative ways of managing the disorder. Alexander Technique had regularly been cited to me as a way of bringing body and mind back into alignment, increasing neuroplasticity and easing the frustration of constantly fighting one's own anatomy. Indeed, the man who developed the technique was an Australian actor who suffered voice loss on stage, which he put down to bad postural habits.

I eventually enquired with the Sydney group, ‘Bodyminded’, and was referred to Chloe Chung – herself a professional musician and internationally accredited teacher of Alexander Technique. Over the past two years, Chloe has quietly observed me in regular sessions, while providing verbal and gentle physical cues to help liberate my voice.

It was in one particular class that she delivered the breakthrough insight that

has changed my thinking not only around my dystonia but my view of myself. It’s also given me confidence to speak in public again.

Noticing I was struggling to get my voice out without strain, Chloe asked what would happen if I moved the air up through my body in a way that cooperated with the relationship between my head and my spine. “In other words, what would happen if you asked all of your self to move in a way that supports your desire to communicate?”’

A penny dropped. Even before dystonia, I had been fighting my own body, or at least treating it as a passive support mechanism for my mind. So when the dystonia appeared, I naturally tried to ‘fix it’ via intellectual exertion. When this failed,  my stress and frustration only increased and the vocal strain ratcheted up even further.

 By contrast, Alexander Technique and the 10-minute meditation I do every day now

are teaching me to cooperate with my own internal design rather than fighting it. Practically, this means quietly inviting the neck and spine to free up before I speak. It also means allowing my breath and whole body to support my voice, without trying to force sound. It’s a liberating feeling. Essentially, I am ‘thinking’ with my whole self, not just my mind, and not just my body.

A Sense of Agency

Now, as a journalist by profession, I'm naturally sceptical and am particularly wary about claims by alternative therapy advocates that they can 'cure' rare ailments resistent to traditional medicine. But with dystonia, the stress and anxiety it provokes tend to compound its effects. So anything that helps deal with those allied symptoms and restores even a limited sense of agency has to be considered.

And the fact is that all us, with or without dystonia, can over time build up inefficient habits of movement. These patterns - like slumping or tightening our necks or over-tensing certain muscles - often occur in response to stress or emotion or even due to spending too long sitting at a computer.

Alexander Technique offers a way to bring these automatic physical responses to a conscious level. In my case, it was to wait a moment before speaking, as I note where I am holding unnecessary tension. I then give my body gentle mental directions that invite length and expansion through the head, neck and spine, rather than contraction. The resulting voice isn't perfect, but it's far more resonant than when I'm tensing up and trying to force sound out through the spasms.

“We’re looking at waking up new pathways for speaking,” Chloe says of the technique. “Using the old pathways seem to exacerbate the dystonia, so awakening and practising using these new pathways gives you more choices for your communication.”

My insight from all this is that Alexander Technique provides a way to cooperate with one's own design, rather than trying to control it. It's about letting go of old bad habits and allowing your natural instincts to reassert themselves. And It's about being kind to your whole self. Yes, I sometimes relapse into old patterns. But through daily practice, I slowly build up new processes.

It takes work. It takes a different mind/body set. But with the right teacher and the right attitude, positive change can occur and an incurable condition becomes much easier to manage.

Oh, and I'm back doing public speaking again.

The author spoke on communication at a conference in Melbourne in August, 2025. (Photo by Tracey Spicer.)

 READING RECOMMENDATIONS:

• 'Tremor' - Sonya Voumard. Veteran Australian journalist Sonya Voumard in her auto-biography describes her life-long battle with tremor and dystonia. She recently underwent experimental brain surgery. Read my review here.

• Cathy Madden on the Alexander Technique - Madden is principal lecturer at the University of Washington's professional actor training program and a renowned expert on Alexander Technique. This is a good one-page summary of what it is and how it works.