288 - The Science and Power of Voice w/Kerry Mandulak

Today I'm joined by Kerry Mandaluk, a speech language pathologist and professor, for a unique conversation weaving storytelling and science. 

We go deep on all things voice, breath, speech, and leadership. We geek out on the anatomy and physiology of speech production, how our voices relate to our identities, emotional expression, and impact as teachers, and why we may want to consciously train and direct our voices.

For semi-occluded vocal exercises and other nerdy stuff recommended by Kerry, visit Voice Science Works here

Weekly stories by email from Bonnie’s HERE

Connect with Bonnie: Instagram, Email (hello@bonnieweeks.com), Website
Listen to Bonnie's other podcast Sexy Sunday HERE

The music for this episode is Threads by The Light Meeting.
Produced by: Grey Tanner

Transcript

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (00:03.15)
Welcome to Yoga Strong, y'all. I am so excited to have you here today because I have a guest. And if you have been listening to the podcast for a hot sec, then you know that the most recent episodes outside of the teacher conversations, the studio owner conversations that I have about once a quarter with two of my friends, that I haven't had a lot of guests on the podcast recently. It's been a lot of solo podcasting, which I have loved. And also dropping into the season where I'm going to be bringing on some more guests.

And so today I have somebody with me that is atypical to anything else that we have had on the podcast, which is so exciting to me. And it's going to be nerdy. And it's going to be especially for people who are interested in using their voice in front of a room, which if you're a teacher, hundred percent it's that. And of course this translates to so many ways that you might be living in your lives and in different positions that you might be holding, right? Depending on

if it's not just in the yoga room, but in other professions and opportunities. So this is going to be good. I have with me my friend, Carrie, who happens to be a close neighbor. And we met Carrie Mandulak, right? That's how you say last time. Carrie Mandulak. I guess we don't say each other's names in sense we're neighbors. like, hello Carrie Mandulak.

Kerry Mandulak (01:14.493)
You

Kerry Mandulak (01:19.346)
Yes, handle that.

Kerry Mandulak (01:26.726)
is that you.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:29.189)
So Carrie and I met because we have kids that are about the same age that play the same sports. So this is like one of those things that sometimes you're like, oh, there's like really cool people around me. And we just like, we're a couple blocks away and how I think sometimes we can, I don't know, get into our same rhythms where we're living and the people that we see and meet and the ways that we flow and...

how close we are to having a whole new relationship, a whole new friendship, a whole new perspective given to us just by proximity actually to some people around you that you have no idea even exist. And then you're like, hi, new friend. So this is that. So hi, Kerry. So Kerry is a professor of speech language pathology at Pacific University. And she has been a speech pathologist since 1998.

Kerry Mandulak (02:13.458)
Bye, Ronnie.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (02:24.754)
currently then is teaching. So even though she practiced for a long time as helping people as speech pathologists, now she's really helping other people. So really being this ripple effect, which as somebody who teaches teachers myself, like this is such a powerful place to be and to watch other teachers be able to take that on. And so for you to help other people who are interested in speech pathology, be able to then take that and serve others.

So you have a lot of expertise in some things, which is fantastic, but you're also so approachable. And I think of, well, and I think of what you do and how you're trying to help other people with their voice that has to be so led from the front. As I think of somebody being a leader, somebody being willing to put themselves out there, you're like, okay, this is who I am. Here's how I'm gonna use my voice. You're like, I'm a talker. I'm gonna like lean in and do the things, but you're...

Kerry Mandulak (02:58.942)
Thanks, Joe.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (03:20.562)
So you're like fast to say hi, you're fast to give compliments, you're fast to engage with other people. And the gift of that, I think that gives other people a permission to also be themselves because you are showing up as yourself. And even in our short amount of times that you and I have had opportunities to like drop in, I'm like, okay, she's hella cool.

Cause you're just like, well, this is who I am. And this is how I've arrived in the world. And then, and some of our, our interchanges even on Instagram about some teaching things and voice things. And I had just, I've been so excited to continue our conversations here. So thank you for being you and for saying yes today.

Kerry Mandulak (04:00.255)
thanks, Bonnie. I feel so many of the same things about you. I felt like when we sat down next to each other at that happy hour, that one time, I mean, how had we not met yet through all of our youth sports, you know, activities. And it was like instant connection, friendship, of conversation. And I think you asking questions and being interested in things that I was nerdy about, like was like, here's someone who wants to talk about the nerdy things. And I was like, let's go.

let's do it. And so it's been really fun and right, you live literally behind me in the neighborhood behind me. I was like, and behind, you know, someone that I already knew and I was like, Oh, we've just been so close, but yet so far. So I'm so glad we're connected now.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (04:35.373)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (04:44.236)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so close. Well, and I love the nerdy side. think when and even before we started recording, you were like, yoga brings kind of a can bring a spiritual aspect, which I 100 % believe there's like this.

the spiritual side, I'm going to say like this woo side, right? Like people are like all woo woo. And it's like, kind of can go in big swings, like anything. We can go to extremes anywhere. But yoga for me definitely was a thing when I was in my own faith transition and leaving organized religion as like a growing up Mormon and finding yoga as a physical practice, but then realizing that yoga showed me that I could.

that my spirituality belonged to me, not to the religion I was a part of. And that really it goes into values. Like what do I value? And how do I value being a learner? How do I value being kind? How do I value taking care of community? How do I value like a seat in myself and listening to myself?

How do I think about like how to care for the world and my connection with myself, with other people, with the world around me? How do I meet people with compassion and attention and presence? And that the spirituality was like all these roots of things that of course my upbringing helped support me in. But then the small ways that even teachers presented things within yoga class, even if they're talking about gratitude,

which that can be a theme of class, right? Graduated or playfulness or presence or being willing to do something hard and stay with it. It was these points that was like, oh, this feels familiar. And it goes to all these people that can believe all different things. that spirituality was, which we know, like if you study, if you're a religious studies person, you're like, oh, we're trying to do the same thing everywhere. so, so yes, I think yoga can give this,

Kerry Mandulak (06:23.454)
Okay.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (06:51.404)
opportunity to like lean into spirituality. And if we go deep yoga, it really does stem from some religious place and can be a whole like practice, but that's definitely not like the extreme that I'm going for. it's that, but then it's also this nerdy side. And so when I talk to teachers and that kind of just to give us a framework here, when I help guide teachers and be like, okay, what are we doing in the classroom?

And I really focus a lot on sequencing on the movement. And so at the same time that you can step in and I talk about storytelling in, in a kind of a different way. So how you can storytell slash theme, but I use the word storytell for it and how you can do that to set it up. it's we're doing more of the movement, but I want you to be hella good at sequencing. And there's a nerdy side to it where I'm like, I want you be able to explain what and why, cause I, I put it under the, the quotes of like, we're doing creative sequencing here.

but to really root it in some science so that people have something to stand on. So it doesn't just feel so fluffy in a way. You're like, why are we doing what we're doing? And how can I explain it? Where a lot of times when we're taught something, we just do it like our teacher said to do it without maybe an understanding of why, of what and why and where. And so it is part of my desire to give teachers that.

Kerry Mandulak (07:58.496)
All right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (08:16.814)
And then there can be the layers of spirituality and like self actualizing and owning your voice that become part of the experience that I think are all of these layers combined together. So when I come to that, I think this is how you land in here too with voice.

Kerry Mandulak (08:33.265)
Right, absolutely. And I think I hear like two things that in all of that is the way that you teach. And again, it's just been mostly from observation, right? I've not take I can't wait for, you know, garage yoga with you. It's gonna be wonderful. But Sunday morning neighborhood yoga, but I think watching you teach and how you layer it's like one layer at the layer at the layer like all of that is like what I do in my classroom. It's like

foundational information, add the complexity, add the complexity, and that's how we build and that's how we learn and that's how students can be successful. So I see like you teaching teachers and I'm teaching students and I think that is what makes it so successful. And so I can see that formula in there, even though it's something completely different. And, you know, as we've talked about being a person with ADHD, my brain is really...

good at making connections. So I can see the connections like, I understand that. I don't understand yoga, right? Necessarily, but I understand what you're doing. And it's really cool to see. And that's why I think I have such deep respect for what you're doing and how you're doing it, because I'm like, that's how we learn. That's the best way for us to learn. And when you talk about storytelling, I know there's not a, there's, will say that one of the areas I'm not strong in, in speech pathology is like,

brain anatomy and understanding all of that function. It's like, you can't be good at everything. And so I've sort of owned that, but I do know that storytelling activates the part of our brain that helps us remember things. so when you tell a story, someone's going to remember it better than if you just say the things, right? And so I incorporate stories, examples, case studies into my class and I've had to learn how to do it well.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (10:08.813)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (10:25.993)
so that students aren't like, wait, why is she talking about this? Right? Like I try, I ground it and I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna tell you a story that's gonna show this point. But then that helps them remember that really important thing that I was talking about. So there's a few things about the brain that I know well, and that's one of them. So I think that's really important. But I think that part of what you said about the way I show up is absolutely because I know my values now.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (10:36.931)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (10:51.854)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (10:51.879)
Values alignment is what has allowed me to be who I am and to embrace who I am instead of questioning and I spent so much of my academic career taking advice from others and being like well they gave me the advice so I should do this thing because otherwise that's rude or something like that instead of really owning what I wanted to do and how I wanted to show up in academia and it wasn't until I went through some coaching and

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (10:56.366)
Mmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (11:10.572)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (11:18.109)
discovered my values. Usually they live on a post-it note like right around here on my, so they're always in front of me as a visual reminder, but now I can operate from a space of that's my value, that is why I do this thing. That is instead of being someone saying, questioning how I show up, I have a freedom and a groundedness in my values and I think that we all should do that work.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (11:41.582)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (11:43.55)
so that we know, so that we can show up really authentically and not second guess and not wonder, why am I doing this thing? It's like, cause I know myself now. I know myself so much better through values. And then that's where you operate from and people will choose it or they might not, but it's like, you are, that's how I'm gonna show up.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (11:54.893)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (12:00.854)
Yeah, yeah. When you're saying you're putting them on a sticky note, what do you have written on your sticky note?

Kerry Mandulak (12:06.685)
My values are, I thought you might ask me. So I just want to remember all of them. So one is collaboration. So sorry, kind of like in my order, like if I use my visual memory, reflection, valuing reflection and kind of thinking back on like how things went or like how important that is. So reflection and collaboration, enthusiasm is also, I would say a superpower for me.

Curiosity. And then my fifth one is really two words. kind of cheated, you you're supposed to have so many values, but whatever, is agency and independence. So making my own choices, doing the things, like it's sort of an idea of autonomy maybe that is really important to me. And that I've learned that like following my own path, what I think is important, what I, and that's when that happened, that's when I also became way more successful in my.

position too with my job. now I have the confidence.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (13:07.817)
Yeah.

Well, because you're doing what you want.

Kerry Mandulak (13:16.583)
It's like, I'm doing what I want, but also because it is how I'm built, who I am, what I care about, right? And so those things, and then I can, you know, like how I show up in the classroom, like that was a note I made somewhere, it's like how I approach students, like how you approach teachers, right? It's like, where it's mutual respect. It's with kindness and compassion. It's with flexibility. It's with things. And I am teaching a course this summer online.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (13:18.766)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (13:45.137)
adjunct at another university just for fun and for salary. But it was a little lovely bump. But one of the students just said, you're one of the best teachers I've ever had because you just were willing to engage in a conversation about our quizzes and our grades. Because like the grading was really, I didn't set up the class, I'm just facilitating it. And I was like, that's easy. It's like, that's not hard to do that. But that

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (14:03.971)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (14:09.271)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (14:11.294)
That thing said that I'm her best professor. I almost wanted to say like, you must not have had very good professors, you know, in the past, because that to me is a really simple thing. It's like, I can approach you with mutual respect and kindness and flexibility. That's super easy. Right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (14:25.112)
So easy. It's so easy. Yeah. Oftentimes when I go into, flow school and I'm going to work with teachers, right. And I had this moment I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it. And I'm like, I like, feels like such a, like it truly feels. And the word is mantle in my, in my head, right? Like that, that's like this responsibility of like, people are trusting me. People are, they have said yes. So like, I think I have something to learn here.

Kerry Mandulak (14:42.208)
Okay.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (14:50.254)
I love that even some people on flow school, especially when they come in person, they're like, my gosh, I just know this person online. Is this person even gonna be real? Is this a scam? you know, like, so I think people have all sorts of nerves and going into a thing, especially because of social stuff, there are social online things. But I think for me, I have this really conscious moment where I'm like, okay, what do they want? And really just dealing things down into like two to three things to like.

Like it's easy to remember. And I'm like, really what teachers want to do here, like my job is like, they want to learn and they want to share. Which means like, want, I have something to teach them and I need to listen to them. Right? Like this is the different ways to Vic feel like they have value, to feel like they are seen and to feel like they are heard. And like, this is, this is my job. Right. And how do I step into that? And, and then it is, it's this mutual respect to be like, I happen to be.

Kerry Mandulak (15:25.536)
Mmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (15:44.374)
at the front of the room at this moment, but any of you could be at the front of room for something here. So let's show up like.

Kerry Mandulak (15:50.197)
Right. Something, and that's, think what has also led me, my research in speech pathology is actually not clinical research. I've sort of taken a bit of a turn and kind of done something a little bit differently than a lot of people have done where I study admissions and like how we admit students into programs, which then, you know, once you, you have to get a master's degree to practice speech pathology. So graduate admissions is the thing. And for so long, our systems have been

very much gatekeeping feeling or a lot of the same, which is why we have a really non-diverse workforce in general. And it turns out the people we serve are not 96 % women or 92 % white. So like we need to be, when you work with a speech pathologist, and I think we'll get into this a little bit, there is what the person brings, what the client brings.

what you bring and then what you all do together. Like you have, and I think in the past we've all believed that while you go to school, you get trained, you like bring in this expertise and you're like, hey, do all these things because you're having this issue is that I'm the expert and I'm gonna show you, right? What to do better when in fact it's, what they've, we've learned is that only 15 % of the outcome in therapy is actually about the actual intervention, the actual, thing that you do. 30 % of it is about the,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (17:14.445)
Hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (17:18.986)
connection you have with your client. And so I can also let students like let it go and be like, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be a good speech language pathologist. And you can be a person who has this other, you know, how do you create that relationship? You essentially are like, I view you positively when you come in and you meet with a client and you express in whatever way I view you positively, 30 % of your work is already done.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (17:20.771)
Wow.

Kerry Mandulak (17:48.577)
And I tell the students, I'm like, very early on, was like, we didn't accept you because we thought you were gonna be the smartest. We thought you were gonna be people that could do that work, the 30 % work, right? so that, was like, so take that burden off and just be it, be here, be with your person. that's, you already know how to do that. You already know how to do that work. And so...

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (17:59.714)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (18:15.669)
I think my work with admissions, what it's done is I was like, there are way more people who could be a speech language pathologist. We need way more people. Communication is like core to who we are as humans. It's a huge responsibility to be a speech pathologist. And it's not just, know, we like help people with their R sound or, know, we work with people who stutter, but like there's, there's so much more to it. And I think that like that's so core to who we are. So how can we make students feel?

like they belong, like they're seen, their points are valued. And can we get people with incredibly different lived experiences in that classroom? Cause they also learn from each other, right? Your teachers that you work with in flow school are all also learning from each other.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (18:54.37)
Yep. Yep.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (19:00.354)
Yeah, absolutely.

Kerry Mandulak (19:01.727)
Right? So it's not just moving at the front, being like, do what I do. Cause I'm Bonnie and I'm the expert. Right? But right. You're it's all collaborative.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (19:09.784)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like one of my favorite things actually about flow school. so I'm 41 and I feel like I'm straddling at the current moment, this, this age gap of like 20 to 60. And I will have people in the room together that are between 20 to 60 who are coming to learn at flow school. And it feels like such a gift to be in a room with such a diverse age gap and

Kerry Mandulak (19:21.087)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (19:39.242)
And there's so many things about that. I mean, because there's a lot of women who are like nearing 60 or about 60 who are like, I don't know, I think I'm too late to like to the game. And I'm like, absolutely not. And so like, that's really exciting. And then exciting because like people like, I could be like your mom over here, like other people. And it's like beautiful. that there's so there's age gap. And then there's also experience gap, where there's people who are in the room who have even stepped in front of the room to teach an actual public class.

And there's people in the room who have been teaching for 20 years. And to give them something, all of them something new, enough so that it feels like all those people can have something to take away from the flow school experience. It's like different than other experiences. which is really cool. It's cool that it hits like this crossover. But yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (20:27.413)
very, it's very cool. and then like, who knew there were all these crossovers between our wildly different professions. I love it.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (20:35.32)
But I think that that's what, I think that's what, the longer I do this more like anybody who's a creative, I'm like, I understand the creative process or like how you like lean into like finding something and then like sharing it and then just being a teacher of a thing. And I love connecting. Like this is part of my nerdism, like, I want to talk to you because the way that we teach is there is like a, how do you teach the flow into a thing? How do you like give people

Just enough information and then a little bit of experience and then them being able to teach that so that they can ingrain it. And then we repeat this cycle and it's these little steps. And it's part of why I've restructured my flow school online to be a membership. Because I'm like, okay, we got to take these little steps and come back. it. Because you grow in that way. You can't just blast it because you'll end up not implementing it as much. Yeah, totally.

Kerry Mandulak (21:26.337)
And doing it in community is so important.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (21:31.31)
Well, and I think before we jump into like some, let's say with sciency, but I think the, just to touch on the point though, where you're saying, you know, to really be with them and not just speak at them. And I love your 30 % and talking about percentage. And it's something that, that I use that phrase with teachers. I'm like, how do you be with them? How do you let them know that you're there and like also human and also like messy and

you are going to show up to class and like, shit's going to be hitting the fan like in your regular life, but you have to show up and teach and like, that's the same. Like they might be in the exact same place. So how are we with each other and how do we storytell and like, share our humanness without having the expectation of them holding us at all. Cause that's where there is a service provider, but also like, not trying to be separate from them. which is not everybody's of course,

things. Some people are like, I want to be the guru, which I'm like, that is not what I want to be. Like, do not pit us on me. Like, real ass human over here. But really that like being with somebody that's like then that it makes such a difference. So I love that you're even sharing that with your students to be like, this is why we chose you because you're gonna be with each other.

Kerry Mandulak (22:49.057)
Right, you have those skills. You didn't have to come to grad school to learn how to be a person that could be with your clients. That's what our admissions process is about, is about finding those. And that's what I've been sort of pushing at the national level too. And for the past eight years, it's really getting people to understand that that humans, I'm sorry, humans, students are humans also, just like us, right? And that we can all be in together, but

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (22:55.672)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (23:18.561)
The word for that in the research is therapeutic alliance. And I thought you would also love to know those terms too, because that's what it is. It's an alliance. And when students leave my class, I also teach a class about stuttering, which is very near and dear to my heart and overlaps a lot with voice, but they walk out and they're just like, therapeutic alliance. And then they talk about it the rest of their time in our grad program. I was like, if that's all you walk away with, sure.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:23.203)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (23:48.321)
That's great.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:49.368)
So therapeutic alliance, meaning that you're, just say more about this.

Kerry Mandulak (23:54.251)
so therapeutic alliances, an aspect of the therapeutic process that is, that's the 30%. Right? So it's that if we just want to like cover the whole, you know, kind of circle, it's a, it's a theory about common, it's called common factors theory that really there's all different methods, right? And we see it, right? There's all different ways to treat anxiety. There's all different ways to treat stuttering. There's all different ways. And essentially what we're doing is we're doing an intervention to get an outcome. Right? So.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (24:02.456)
Okay.

Kerry Mandulak (24:24.662)
Basically, the whole idea with common factors is that all therapeutic processes have common factors in them that contribute to the outcome. And only 15 % of that outcome can be attributed to the actual thing that you're doing. So the actual method, the actual techniques, the actual sort of things. And then 30 % of it is this therapeutic alliance.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (24:40.771)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (24:52.246)
40 % of it is what the clinician brings. And then there's another 15 % that is like completely leaving my brain now because I'm trying to think about it, but I'm sure I'll think about it in like 20 minutes and I'll come back to it. But it's like, it's basically what does the client bring? What does the clinician bring? And then what are you doing together? It all adds up to a hundred.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:11.861)
What does the client bring 5 % then?

Kerry Mandulak (25:14.914)
No, it's, let me think, it's 15 and 15 and then 30 and 40. The client is bringing 40%. Oh, I know what it is. Sorry, got it, Bonnie. I just needed a second. The other 15 % is really to me, my favorite part of it, is that the client has hope for change.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:19.886)
Okay, 13, 14, gotcha.

Kerry Mandulak (25:36.242)
and that they believe, it makes me get a little bit teary-eyed. They believe that change is possible.

Kerry Mandulak (25:46.307)
Isn't that like that they can do it. Like people have to believe in your flow school, right? That they could actually do it. So it's a little bit about it's like you bring the expertise and the credibility and the, know, so people have to believe in you. The client has all the things that they're bringing in, right? So your teachers that come to that have like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:55.267)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (26:07.171)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (26:12.3)
their home life, their experience, all those factors, right? How old they are, how much experience they have, what they think of themselves, all that kind of thing. And then there's like the combination of you two, which is Therapeutic Alliance. But then there's that other little piece that is, can I do this thing? How cool is that? Yeah. I'm so glad I remembered.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (26:27.95)
It's so cool. Like that makes me like feel all the other things. Well, this makes me feel all the things too. think this is like.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (26:40.238)
I think that people are so nervous when they first are stepping into things and into teaching. so taking this to the yoga room, what I have been doing at Flow School is working with teachers who already have their initial trainings, which is a wild variety. Like as many types of people out there, there could be trainings. There tries to be some governing bodies for yoga, but there's not really a governing body. And Yoga Alliance was like a governing body, but it...

didn't do a good job and people don't like it's hapsies and I don't care about it. Like there's not, there's no support in it. Like there's no reason for it. Um, cause there can be a lot of programs that are gone through yoga Alliance or that they get certified or like, okayed through them that are not awesome. So it's like, and it can be both. could like have a not awesome one that's not, and you're to have awesome on all sides. like, it, so it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Um,

So I get a wide variety of people who come and so it's not total noobs. So there's like not quite the nervousness of like, I going to pass? Can I learn the things? Can I? So people are coming with something already, which is really beautiful to work with these people. But when like it's been interesting to have been doing flow school for it'll be five years, actually five years this month is August five years.

Kerry Mandulak (28:03.234)
Amazing. Happy anniversary. Congratulations on something amazing.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (28:06.206)
August of 2020, I mean, I've been doing this for a minute. I've done it 23 times in person and online, but the things that I did not expect it to do or expect it to be, and I think this idea of what somebody has in hope to change or to stand up in themselves, to give themselves permission, permission has become a huge piece of it. Can I give myself permission to do this thing?

And that like, much like my own personal journey of like, how did I land here? How did I create flow school? It was literally me giving myself permission. I was like, okay, here's this I learned, here's this I learned. And also people just started asking me questions. like, you're doing something different. I'm like, what am I doing? So then trying to be really conscious, making my unconscious thing conscious to myself so I could actually teach it and then have like the groundwork for like why I was doing it. And that...

that was just coming from me. So anything that's coming from anybody else is like also valid. Like you just have to give yourself permission, but it's scary. You have to have a lot of courage and curiosity, but you have to have that hope and the connection piece. I think it's just, you know, one of my favorite stories, I'll tell this and then can keep going. But I want to say it was like two years ago, there was a group online.

Kerry Mandulak (29:10.636)
Sure.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (29:27.692)
had done flow school and one of the women connected with me maybe like two months later and was like, hey, I just wanted to let you know that because I went through flow school, I learned that I could trust myself. And because of that, she's like, I grew up in a highly conservative Christian religion, but I had this dream to write a romance novel. And because I learned to trust myself in flow school,

Kerry Mandulak (29:40.61)
Mmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (29:57.518)
I wrote a romance novel and participated in the October writing month where you write every day. She wrote 700 pages or whatever it was. She's like, I wrote it and it was actually because of full school that I did. I'm like,

Kerry Mandulak (30:04.611)
Right, right.

Kerry Mandulak (30:13.687)
You gave her permission to trust herself, right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (30:16.35)
Like, I'm like, that's not something I could have planned on. That's not something, and this is not here to like, mean, myself on the back is literally to pat her on the back, like that she did the work to like sit with herself and be like, I'm gonna be okay if I try something new. And I'm gonna give myself permission to be bigger than I thought that I was okay being and like, and trust myself. that, like.

Like her win is my win. I'm just like, okay, if that's gonna be what happens and like people free themselves to like do the thing that they want and they love, like there's nothing better.

Kerry Mandulak (30:50.643)
And you and I were, you know, joking ahead of time about, you know, compliments and how a compliment can go very far with me, right? But sometimes it is that compliment is also permission giving. And I had a conversation with a person who I view as a mentor and she gave me permission to say, love this, like you love admissions, like you love talking about it, you're doing the work, you're a leader. There is a science to this.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (31:02.86)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (31:20.041)
Someone needs to study it and it should be you.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (31:22.926)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (31:24.705)
And that's when my entire professional life changed. And because she gave me just like that, it was like the nudge over the line. I knew I loved it. I knew it was a great idea. I knew that like people needed to hear about it all of that, but just like that. And it was a compliment, but it was also permission. And then that changed literally everything. And so when can we be that for other people?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (31:46.179)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (31:52.216)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (31:52.834)
Like we can do that. And it was very easy for her to say it. She just, and that was my launch. Like I literally, like I left that event and I launched and now here I am. So it's really exciting. But I, and that's what I want to be for students. And I want to be like, I see that you have this strength or that you have this interest and there is a place for that. And let's like, go for it. Stop trying to be good at everything. Like.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (32:05.56)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (32:18.604)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (32:21.431)
Find the thing you love. There's a Howard Thurman quote about finding what it is that you love and let it set you on fire because what we need is more people that are set on fire. I'm so sorry, Howard Thurman, that I did not say it exactly, but that's the quote. It's like, that's what we need is people who are on fire for something. You have to find that thing. And she's not here. And then she did.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (32:42.508)
Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, and what I like saying, like, people are moved when you are moved. Like, if you are, like, are lit up, then, like, that's how you move others. People are really, really moved.

Kerry Mandulak (32:52.013)
That's where I think my enthusiasm, superpower comes. Like I always tell the students, know, course evaluations are a thing, right? And they are deeply flawed and biased and all these things. But I always tell students, and I tell students that, I was like, so you have a responsibility when you fill these out, just so you know, it's not just a casual thing. said, also I've never been denied.

my enthusiasm in the class. People might be like, you're not just, you know, you're disorganized or you tell too many stories or I don't like it when you get emotional and blah, blah, blah. But they're like, but six, you know, hi, whatever the highest thing is, they're like, you are enthusiastic. I was like, no one denies me my enthusiasm. I was like, that is my, that is, that is my like ticket. was like, that's what I got. And so that's how I know it's my, it's one of my values is to be enthusiastic. Cause I think it takes vulnerability to be enthusiastic.

but it comes easy to me, so I lean into it. So, bye.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (33:47.106)
Yeah, totally. Okay, so I want to get nerdy, before that I want to know if you're...

Did you always feel like your voice was valued? And the way that you lean into sharing your voice now is like very enthusiastic, to use that word. And does it feel like that has always been who you were? And was there a journey then to get there?

Kerry Mandulak (34:18.019)
I do not feel like it was that I've been in spaces, I will say this, I've been in spaces where I have not felt valued. And I did also not feel successful in those spaces because of that. And one was, you know, a professional position. I was within,

a department that I just was having a really hard time finding how I fit, how I worked, how, you know, and what was important to me. And as I, and it was my very first academic appointment, so it's really hard to sort of learn how to find yourself in academia. And what I found was that I was really gravitating towards helping students find.

who they wanted to be. So I was mentoring guys in the profession because we have so few people who identify as male in our profession. And so I would meet them and I'd like, you you need to be mentored by this other male SLP and go see how different people do it and all that kind of stuff to try to help them. And so that's just one example. But I was finding that like my connection with students and helping them move along was really important.

and that wasn't particularly valued. And then also just who I was and how my brain operates. I didn't know for a long time that emotional dysregulation is something that comes with ADHD, right? That like my, you cry so easily or you cry at things, like is actually part of how my brain works. It's not something that, it's not that it's not under my control, but it's like part of my like literal, you know, structure in my skull. And

I use it that people at the place where I worked used to call crying, pulling a Mandelk. So my emotional expression and my enthusiasm was sort of like a, and I was like, there are miracles happening in this basement that we were in. Like that's where our department was and it in the basement. was like, there are things happening here. And they're like, you pull on a Mandelk again?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (36:14.71)
Hmm.

Bill and I.

Kerry Mandulak (36:36.962)
And so like that emotional vulnerability and willingness to see the humanity in students wasn't valued. it felt like I was in a long-term relationship that I knew wasn't right, but I didn't quite know how to get out. And so that is the place where I didn't feel like my voice was valued. And so I ended up interviewing for the position I have known and

realized that my current university is such, it's just we're so much better connected. The things that I valued, I was working with a man who stuttered in a youth correctional facility with a colleague of mine. And at my old institution, no one ever spoke with me about that. At my new institution, like when I talked about it in my interview, they're like, that would be credited to your account. Like that counts here. That's valued here. And I was like, well, then I have to be here.

The work that I wanted to do to use my expertise and my knowledge and my nerdiness and all of that in the field wasn't traditional. Like it wasn't like a really specific research kind of, I was like, I want to use it for good in these other ways. like I've never engaged in the correctional system, right? Like I had no idea what that was like. And I was like, this guy needs our help. Let's go. Let's see. He asked for help. let's.

we have the expertise, let's do it. And my university now is like, absolutely, let's do that work, right? And that counts. And within three months of being at my new place, one of my close colleagues turned to me, he's like, Carrie, you're finally the professor I always knew you could be.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (38:07.639)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (38:17.198)
Mmm.

Kerry Mandulak (38:18.69)
because I was in a place that like, it was values alignment, right? And so I think now I feel for the most part, without, know, there's like workplace things, right? But for the most part, my ideas, my, I can approach things with that sense of confidence because I know that my expertise and my thoughts and my ideas are deeply valued. And so I feel.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (38:44.856)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (38:45.09)
We often like joke in our department that we all have like the jackpot job because not only do we like get to do the things that we love to do in really creative and innovative ways, but we also really like each other, which is very unusual in academia. And so we're always like this jackpot. Like we always, that's like one of our like weird little hashtags on our Instagram accounts, like jackpot job. So it doesn't mean there's not issues, but like that feeling of being valued.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (39:03.81)
No.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (39:08.621)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (39:13.444)
like makes such a difference. And so it's definitely been a journey. And I think that developed me my self-awareness of who I am and how I show up and how I want to show up has also allowed me to enter into spaces with more confidence. And I think not like an arrogant confidence, but just like a grounded confidence. So like, this is how I'm going to show up and like, does that work or not? And now if it doesn't, then I can not be there and that's okay. So.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (39:15.564)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (39:41.27)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think to me that's part of, when I use the phrase that I'm here to help teachers own the hell out of their voice, it is like really the route to say it simply is confidence, but that's like, it's not, that's not descriptive enough. doesn't say enough things. but there's a part of it that is that like, how can I, because like how to, how to build that is like a whole, that's like a whole journey.

Kerry Mandulak (39:56.696)
Right.

Kerry Mandulak (40:05.817)
Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (40:06.732)
But like to be able to arrive in a room and be like, I'm confident that I can be here or I can make the change or that I can hold myself, the emotional regulation, the trust. Like there's like a lot of other pieces in it, but it is, think what you're speaking to here where, but it is a journey. Like you're like, I'm here. This is not where I'm supposed to be. Like, do I feel confident? You're like, okay, now I'm, I think I'm wiggling into the place. So it's not a one time. And then we will also can find that in some places and other places are like, wait, why am I not owning my voice here?

like I am over here and then we're gonna have different pockets of places where we feel like super grounded and like confident where we're standing and other places in our life that like in five minutes I'm like, uh. Yes, absolutely. Uh huh. Yeah. But thank you for sharing a little bit about just your professional journey here. I know for me, I've worked at some places where I was like, oh, they don't want me.

Kerry Mandulak (40:47.365)
And that's also okay, right? Like it's also okay to be like, oh.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (41:03.894)
And like that change from like one job to another or just be like, I'm to go back and do my own thing. And really the thing that I hope to give teachers as well as I worked with them as like, go where people want you. Like it will make such a difference. And if somebody doesn't want you, one place doesn't want you, then somebody else is going to want you and you don't have to stay where you're not wanted.

Kerry Mandulak (41:26.169)
Right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (41:26.188)
I mean, can we speak to like privilege and money and yes, those could be pieces in there that might be factors that might need to be considered for where you live and the cost of living. So like, yes, those things, but also.

Like it's taking a toll on us in so many different ways if you stay somewhere where you're not wanted.

Kerry Mandulak (41:48.45)
Absolutely.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (41:49.644)
Yeah, yeah, so thank you for sharing that.

Kerry Mandulak (41:52.035)
Yeah, sure.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (41:54.036)
okay. Let's, let's swing nerdy. so in like the setup of values and the setup of trusting yourself, like, like this is like, it's, but I love, I'm like, let's, it kind of goes between all things. Like, that and let's like talk about vocal cords and let's talk about, like, this is normal life for me. when I'm working with teachers, I'm like, that's because all of it counts. This is all the different layers.

Kerry Mandulak (41:57.495)
Okay.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (42:21.806)
So one of the things I love to give teachers is the book Breath by James Nestor. And I give them, we talk about movement science and about movement planes and about like why we're sequencing in the way that we're doing, which is a little bit is like atypical than the roots of vinyasa coming from Ashtanga, which you don't have to understand that, that's fine right now. But just like giving them some science-based things that they're really interesting then.

And I would love to make sure, so I wanna start here, because I really want teachers to get this, because oftentimes we don't get a deep dive into our voice and into our vocal cords and into breath in this particular way that you have expertise in. So we can read Breath by James Nestor that's literally talking mostly about breathing through your nose and like the impact of breath and mouth breathing and the rate of oxygen and carbon dioxide and how this affects things. So I think you have some things about breath that will be interesting.

and of course speaking as part of it, and vocal cords. So I would love for you to share, give us the anatomy of some vocal cords and of what's happening in sharing our voice. Like what does that look like as like a rough anatomy part that you love to share about the creation of voice? And then we can go from there.

Kerry Mandulak (43:42.937)
I don't think I've ever felt so excited to answer a question in my life.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (43:44.238)
Perfect.

Kerry Mandulak (43:49.799)
I was just making a quick note to myself there. So I'm gonna zoom out just a little bit in order to zoom in effectively. So that can I, I have permission to go full nerdy, right? Full nerd, okay. And I mean that in the best way of all the things.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (44:08.732)
nerd.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (44:13.644)
same. Absolutely.

Kerry Mandulak (44:18.404)
So when we...

One, so when we talk about just speech production in general, right? Well, there's a kind of like the overriding theory is about source and filter. So the source filter theory of speech production, and I teach this like a hundred times in undergrad classes, but basically we have a source of sound and then we filter the sound. And we can think about that as like making coffee, right? Like the source is the coffee beans and the grounds.

and the water and then you put it into your French press and you filter it and then the output is what I'm drinking, right? And so when we think about speech in general, we have a source of sound, like what creates sound for us in speech and we have sounds that are made of just air. We have sounds that are made with our vocal cords and we have sounds that use both. So.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (45:10.03)
Mmm.

Kerry Mandulak (45:11.93)
When we talk about the source, we're talking about the power source, which is respiration. And then we sort of add on our larynx. like evolutionarily, like our larynx was not meant for voice. It was meant for protection. So our vocal folds are a layer of protection. And then we have false vocal folds, which I don't know if you knew that we had those as well. And then you have your epiglottis, right? So you have three layers. So when you swallow food, right? Our windpipe and our esophagus are back up against each other, right? So when you swallow your epiglottis closes, so everything, whoop.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (45:30.402)
Mmm.

Kerry Mandulak (45:41.177)
slides over your airway when that doesn't coordinate for some reason, you get something in your airway and then you cough and you're like, geez. Okay. So there's like some evolutionary protection there that like our airway is like, if even like babies, when they are first born, if they cannot breathe, they will not eat. If there's something that interrupts their breathing. So breath is just like core. And I'm so, I do need to read that book. So I apologize if I say anything that sort of like contradicts what's in there.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (45:41.486)
you

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (46:09.494)
No, you're going to be fine.

Kerry Mandulak (46:10.442)
but so when we think about speech, we, I always think about it as a bottom up, right? So we're going to start with breathing and breathing and our respiration system, right? Is our power source. So essentially when we breathe in, right, our diaphragm contracts, which, it starts as a dome, it contracts. So it flattens out, which increases the volume of our lungs that

changes the pressure, so it like decreases the pressure, right? Because it's like a closed system. So when our thorax increases, when our lungs increase in size, the pressure decreases compared to what's outside, air rushes in. I have done a number of talks, side note, side story, just to explain that fact. I have done a number of talks for another exercise company in the interest of voice.

issues prevention, right? And when I talked about that, that we don't actually suck in air, right? That it's actually like, comes from the diaphragm. Diaphragmatic breathing, when we say that is like breathing, breathing, right? Like your diaphragm is your primary muscle. You can't get around your diaphragm, right? So the diaphragm, the pressure changes, it's just a pressure exchange, right? Like you create negative pressure, air rushes in. You create positive pressure, air rushes out. So that's like what we're doing breath wise.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (47:12.078)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (47:21.26)
Yeah. Correct.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (47:36.142)
I mean, it's so cool because like your body's breathing you. It's like you can't not breathe because it's literally just science. You're like the air pressure here versus the air pressure in your lungs. Like you can't avoid it coming in because of like, yeah. And I love how people say, diaphragmatic breathing. You're like, actually you can't, like you have to use your diaphragm to breathe. So like all of it. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (47:44.709)
Yes.

Kerry Mandulak (47:48.507)
No.

Kerry Mandulak (47:55.816)
Like there's no way around it. Now you can recruit other muscles, right? Like you can recruit like clavicular breathing and all, it's not efficient, effective, any of those things. The other thing I think about that is that it's also controlled by your brain stem, right? Like that's out of your control. Breathing, and the other thing we talk a lot about in speech pathology is breathing for life versus breathing for speech. It's two completely different.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (48:19.374)
you

Kerry Mandulak (48:22.631)
Processes so when you're breathing for life, right? You're sleeping you're breathing you're sitting there listening to me You're like you can't control that if you try to hold your breath and be like I'm gonna hold it until I then you pass out and your brain stems like I'm back in business Thank you for trying right, but it's just involuntary versus voluntary So for speech we can voluntarily change how we breathe So for life we breathe 40 % in 60 % out. That's just that that's the flow for speech

I 10 % of the time in a breathing cycle, 10 % of it is in and 90 % of it is out. And I control it. I control it with my ab muscles. I control it at my vocal folds. Like I control how slow that is releasing, right? And then you talk and you talk, like, my gosh, right? And you like talk to end of your breath, right? Then you have to take another one in. So we are sort of modulating that process when we're talking, which is good news.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (49:00.686)
Mm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (49:17.87)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (49:21.061)
because that means we can change how we use our breath for speech and we can change how we use it for something like teaching, right? But also it's still this like process that gives us life, which is why I think that book is so powerful. So that being said, that's where we get our power. That's where we get our, like the source of how much, if I want to yell, right? It's a lot more efficient for me to take a deeper breath.

than to hold my vocal cords tighter, sorry, to hold them closed longer, to build up more pressure, to get louder. It's a lot better for me just to take in more power. Let me use a giant diaphragm instead of a muscle that would fit on less than a dime, right? Let's not use those muscles.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (50:00.174)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (50:10.242)
Well, we're not like exhaling and then yelling. We're like, because you're like, you're like, fill it up.

Kerry Mandulak (50:15.399)
Yeah, and all of our speech, right? All of our speech is on the exhale, but there's two ways to get loud. You can either, because the way we get louder is that our vocal folds move farther away from the midline when they're blown open into this vibratory pattern. So we can create more of a pressure differential by using more power, or we can do it by squeezing our vocal folds tighter so more pressure builds up to blow them open. So it's all about blowing them open.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (50:41.107)
Do we, but do we actually have control of that?

Kerry Mandulak (50:46.14)
Yes.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (50:47.726)
Okay, tell me more.

Kerry Mandulak (50:48.741)
Yeah. So, so that's breathing, right? So breathing is Boyle's law. I love it. It's like increase in volume, decrease in pressure and vice versa. Inverse relationship. Super interesting. Boyle's law is very complicated, but I'm just like, that's all we need to know, right? Is this inverse relationship. So then we get to our vocal folds, right? So our respiration system is enormous. Our larynx is like four or five inches. And.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (51:15.854)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (51:18.873)
It's made up of, you know, interconnected cartilages and our vocal folds are attached posteriorly to two little cartilages that can kind of, they can move in and out and they can also rotate. And then at the front of our body, they're attached to the thyroid cartilage and the thyroid cartilage, all, hate to use this terminology, it's old, but Adam's apple, right? So it's right here. So they're right behind, you know, in that, and it's not as prominent in women. The angle is different.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (51:44.814)
stuff.

Kerry Mandulak (51:49.385)
But so that's what so they're attached in there. So really our vocal folds the hard thing about teaching about vocal folds you can't see them Right just talk you can't see how you use our voice You can see how you make an L you can see how you make an R but you can't see how your vocal cords are working so we often use like Like vibrating your lips like that is really how like to simulate how your vocal folds vibrate Right, so we take a deep breath in

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (51:57.236)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (52:13.698)
Mmm. Mmm.

Kerry Mandulak (52:17.488)
and our vocal folds open. So they open right there attached to the front, but they open at the back and we have to open them sometimes just a little bit is fine because you can get the air in. If we're working out really hard or we need a lot more air, can actually, the muscles can open up those cartilages so we can make a larger space. We get more breath in.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (52:38.744)
Yeah

Kerry Mandulak (52:40.462)
Then as we begin to exhale, our air is moving up towards our vocal folds on our vocal folds close or adduct, right? And then that air pressure builds up underneath. all of this, so let's just, again, like vocal folds fit on a dime or a nickel. And so that is cool. They're tiny. And the muscles that control them, again, tiny. And we have very little

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (52:59.555)
So small.

Kerry Mandulak (53:08.888)
sensory feedback from those muscles, but we do have the neuromotor control of whatever, but we don't get a lot of feedback from our learning. So it's hard to, that's why singers are so impressive, that they can manipulate these movements so precisely. And it's all through just like feedback and feeling it and getting, like they make a sound and they're like, that wasn't right. I gotta do it other way. And they figure it out, which is anyway, bananas. So,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (53:24.643)
you

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (53:33.116)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (53:39.271)
Deep respect for singers, vocal athletes of our world. But our vocal folds, they are fit on a dime or a nickel, depending on how you are assigned at birth, right? Just so there's biological differences. And then they also are made of five layers of skin and muscle. So you have respiratory epithelium, which is like the skin that like is all throughout our tract.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (53:46.915)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (54:06.704)
Right? So that's why, like, when you get laryngitis, when you get a cold, right? Like there's things that produce mucus and then you have to cough it, you know, all that kind of stuff. But then there's increasingly more solidified layers as you go through the next four layers. It kind of starts as like gelatinous, then it gets a little more structured, a little more structured. And then the final layer is muscle. So we have this instrument inside our body that fits on a dime that has five layers in order for us to create all the sounds that we make.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (54:26.35)
Mmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (54:35.181)
Hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (54:37.99)
Like, right? I said full, like, here we go. So, and in all those layers are different chemicals that keep them hydrated, that give them structure. There's collagen, there's elastin, there's higher lyronic acid, all these things, like, so that they continue to work well. And so they can continue to like create the sounds that we expect our voice will create when we wake up every morning, right? That we just wake up and we're like, this larynx is going to work. So.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (55:02.004)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (55:07.356)
They come together. Here we go. We breathe in. We start to breathe out. Right? And then they come together. The air pressure builds up underneath. They remain together, but because the air pressure builds up underneath, those top layers get displaced. They can't overcome the pressure anymore. So they get blown open.

the air rushes through and when the air rushes through, they get sucked back together by something called Bernoulli effect. And Bernoulli effect is something that we all experienced when we drive by a truck and we get pulled towards a truck or like when you're in a shower and the shower curtain like comes and like, that's my sound for like when the shower curtain sucks to your leg, right? It's like that.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (55:48.941)
Hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (55:55.729)
It's because of like airflow and pressure and the creation of negative pressure and it brings them back together. Well, now they're back together again. So now the pressure builds up again and now they're blown open again and then they get sucked back together again. And then that's literally how our vocal folds vibrate. And that happens for me, for example, I just happen to know like my vocal folds vibrate approximately 200 times per second. That cycle of

pressure building up, blowing open, air coming through, getting sucked back together 200 times a second. But it can range, right? If I go way up here, it might be like 350, or if I'm down here, it might be 120, right? So we have that ability to lengthen and shorten our vocal folds. So another muscular contraction and control that I can use in the classroom if I'm trying to be enthusiastic. And I'm like, so I vary my pitch.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (56:37.678)
Hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (56:53.682)
versus someone who talks like this all the time, right? That also conveys something. That's potential, So we have all this very, like all this flexibility, all these things that we can do with our voice. So when you say like, own the hell out of it, I was like, yeah, you can own the hell out of it because there's so many things you can do with it. But that's how that works. Now where people have issues, and then just to close the loop.

Sometimes we use voice for sounds. We use it for vowels. We use it for sounds that come through our nose, like an or an N. We have it for certain sounds, but then we also just sometimes use air. And you can feel it if you put your hand on your larynx. I hope everyone on your podcast does this. If you put your hand on your larynx and you say an S sound, a S.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (57:44.366)
you

Kerry Mandulak (57:46.985)
Or if you say a vowel, so if you say ah, you can feel it differently. So now if you feel it's ah, or zzz, right? So sometimes we use air, sometimes we use voice, sometimes we use both. All this is happening without us even giving it a second thought. When I say bunny weeks, right? My voice knows to be on for B-O-N, the E, the W, the E, and at the very end it turns off, right?

Harry Mandelack is mostly voiced sounds, like a word like sustainability. It's like your voice is off, it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off while you're making the sounds here because what we do is then we take that core, that source of breath that powers our voice or not, and then we filter it through our vocal tract. So above our larynx, out to our mouth, out through our nose. We do things motorically here. It's weird to talk about talking when you're talking, but.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (58:14.222)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (58:41.968)
Like we are articulating all these, I'm making all these different shapes so that I'm communicating to you a thing that I want you to understand. I'm saying words and I want to be intelligible. if I, if I don't move anything, it's just as nothing, right? So I have to do all these motors. So you can see like the coordination of breath, voice, articulation, resonance sometimes, right? It's a miracle that any of us are like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (58:48.386)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (58:57.75)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (59:11.986)
talking and being understood by each other. In my opinion, I always say speech is a miracle. I say it all the time. It's a miracle process and it takes final motor. Speech is our finest fine motor skill. Whatever fine motor skill you can think of, even like tapping your finger and your thumb together, your speech can move seven times faster than that. Like so.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (59:13.792)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (59:26.414)
Mm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (59:35.459)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (59:38.814)
That's why I think that what you do as a teacher to own the hell out your voice, and you know, you and I have talked about how I've, the thing that I find really fascinating about how you teach yoga and how you layer on the, I don't know, the direct, like instructions, directions, I don't know the word, like when you offer to put your foot in a place or do those things, and then tell, so already you are doing so many things yourself.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (59:57.966)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:00:08.393)
And then you're thinking about the cognitive part of the language you're using, and then you're executing a motor skill, and then you're executing it a little bit differently and a little bit differently. mean...

I, it leaves me, I hate to say it, speechless, right? Like it's, I'm sorry, that was very punny. But it's the word that we use for that, right? Is to think about how complex that is and how hard that is. Like to me, that would be like, forget it, I'm out. Like I'd immediately be like, nope, can't. But you learn it and you scaffold and you build and you get it and you practice because speech is a motor skill. And just like any other motor skills, the more you practice, the more.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:00:40.846)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:00:49.691)
Right? You learn the movements, you learn how you layer on the cognition of it, the thoughts of it, the executing it. And so that's how we do it. That's how we do it. think where we get in trouble is when we use some part of that system inefficiently. And so when you were having some issues with your voice at the end of flow school, right? You're in front of a room. You probably were talking louder.

right than normal for extended periods of time. There's no fault in any of that. Like your vocal folds just got like a little irritated. They were like, wow, this is a lot of work.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:01:27.598)
Yeah, when your voice gets raspy and I can feel my, well, you know what? think the first time I, I have lost my voice once that I can remember. And it was two years ago. Yep. Two years ago. And I, was at my, I threw this birthday party for myself and I remember like giving a speech that night and I could feel my voice like having feels, I like.

Kerry Mandulak (01:01:31.185)
Ahem.

Kerry Mandulak (01:01:37.277)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:01:56.824)
Sometimes that happens, you know, I'm like when your voice is tired. But ever since then I can feel it more intently or more like, I'm like, it's like be nice to my voice because I lost my voice for two weeks.

It was so, I was, was toasted. Like I was not sick, but I just didn't have my voice, which is really fascinating. And it's interesting to think about, I love like playing with the like, okay, this is happening physically. What's happening emotionally? What am I trying to process? What have I had to hold? Like, what am I trying to give voice to? And that birthday party, that was my naked 40 birthday party. We weren't all naked in the room, but I had done this project, this creative project of like,

Kerry Mandulak (01:02:25.577)
Great.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:02:36.526)
photographing people and then hosting as a gallery. like, so it was that, it was this whole experience, which was a lot of voice sharing in a way. And it was my 40th birthday. And so that was the time when I lost my voice. It's just fascinating to think of like the nuance underneath the actual voice using. Cause I didn't feel like I was using my voice that like any more than normal in that kind of current moment.

Kerry Mandulak (01:03:05.605)
It's the way, one thing we talk about a lot in class, at the beginning of my voice disorders class, do sort of visit, like we visit this idea of like, as speech language pathologists, we think about voices as very physical, vocal cords vibrating a certain amount of times. We expect them to vibrate in a way that allows our voice to be clear, right? Like, and I'm using air quotes.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:03:23.362)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:03:34.833)
Right? So clear, like what does a clear voice mean? What does a normal voice like what, what is normal? And in speech pathology, there's, there's some things that are fairly clear cut or I've been well established by research, but the idea of a normal voice is still.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:03:42.915)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:03:54.197)
There's nothing that, like, you don't get to, like, jump into that category for some certain reason, right? That there's all these different characteristics of your voice. It's like how steady can you hold your, you know, your vibratory pattern? But there's nothing, and so it's so much perceptual, subjective judgment, just judgment in general. And so there's that part of it, so we can think about it very clinically, but then we also think like,

I also say like, what does it mean to have a voice?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:04:26.191)
Mm-hmm. Yup. Ugh. So good.

Kerry Mandulak (01:04:28.946)
Right? What does it mean when people say, you talk, you you write just like you talk. Like that's your, the voice in your writing, the voice in your speaking, the voice of, I have a voice in this political world, right? Like, I have no voice. Like you're not being heard, not being heard acoustically or not being heard metaphorically, right? So there's all of that as well. And people's identity, when I,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:04:48.046)
Yep.

Kerry Mandulak (01:04:58.14)
you know, if I were like yelling at you across the lacrosse field, you might be like, that's Carrie. I've had people come into lacrosse games and be like, I already knew you were here because I am a loud voice and I cheer loudly and very specifically, right? So I'm identified by my voice. People can hear me in the hallway. When you call someone, like, hey, Carrie, right? Wait, you know, I'm old enough. I'm about 10 years older than you. Like I'm old enough that like

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:05:10.99)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:05:26.53)
I used to talk to my friends in high school on the phone where we didn't have caller ID. Like we barely had call waiting, right? So it's like, would call them and be like, hey, Carrie, like you're identified by your voice. You are located. so there's all of those aspects of it because my larynx is different than yours. My vocal tract is different. There's like different dimensions. There's different materials. Like it's the same, but it's different. And so I think there's also that part of our identity.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:05:36.878)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:05:54.872)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:05:56.575)
Right, is all about our voice. And so I think that the reason I'm to come back to what, if I want to call in sick, but I'm not sick, I would be like, hey, I'm not feeling great. Like our voice conveys things about us. I think having that giant event, like what I might think is like having that event that meant a lot to, there was a lot of other things that were influencing how you.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:06:14.604)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:06:22.818)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:06:26.378)
possibly were using your voice that it might have been a little bit more than normal and then it and then there's also like that after release and all of those things of having like a major event in the processing and those things but physically your vocal folds are probably a little irritated and then what happens is when that we tend to like then grab right so if my vocal folds get irritated syphilis and they get inflamed they're not going to close as well

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:06:28.685)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:06:32.27)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:06:43.49)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:06:56.33)
So if they don't close as well, don't, or they don't vibrate as well. And so, right? And so now what do I do? But I close them tighter. How do I close them tighter as I clench those neck muscles and I clench things. And that is actually not helpful.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:07:07.937)
and

Yeah, no, because I can feel it. Well, I felt like because of that time, that two week time period, I feel more in tune with how my voice and my vocal, how my vocal cords feel than I ever have before in my life. And I can feel it when things are getting tired. I mean, you can hear, like I can hear it, of course, but I feel more in tune with it because that was such a poignant length of time. And like,

Kerry Mandulak (01:07:37.373)
Yes.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:07:39.518)
Yeah, and just like the all the surrounding sort of kind of experience.

Kerry Mandulak (01:07:42.294)
Well, surrounding, and that's why it's so traumatic when people do lose their voices, right? And like, how can they get it back? And they try to compensate, right? But the things that we know how to compensate, actually aren't physically efficient and then would kind of cause more problems. So often sometimes people lose their voice and then they'll lose it for longer because the things that they continue to do to try to compensate actually continue to make it worse or they develop a pattern. There was a friend of mine whose son, you know, had a

upper respiratory thing, lost his voice.

So he was so tense. I just did that by tensing my neck. That's all I did. And so using that mechanism efficiently, effectively, like he just had a pattern. He like learned this pattern and he kept doing it even though he didn't need to do it anymore. And that's just right. Like think about all the things in our world that we do, even though we don't need to, right? Like in our own personal world, like that does not serve me, but I'm still doing it because I learned it. And that's what I know. So.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:08:19.469)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:08:42.765)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:08:46.291)
I think that with voice and what I've seen, there's like this science behind, you again, we have air coming up from below to power our voice, but we can manipulate how we're using that filter, that articulatory system, like how we move our mouth and our tongue and our throat to actually create back pressure.

that equalizes the pressure. Because so much pressure is going to come from below. We've got giant diaphragm, giant lungs, powering these tiny muscles, skin and folds, know, skin, folds of skin. so to be able to do it back. And so an example of people in the world now use a lot of glattal fry. And glattal fry is not bad. It's not bad for your voice. It's just like a way that people are talking. And then what happens is it becomes culturally acceptable. And then other people do it and they...

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:09:41.25)
What's what's their glottal fry? Glottal fry.

Kerry Mandulak (01:09:43.244)
glottal, fried. So glottal, your vocal folds, the space between your vocal folds is called your collodus. Just a word that, and then fry is a word that sort of means that like poppy, bubbly, gravelly sound. We all do it at the end of a sentence because we run out of air. It's a little gravelly. So gravelly, it's not raspy necessarily because raspy is more like this to me.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:09:51.022)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:10:02.958)
So we're doing a gravelly sort of experience.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:10:13.23)
I

Kerry Mandulak (01:10:13.353)
And that's more effort and strain, right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:10:15.867)
I know I just want this podcast to be us talking in different voices.

Kerry Mandulak (01:10:19.623)
Right? Here for it.

It's really interesting because again, we talked about the pendulum swinging like everyone is like glottal fry doesn't use enough breath support and you have to like really close your vocal folds tight and then that's like let the air pop through. That's how you create that. Like you can't be loud and use glottal fry because it doesn't have a lot of breath support. And then the pendulum swung that like women are using glottal fry too much and they're not getting jobs and it's like not okay. And so then it became like gender based. All these things.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:10:53.581)
Wow!

Kerry Mandulak (01:10:55.039)
The bottom line is we all use glottal fry. I just did it just there at the end, glottal fry. At the end of my sentence, because I ran out of air. Like, so there wasn't enough air to support the whole part of my sentence. But, so I can switch from using glottal fry to using a more focused front, like we call it forward focus or front resonance, where I'm really trying to place my sounds at the front of my vocal tract. So I'm doing things that like got me out of glottal fry.

My voice, my larynx, I still have the same larynx. I still have the same structures, but voluntarily I can change. I place my voice and do different exercises. So now I don't feel my larynx at all. Like I don't even know that it's there when I talk in Zottel Fry. Like my, I always talk about it's like we're sitting on our larynx. We're just like, like sitting there and it's like, we're just keeping it down versus letting it go.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:11:31.651)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:11:49.966)
Yeah. So when you, when I was, uh, filling my voice at the end of full school and I'm like, when you're saying, I want to think you had said it before we started like to, um, like the support and losing my voice of getting in front of it versus like sitting in it. Is this what you mean? Like I'm like, when we get tired and does it happen more when we get tired or using our voice more, do we start to sit in that? Not even necessarily trying to be, be louder, but just like the amount.

Kerry Mandulak (01:12:06.592)
Yes.

Kerry Mandulak (01:12:17.376)
that you just kind of use like different muscles differently. You're not using your breath as efficiently because it takes effort, right? It takes effort to like really focus on your voice. But what I think when I was talking about getting in front of it with when you were doing flow school is for example, doing like a preventing getting to that place where you are feeling tired, where you were feeling

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:12:38.67)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:12:44.49)
And it's very small changes can make a very big difference. I worked with an instructor once who she would teach two night classes, then she would teach two morning classes. And she said by the end of the night class, she could like feel on her jaw. Because again, your neck muscles are not only connected to your larynx, right? They're also connected to your jaw. And she realized that after she taught those two night classes, instead of getting in her car, getting on the phone, she just rested. Like she just took a break. And then in the morning, she's like, it was gone.

and then she could be fresh for morning. she just, that was something she had to do for herself. Just like we all need a rest day. Like we can't lift, we can't deadlift every single day. I mean, you can, but like it's, you're not gonna have that recovery time. And if we think about our vocal folds as muscles that require recovery time, recover, like when they come together and they vibrate and they come back together, they hit each other. There's wound stress and like our body overnight can just regenerate. But if you do it,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:13:22.286)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:13:41.984)
day after day after day. When I'm in lacrosse season, I am hoarse. And I know it's not good for my voice or whatever, but I cannot help myself because I just love to cheer so much. Right, and I just love it so.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:13:52.386)
I know, me too. I'm wiggling in my seat and I'm like, ooh, just hit him.

Kerry Mandulak (01:13:59.565)
And I can't also cheer quietly. Why must it be so much? But that's because I'm a bit of an all or nothing, right? So it's either like I say nothing or I'm my voice is echoing through the stands, right? And so, and then I get a little, it's like, I overworked it. There's no shame in that. The word that we used to use for that was called vocal abuse. So people would come, right? So they come in and they're like, you know, like, well, you have

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:14:22.318)
So yeah, that's not helpful.

Kerry Mandulak (01:14:29.706)
You abused your vocal folds, you have vocal abuse, and that's why you have this thing. Now we say phono-trauma. Like, phono-trauma means like, hey, like I garden for 12 hours, I got some trauma on my hands. There's nothing shame in that. just like I just like overworked a part of myself, right? And we can do that with our voice. So the thing that I, what I was telling you about is that the beginning of the day, right, we warm up our voice just like we would warm up for any other like activity. It does not have to be long.

and then you do the cool down. But I taught you those exercises to use a straw, which is when you semi occlude your vocal tract. So you put a straw between your lips and use hum.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:15:07.298)
Anyways, occlude, I mean it's like half closed.

Kerry Mandulak (01:15:09.76)
Semi occlude, right? So it's like just a lip, like mostly closed. Like I can occlude my vocal tract by like putting my, closing my mouth. Right? But if you semi occlude it and you do something like humming or with a straw, like so humming on a straw, what it does is it forces it like, sorry, it doesn't force, it facilitates.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:15:24.568)
Ruistra.

Kerry Mandulak (01:15:34.824)
that forward focus that I'm talking about now. So it takes, if you get into a habit of kind of like, I'm down here, I'm tired. I'm just kind of, and I do that like at end of the day, I might be like, I'm down here. It gets me replaced, re-centered. And also it creates back pressure to take that pressure off your arm so you're not sitting on anymore. gets you off.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:15:56.562)
Breathing in and out of that. Well, and there's a, I know that there's, a company, gosh, there's probably more than one and they sell these little, like there may be like two or three inches long little steel breathing things that you can wear on a necklace. That's like this idea of like slow breaths to like have an intentional breath, but thinking about it as a vocal cord warmup and using one of those. And yes, could it be meditative? Yes, we know breathing is meant to be like,

but to use it as for this other purpose of vocal chord warm is really a cool thing.

Kerry Mandulak (01:16:32.918)
Yeah, I own that device. I own that, but I own it in, maybe it's marketed differently for different things. It can slow down your brain. It can be more of like an intentional breathing thing, but also to hum through that just like we, and then also not just a, to kind of place and feel it.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:16:35.714)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:16:47.768)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:16:56.554)
So a lot of like voice work and therapy and speech pathology is also feeling and hearing and thinking, right? Like becoming more aware because all of us are so unaware of how our voice works, which is totally fair. I always tell my students like, no one cares about how these things work except for us. But people are interested in how we talk, which I think is why I'm here, right? And so it is an interesting thing because people who use verbal speech like this is how it works. But to...

to use that humming and then also to change your pitch, right? So not just to like feel it like, okay, there's my speech in the front of my mouth versus my speech back here, right? That's back resonance versus frontal resonance, but also to then stretch your vocal cords and then bring them back. So because again, that's the other way they can stretch. not just like promote, facilitating a good vibratory pattern, but also give them the chance to expand and contract.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:17:55.298)
give them some skills.

Kerry Mandulak (01:17:56.96)
That's how we do it.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:17:58.51)
So warmup, just to recap warmup is use a straw, use the little still breathing things, probably marketed lots of different ways. And then do like a straight humming, just like a solar, just like one tone. And then to do almost like a scale where you're going up and down.

Kerry Mandulak (01:17:59.788)
Like in the first.

Kerry Mandulak (01:18:12.384)
Mm-hmm.

just going up and down and just think about like you're like stretching a rubber band and like letting it go. Now, if you can't find yourself a straw or that you can just do it with a lip trill or a tongue trill. just a, doing a like a few of those just the amount of yeah, horse lips, sure. Right? Because in order to make that happen you actually have to generate like a pretty good amount of respiratory support. Like you can't just

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:18:30.606)
Yep. Might be like a horse lips.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:18:45.261)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:18:45.395)
Right? But to actually hold that out, have to facilitate it's like good.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:18:49.614)
Is wood whistling counted that too? I mean, there's a lot of like face work in the whistling, so.

Kerry Mandulak (01:18:53.614)
No.

There's face work and whistling. It is okay, but when you whistle, you're not using your vocal cords. You're creating the sound just here. So to like rebalance that physiological process of coordinating, like one of the goals in voice therapy is coordinating breath and voice. So sometimes people will go, okay, well, I don't know why my voice hurts, right? You're like, you just lost all your breath. know, because people just have to learn how to re-coordinate that.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:19:02.862)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:19:11.116)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:19:24.002)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:19:24.715)
or to not do like the clavicular breathing, but to coordinate breath and voice and to rebalance that. And then it sort of gets you back into a place where like, that's right. That's how that feels. That's where it feels better. That is something that I think that's something to learn and to try and to, but that's what using a straw or using lip trills or even with your tongue,

You have to use good breast support and then you get to do that like straight or up and down. And so you don't need any equipment. You can just like do it in the car on the way to your class and then way home. Same thing. It's like you do a little bit of a cool down. That's it. Yes.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:19:58.989)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:20:05.645)
Yeah.

Okay, and will you tell me the name again when you're saying the half close? What's name that you would call it?

Kerry Mandulak (01:20:13.343)
semi-occluded vocal tract exercises and I can send you a link for people who are interested in learning about it more, whether it's the science or just all the different ones. But it's really simple, but yet works so well. have, I can't tell you how many videos I've made that were similar to the video I made you of using the straw and just demonstrating it. And you don't, you don't,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:20:30.115)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:20:43.293)
realize how much it helps until you try it you're like, that does feel different, right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:20:46.604)
Yeah. Well, and especially because I, I work with some teachers who are like, teach 30 classes a week. And so like that's like, or 20 classes, I can't even imagine. Like it's so many, it's so many classes where you're just projecting and like leading that for continuous time. So like something like this feels so helpful because there's already such a wear on trying to space hold and guide and lead, but then on your voice and be able to keep that. And I know some people who,

talked about wearing a small speaker where it's just on them. like this just being projected from them, not necessarily through even a sound system. And of course some studios will have a sound system so you don't have to try to speak so loud. So that can be supportive for some.

Kerry Mandulak (01:21:32.363)
And I think with the mic too, during COVID, right, we were all teaching with masks on and having that mic just was a visual reminder for me to place my voice into the microphone instead of leaving it in my larynx. And again, to a non-speech pathology person, it's like, what do you mean sitting on your larynx or whatever? So sometimes it's a little bit of instruction to be like this versus this.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:21:43.637)
and

Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:21:59.69)
It can affect her intelligibility. had someone who she was, she had such high muscle tone, it's just how she was built. And like so much of this exercise that we were doing was about core. So she was holding her core so tight. And she's like, I can't, I can't let my stomach expand. And I was like, we, but yes, it's like, that's actually okay. But people couldn't understand her because it was so tight and so much glottal fry. And so she was ineffective as a professional voice user.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:22:15.448)
Hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:22:29.759)
despite being wildly effective as an instructor and her abilities and all of that, but that it didn't matter if people couldn't understand her cues, right? This is.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:22:38.284)
Yeah. see, okay. So this is where, this is why we can talk about all the things and how they all matter. Like we can talk about vocal cords and then here's this individual who's like trying to hold her body so tight that she literally can't get her voice out. And so this idea of like, what does it mean to own your voice? What does it mean to be able to share your voice? Like, do you have a voice? And the very intimate personal work for this

Kerry Mandulak (01:22:46.589)
Right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:23:08.13)
person as it is for all of us, but for this person in particular, she's like, okay, how do I soften? How do I stop trying to hold everything up? How do I allow myself to just be? And okay, there's my voice. Like everything's combined. Everything touches everything.

Kerry Mandulak (01:23:27.275)
You did that really masterfully. You brought it all the way back. Sorry. You did that really expertly. You brought it all back together. Way to close the loop. For all those things.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:23:33.742)
Okay. So give me, said you mentioned a cool down. What's your cool down?

Kerry Mandulak (01:23:42.294)
Same as your warmup. It's a rebalancing. The warmup is the get ready, right? And get balanced. And then the cool down is the rebalancing of getting back into that place where things are sort of back to baseline. And in case like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:23:43.627)
Okay.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:23:50.21)
Mm-hmm

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:24:01.708)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:24:07.431)
If during your teaching you went to a more kind of grabbing in your larynx place or like you're using a little more tension here, then it's like, and then you can let it go. so it's so, it's just, it's similar to just exercise physiology principles in general. And again, I, what I've learned through practice is that it doesn't take a lot.

It's not, it doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be intentional and the purpose, right, is to cool down those muscles you just used to promote that wound healing from your vocal folds that had just been like brought together so many times, again, 200 times a second for 60 minutes or however, you know, however long you're speaking during a class. It's just to bring it back, rebalance and

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:24:51.149)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:25:03.765)
promote all of the things that recover so that you're ready the next day. As teachers, we are professional voice users. We cannot teach if we don't have our voice. We can, but we can't, right? And so let's, I'd rather be preventative or habilitative, like maximize your performance, maximize your abilities versus trying to rehab, right? And then,

get to a place where then you have to rehab back to where you were. But that experience of, don't lose my voice often. It's been raspy the past, after the summer doing a lot of cheering at lacrosse tournaments and through lacrosse season, but I don't lose it often. But when I did, I remember how helpless I felt, how I just got laryngitis or something. I was trying to,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:25:35.042)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:26:00.021)
hold a really important meeting with someone and communicate these ideas. And I had to limit what I wanted to say because physically it was painful. And also it's not, and this might be judgmental, but I was like, no one wants to listen to this as well. No one wants to listen to this quality.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:26:06.318)
you

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:26:18.082)
Mm. Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:26:24.926)
that sound strange, that's hard to listen to. And that was a judgment I put on myself, but I think that I was so hyper aware of how hoarse, how raspy, how strained it was. And I definitely did not feel like I got my personal message across in that meeting, because it wasn't me, it was like an injured voice. And...

So that was hard and even just like getting my family's attention. I remember I got so frustrated, I like banged on the wall of the garage, because like no one could hear me.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:26:58.527)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:26:59.458)
And it like made me immediately just like sad, really. So I think could we prevent things like that when you like have a hint or when you know and you're like, I got to take a break. I got to rest. I think that's taking care of ourselves as well from a physical standpoint. So I think that's really important too, is to know when we need a break.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:27:04.844)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:27:21.324)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Literally step back. Ugh, like I have so many feels from you just like talking like.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:27:33.826)
I think that it's easy probably for people to see you as much as people to see me and say, this is how you've been. Like you can just stand up, you can share your voice in this way. Like this is like, and it's been such a journey to get to this place. And for you to use the phrase, like no one wants to listen to this. And that can apply to having a voice where you're like, okay, this person, is this person sick? Are they gonna get me sick? Like what's happening with their voice?

Kerry Mandulak (01:27:58.431)
Right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:28:00.084)
And then there's a layer of like your identity in here. I was like, as a speech pathologist, as somebody who focuses on this and speech as part of your profession for me, like I couldn't, was like, well, I guess I'm not recording in classes. guess I can't do some things because I can't talk. and a lot of people who are movers who have an injury where then you can't move. You're like, well, who am I? Am I, my low back was hurting for a good chunk of time. It's not now. And.

Kerry Mandulak (01:28:15.786)
Right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:28:26.83)
I was like, who am I to be like talking about movement healing when now I have a thing that's this moment that I'm like having to deal with, right? And so this identity piece is wrapped in this. And then there's another layer of this emotional and like belonging piece that's attached to this. And even if people are having clear vocal cords,

Kerry Mandulak (01:28:34.314)
Great.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:28:52.584)
living their lives, that same statement can exist and does exist. No one wants to listen to this, meaning like me or my ideas or the way I want to present or the things I may or may not know in this question place of like, what does it mean to own the hell out of our voice? It is that we can, and for me, I'm like, you can learn as you lead. Like you don't have to know everything. And it's this 30%. You're like, how do we connect? Because like,

Kerry Mandulak (01:29:19.05)
Great.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:29:22.454)
And I have developed, I've developed a method and I'm teaching it and people are using it and it's working really well for people who are like continuing to like put the practice in. And there's like the way I might deliver it and the way I use my voice, but then it's about the connection piece. so I don't know. I think it's just really beautiful because it's such a personal journey for each of us. And there is no rush to the journey. We're literally in exactly the right place.

we're hearing the things, like anybody who listens to our conversation, like they're hearing it at the right time, they're gonna share it with the right people. Like, put another foot forward and then another.

Kerry Mandulak (01:29:58.282)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:30:04.586)
You gotta keep moving forward, yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:30:06.846)
Mm-hmm. As I, you know, when I was in...

Like there's a lot of times I have either been like assigned leadership or assumed leadership in like kind of my whole life. And so that even if that's like been a part of my story, there's still very much a voice ownership story as well. And I remember being in teacher training and my friend Rocky Heron, who's my teacher, he called me out because we were sitting in a group of, you know, our group and sharing.

thoughts and I had something I wanted to say and I said it and I started talking and I was saying the thing and then I started speeding up even faster and then I got swapped for another one.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:30:54.334)
And he called me out, he was like, hey Bonnie, so before we move on, like it sounds like you're apologizing for your voice because you're starting big, but there's a decrescendo, we're like going small and you're speeding up as you do it. Like you're trying to not take up too much space with your voice. And so you can get it done with faster so that people, we can move on to somebody else, but he, I don't know.

Kerry Mandulak (01:31:14.675)
Right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:31:21.226)
You know, and I was, I felt totally comfortable with like him and his response to me. I really appreciate his reflection to me. I'm like, you're not wrong. Actually, that's how I feel.

Kerry Mandulak (01:31:32.018)
Right, not taking, and that's, mean, same, right? Speeding up, being like, just one, just let me, just one more thing, just, okay, because it's like, like you don't have the right to that much time or that much sonic space. And that's on us a little bit, right? Like that's on ourselves, that like that, that is the choice that we're making about ourselves versus, and so it's nice that he's,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:31:36.034)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:31:46.126)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:31:55.192)
Absolutely.

Kerry Mandulak (01:32:01.418)
recorded you in that because he was sort of giving you permission. Actually, I want to hear all the things.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:32:06.284)
Yeah. And that's what he said. He was like, if you're talking and we're like, we want to hear what you have to say. And it was like this aha for me of, of like not standing in my voice. So I think of, you know, getting in front of your voice or sitting back and like, might be like, and there's like little sounds, but then there's also this apologetic nature of owning yourself of, of saying like, I'm worth it.

Like this is a worthiness like conversation too and a belonging conversation. like, okay, I can use my voice. Like, what does it mean to have a voice? Like, I can use my voice. My voice is worth hearing. And to stand in the front of the room and then like the science of it, right? But then, so like that layer was really a beautiful lesson for me as well. And the time that we can give ourselves permission to use to actually say something. And that's part of what

Kerry Mandulak (01:32:31.23)
Right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:32:58.334)
This is when I talk to teachers, like this variation in voice sound and speed, like this tone can really then amplify the experiences students have in the room. And we get a personalized that because we can teach the exact same yoga posture, but then it's a totally different class, the way that we teach it and the way our voice sounds. And sometimes you might go to a teacher and you're like, cool class, but I cannot stand the sound of their voice. Cool.

then go to another one and that's fine because somebody else is gonna love them.

Kerry Mandulak (01:33:29.545)
Absolutely. That's the, I've heard it called the lesson of the lamp, right? And this was something I had to come to with my own teaching. Who am I as a teacher? How do I want to show up in class? How do I want to like, there are a zillion ways to teach speech pathology content, right? So many, but how, who am I as a teacher and how am I going to show up? Center that first and then realize that you're going to show up and

It's like seeing a lamp at Fred Meyer, right? You're like, it's silly, but I wrote about it in my promotion materials in the narrative to explain this, that in course evaluations, I get all this feedback, right? And 90 % of it would be best ever. And then one person would be like,

she seems disorganized. And I was like, I'm disorganized. That's my identity now. how can, right? And I, got to the point where I had to, I would send my course evaluations to my therapist and let him read them. So then we could talk about, so it's like someone else could see it first and be like, all right, Carrie, get ready. And literally he was like, this is sort of silly Carrie. Like these are so good. I was like, but did you see that one thing that that one person said about one, you know? So the reality is, is that I am emotionally dysregulated.

because I have ADHD. I cry about things and stutter in class because I'm a parent. I had a child who stuttered for two years. I am also a speech pathologist and I know a lot of people who stutter and that work is deep in my heart. So I tell students at the beginning of class, I have ADHD. With ADHD comes emotional dysregulation. You will see me cry. You'll see me get emotional. It comes and it goes. But that's what you see instead of, and it's not an apology, it is a statement.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:35:15.18)
Mm-mm. Yep.

Kerry Mandulak (01:35:16.777)
And so my point is here is that I can go to Fred Meyer and be like, want, you know, I need a lamp and I can bring David, you know, my husband with me and he'd like, that lamp is horrible. Like I found my lamp, right? It's a blue lamp with a white shade, whatever. He's like, that lamp is the worst. I would never buy that in a million years. And I was like, well, I love that lamp. The lamp is still the lamp. There's nothing different. The lamp is not changing, right?

But this idea that the lamp is the lamp and some people will love it and some people will not like it. And can you show up in a way that you with integrity and with credibility and with evidence-based work? I'm an evidence-based profession, right? That I know helps students learn whether they like it all the time or not. But I know that like from that grounded place, that's who I am. And like you said, people are gonna love that voice or not love that voice. So we do a little activity within my class called, I call it the voice project.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:36:01.258)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:36:10.344)
I'm not very creative with naming things, but basically they go out into the world and they find a voice that stands out to them. And then they bring it in and they say like, somebody used once like the lead singer of Florence and the machine, right? And they're like, this is, I love this voice. And I was like, okay, so number one, what's the physiology behind the voice? How do they create that voice? What do you think is happening? Like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:36:17.634)
Mmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:36:32.302)
Mm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:36:36.28)
Mm.

Kerry Mandulak (01:36:36.424)
well, they, know, a lot of pitch inflection or a lot of this or, you know, really forward or really back. and then also, or they can bring in a voice that like drives them, like, you know, like they just can't stand it. And they're like, this is why, and this is why it happens. But, they, you know, give a little clip and it's extra credit, but it's just to get people on also that assignment ruins everybody on listening to voices forever because they're always like tuned into people's voices. But that's the thing we all love and

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:37:03.224)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:37:05.808)
not love, different things, but all kinds, and it's all okay. Right? It's all okay. And I think that, yeah, and there was something you were saying earlier that I'll remember that I'll come back to, but it's all okay. And we can be in a space where I'm like, hopefully a majority of the class can appreciate X, Y, or Z. I take the feedback.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:37:09.869)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:37:35.616)
I use it to change things and then I move forward. But my expectations are different. I don't care about reading Corsi vowels anymore. Part of it is my position and my privilege as a tenured professor, but part of it is also like, sure, I get that. Maybe I did seem angry about this or maybe I didn't do that exactly right or in a way that was super helpful, but I can take that feedback and I can move forward instead of making it part of who I am.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:37:38.722)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:37:49.395)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:37:58.894)
Yeah. Well, and I think one of the things I've tried to give teachers too is because people can write reviews now on different sites about people's classes and teachers get real hung up on it. It's really hard. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not going to be a part of that. I'm like, I don't want to work anywhere where you can see all the evals. But the, to approach each time you teach as an experiment and to then separate your worth from what you give.

Kerry Mandulak (01:38:11.404)
sure.

Kerry Mandulak (01:38:14.894)
Right.

Kerry Mandulak (01:38:24.124)
Yes.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:38:28.268)
Because we go into each class and say, like, what do you want to practice this time? I'm like, do you want to practice leading into breath pace? Then let's create a five pose flow breath pace. that don't worry about breath pace for the rest. Cause breath pace teaching to breath to movement really well. So it actually makes sense is actually quite difficult. Cool. If you want to work on demoing this or mirroring in this class where I say, right, but I lift up my left arm because I'm looking at you. Like you go, that's a brain. That's a brain game. So.

work on that just for even a part of it. You wanna get off your mat the next class, that's where your practice is on top of learning people's names and remembering the sequence and like trying to do the things. So each time you teach is just an experiment so you can separate your worth and identity from the thing that you might be practicing, because it's a practice to be a teacher. And I think we can glom onto the feedback that we get that might not feel

kind or might feel more judgmental and might have us questioning like, why am I even doing this? Like I'm a terrible teacher. Like nobody even wants to come to my class. Like they thought it was boring. Everything's done. Like let's quit. Where it's like, wait, like let's, let's like separate this and be like, I don't know. I'm not the teacher for everybody. Cool. And absolutely. Like I could have taught that better. And that makes me excited. Cause when I teach something, especially as the first time like, Whoa,

Kerry Mandulak (01:39:39.068)
Yes, familiar.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:39:54.316)
Okay, actually, I'm going to switch this and this and I'm to go in and teach it another way. And so to like separate our identity from the experiments and then also to like really be intentional about like, go do the thing at best that you can. And also perfect is boring. like.

Kerry Mandulak (01:40:11.655)
Perfect is, right, perfect is the enemy of good. You know, all those things, gentle is the new perfect, which is my friend Robin Conley Downs always says that, like, there's no perfect is something we make up. Perfect is an illusion, like, just similar to what I was saying about like a normal voice. Like, who is determining perfect? Right, but if you can say it's about the process, not the outcome, that's another thing that, believe me, I'm saying that to myself as much as I'm saying it out loud.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:40:22.241)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:40:29.805)
Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:40:34.862)
Mm-hmm.

Totally.

Kerry Mandulak (01:40:39.335)
but to really focus on what you can control versus what you cannot control if someone is going to like or not like your voice. That's all on them. It's on them. And so what you can control is I'm going to do this experiment or I'm going to do these things. And I think what I wanted to come back to, I remembered it was the idea of the front and the back, bringing your voice to the front. Do you know, I have said that so many times in a voice therapy session, but really it's, you made such a wonderful connection between that as far as like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:40:49.505)
That's okay.

Kerry Mandulak (01:41:08.807)
Bringing it to the front is like letting it be there and like holding the space versus in the back, right? Where it's down here and it's in like, you know, you're kind of hiding it like in your larynx a little bit versus like letting it just be in the front. And that's space that we can occupy. It's been hard for me to learn how to own my space or own a space. And, but again, it takes practice. takes experimentation. And then,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:41:17.774)
Hmm?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:41:21.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:41:34.126)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:41:37.733)
You build the courage as you do the thing, not before the thing. Right?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:41:41.622)
Absolutely. I mean, that's like my values is like courage and curiosity. I'm like, let's take that everywhere. And I like how you're even talking about space is one of the things I think about with voice sharing is like the speed that we talk and the amount of space it takes up if I'm not going to try to talk fast. And this idea of what happens when we talk lower.

Kerry Mandulak (01:42:00.069)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:42:08.523)
or slower doesn't mean we have to like sit back in our voice, but we can be talking upfront, but we're not trying to get things out really fast. Cause if we get things up really fast and tell you to raise your arms, then you try to pull to your checks. And then you were going to reach out like, like it, it incites a feeling in people who are listening to you. so sometimes it is apologetic. Sometimes it's trying not to take up space. So you're like, actually take up some freaking space. And it's when one of the things that I, when I voice note people,

I'm just going to talk like, Rangen. But it's been fascinating to me because I don't think of it and I'm just like talking and letting myself process as I speak. But so many people have responded to be like, I love how you just let yourself pause in the middle and you're just, not in a rush to like give, and it's happened enough times to be like, I'm not even trying to do that, but I just am like,

I'm making it. Here's the space, allowing yourselves to like have that. fascinating.

Kerry Mandulak (01:43:14.939)
I love a good pause now. I didn't use to, I used to never pause. Pausing was like not part of my, any part of like how I taught, but now I'm like pause so people can process. Pause because you've made a point and you want people to just like linger on that point for a minute. I've really learned how to do that. I haven't demonstrated it well here today, but I, the pausing,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:43:22.403)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:43:27.074)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:43:37.922)
No.

Kerry Mandulak (01:43:40.239)
I think that is really, cause I just wanted to tell you every single thing about both the chords that I wanted to share, but I, the power and pausing and taking your time and doing less to get more with the small shifts, big impact, that idea has been really circulating through the past 20, gosh, I'm almost, I'm coming up on almost 30 years as a speech pathologist, but about.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:43:52.952)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:44:06.327)
Yeah.

Kerry Mandulak (01:44:07.281)
coming up on 20 years as a professor, and it's really powerful.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:44:10.67)
Yeah. Well, and I know some teachers I've talked to, they're like, oh my gosh, when I'm teaching, feel like I'm out of breath. I was like, you know, you can just stop the class. guide them to a position where they're resting and just be like, we're going to be here for five breaths. They put them in down dog, put them in child's pose, put them at whatever, like they're standing facing forward. You go to the back of the room, take a pause for yourself. They don't even have to know it's for you.

Kerry Mandulak (01:44:18.725)
Yes.

Kerry Mandulak (01:44:36.56)
My age.

Kerry Mandulak (01:44:41.201)
Just a pause. Yeah. that's, mean, so yeah, we just never, we don't often take that pause. we're, when we think about like how much we're doing when we're talking, it's like, we all need to pause. Yeah. And we're coordinating so much. It's like, you have to just use your breath for you, not for speed. Take a minute. Take a beat. That's my new favorite thing. So just gonna take a beat. Okay. Here we go.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:45:01.772)
Yeah. Yeah.

I just like now this current moment, I want to, I need to see some visuals of like my throat and like all the things this is. I love like the science part. love that you're talking about being an evidence-based teacher. I love how that can exist at the same time as we're like, okay, is my voice value like valuable even to hear, right? Like all of these pieces get to be in there together, but having it be an evidence-based be like, here's some science.

Kerry Mandulak (01:45:27.674)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:45:33.1)
of what's happening so that it gives us this framework to sit on to then be able to explore and experiment and roots us. Like it roots us down. So it's not just like, well, it sounds like this. And then it's this. You're like, okay, but what's really happening and how is it happening and how can we play with that? And where can we adjust it to support ourselves to prevent things like so helpful? that, I love that part of what you've given us here today.

Kerry Mandulak (01:45:38.747)
Yes, for sure.

Kerry Mandulak (01:45:59.707)
Thank you. This is a really fun conversation.

Kerry Mandulak (01:46:05.583)
I feel like we could keep talking, but there are.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:46:08.928)
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's, there's a, I mean, I have a couple of things in mind where I was like, we didn't even, I mean, have you connected with and deep dove with, with somebody who's like a pelvic floor, physical therapist type of vibe. my gosh. Like that would be so exciting to me because there's a lot of people I, there was a teacher who worked, came to flow school. She's a pelvic floor and like throat, jaw, like

physical therapist because the combination of those two things and especially for a female like born female anatomy, the shape of vulva and the shape of vocal cords and like those similarities of structure between the two is pretty fascinating and yeah, that's fun.

Kerry Mandulak (01:46:55.195)
we have to have that conversation at the beginning of every, like beginning of semester, whether it be with undergrads or grad students that we're gonna be looking at a lot of vocal folds and it does look like female anatomy. So just here we go. And we just, day I'm just like, here it is. I've had, did once a video for my online asynchronous, you know, course that I teach in speech science where it's very close up vocal folds. can't wait to show you this video. And I just.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:47:06.828)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Kerry Mandulak (01:47:23.015)
Commentate about it for five minutes like I can talk about it for so long It's just the same thing over and over and it was definitely age restricted on YouTube and I said these are vocal cords like this is our body like this is and they're like no and I was like, right, well everybody But it is that's Yep

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:47:27.287)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:47:43.958)
Yeah, so thinking about, mean, so there's some fun layers in that of, there's some fun layers. I'll stop it there. there's so many more things to say. Well, and emotional and ownership layers. And I mean, like truly for me, maybe we'll bring back another conversation here too. And as we start to take some walks together and you come to garage yoga, all the things.

Kerry Mandulak (01:47:47.557)
Yes. Different.

Different sort of layers, next conversation. Can't wait.

Kerry Mandulak (01:48:10.276)
Right.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:48:12.558)
But truly it's I think when I talk about owning the hell of your voice I love this as a part of the conversation and like the anatomy behind it because I'm always looking to bring the evidence based into Yoga, so it's not just all woo based all like quote-unquote spiritual which I fucking love that part like I think that's really important But like that's also we can be be married together Like all things are like our emotional body touches our physical body. We have heartbreak our body hurts

Like everything, like everything's tied together. So this idea of owning your voice, owning what you want to say and what you want and how you want to say it and letting yourself take up space. And now I have some visions for, I'm like, well, if I'm in teacher training, then you're going to have to be part of it. We're going to talk about a voice.

Kerry Mandulak (01:48:43.579)
Right.

Kerry Mandulak (01:49:02.15)
I would say yes to that in a minute.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:49:05.169)
Great, great. That's my vision right now. I mean, I haven't set it a whole bunch of places, but I am really thinking that maybe in a year, next September, to run a longer teacher training.

That's what we can look forward to. Perfect.

Kerry Mandulak (01:49:20.174)
Okay, great. I'm, I'm, I'm here for it. I feel really fortunate to know you. You teach me a lot. Thank you.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:49:32.366)
Thank you, Carrie.

So I squeeze you. okay. we got to sign off. We both have other places we need to get to, but, such a delight to be here. I'm looking forward to more. There's more coming for us. This is literally just the beginning. We're like, let's be friends. Okay. That's podcasts. we'll like, you got, yeah. Okay. Y'all thank you for tuning in for the podcast today and listening to this. Hopefully it's like.

Kerry Mandulak (01:49:50.15)
you

Kerry Mandulak (01:49:55.75)
Yes, the possibilities are endless. I can't wait.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:50:05.25)
I think this conversation, because it feels like it just brushes the surface. We need like diagrams and we need like repetition and like go look up this, this, and if you're a teacher and you're like, wow, this is fascinating. These are other layers, like read breath by James Nestor, especially if you're coming to full school, do that. and then like look at some anatomy of the throat, like play with this, like warm up your voice with some horse lips, go get a straw or a weird.

Kerry Mandulak (01:50:11.643)
Hmm?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:50:31.212)
like a fancy metal stainless steel thing, like whatever, you know, whatever's exciting. So do these things and remember that there's so many ways to nerd out in any direction. And we can of course spread ourselves thin, but you could just do a deep dive, right? And be like, okay, let's like learn about this right now. And how does this affect how you're showing up? Because it does. And Carrie and I are here telling you that we are so in for you owning the hell out of your voice.

Kerry Mandulak (01:50:59.974)
Absolutely.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:51:00.684)
I'm taking care of it.

Kerry Mandulak (01:51:03.078)
Please take care of your voices and I can help. So, but I will also send that information about semi-occluded vocal tract, which also on that website has anatomy and physiology resources, has exercise resources, has all kinds of things for however much you want to nerd out. It's there. Yeah. Great.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:51:18.894)
Awesome. Okay, I'll put that in the show notes as well. Okay, thank you, Carrie. It's a delight to talk to you. Thank you all.

Kerry Mandulak (01:51:26.032)
Thanks, Bonnie. See you in the hood, neighborhood.