Your voice doesn’t exist in isolation — you are the instrument.
In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, Amber Cathey explores how your physical health and mental state directly impact your singing. From injury and illness to stress, fatigue, and even subtle discomfort, what’s happening in your body and mind will always show up in your voice.
You’ll learn why tension isn’t just “in your head,” how small physical setbacks can affect technique and confidence, and how to recognize when your voice needs support beyond vocal exercises.
If something feels off, it may be time to look beyond the voice itself.
Because sustainable singing isn’t just about technique — it’s about caring for the whole instrument.
00:00 Introduction to Vocal Health and Well-being
03:46 Personal Experiences with Physical Challenges
06:45 The Importance of Self-Care for Singers
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Hi friends, welcome to Vocal Tips in 10. Thank you for being here with me. Today's episode, I am really just talking off the cuff, which I do every time. I use no scripts for any of these. If you're a regular listener, you're like, really, Amber? Shocking. You know, I always, just like I do with everything, I talk about and I share things that are happening in my daily life, working with singers as a singer myself. If I have a lot of singers that have an issue or a question,
or something they wanna learn more about, something that they're working on, struggling with. And I think, okay, well, obviously they're not the only ones. Let me talk about it on a platform like this so I can hopefully help more people. And what I just wanna talk about today is how important it is for us to remember.
that we are not just a voice floating around in the world. We all know that, right? We're like, of course we're not, I get that. But our body is our instrument. I know I say it all the time, but it is. We use our entire body in one form or fashion, or at least everything we use is connected to aspects of our entire body when we sing.
and then what runs the show that is our body? Our mind. We cannot separate the voice from the body from the mind. And I think that's especially important right now when I am recording this. The world is a crazy place. I was gonna say not great place.
There are always There are always great people. I firmly believe in that. And there's also, gosh, we just hear a lot of dark, rough stuff right now. I also know this is not, you know, it's not like it's the first time in the world things have been dark and rough.
But I feel that lots of us are feeling that. I think it's hard not to. And I think especially if you are listening to this, you are a singer, you're a vocalist, you're a creative person in some way, we generally feel things stronger than the average bear, We're just kind of an emotional,
crew many times. And so there's that aspect that's really important and really important to think about. I've seen a whole lot of singers, was going to say these last handful of weeks, but that's not true. These last many, many months that are just dealing with more tension, more blocks, more fatigue, just things feeling harder and not as good as they normally do.
And sometimes there's a real clear technical thing. okay, well, there's this, let's fix that. There's a real clear vocal health thing. You we need to budget your vocal energy more purposefully, whatever it is. And then there's almost always this mental, emotional piece. They're stressed about something, they're overwhelmed. We just, with social media,
and 24-7 access to everything and a lot of things being dark. So just, know, more stressed out brains, tighter bodies, tighter voices, a harder time maybe connecting emotionally or...
Emotions being so much at the surface that when they go to connect to something emotionally, they kind of fall apart.
so there's the emotional piece right? The social emotional piece, how we're feeling mentally, And then there's the important part of the body. So obviously, like I just talked about, the mind influences the body. If we're really stressed, if we're feeling down, you know, the body's tight, the body's more sluggish, everything feels a little bit more difficult.
Also, I was working with a singer earlier this week who was having struggles vocally. And we were talking, I've worked with the singer for years. He's a fantastic singer in a great rock band. And we were trying to get to the bottom of what is the issue? And I kept asking him about other things in his life, anything physically that's happened, anything, just trying to get as much information as I can. No, no, I can't think of anything. And then he just kind of said as an aside.
Later in the lesson, yeah, sorry, let me kind of re-situate myself. I pulled a leg muscle and it's just been killing me.
he had pulled like the big old quad muscle. that's a major muscle. And he was like, yeah, I'm having to go into PT and I'm just in a lot of pain. and I was like, dude, you failed to mention that. You don't think that a massive pulled muscle, a quad muscle pulled is going to then affect other parts of your body. And you just
feeling kind of constant pain and discomfort. And so we made some tweaks based on that. And then he messaged me and was like, yeah, that was it. I'm feeling a whole lot better. I also today am getting ready to go get an injection into my tailbone. If it sounds like, wow, that's not fun. It is not. That is part of my hypermobility. I have hypermobile EDS.
One of my very hypermobile spots, unfortunately, is my tailbone. And so it has caused pretty significant arthritis, which means it hurts when I sit. It hurts sometimes when I stand too long.
And I'm gonna bet you don't have to go out on too far of a limb to think about how that could affect my singing. When I'm sitting right now, I'm sitting on a lovely cushion right now, a booty cushion before I get my shot. But it is quite uncomfortable. I find myself wriggling around, moving, crossing one leg over the other, trying to find a comfortable position. Well, all of that, of course, affects the muscles in my body, affects kind of my balance, my alignment.
all of those things. And also just when you're uncomfortable, other parts of your body tend to tighten to try and protect you. So I'm going to go in and get this injection. It is not fun times, but after about 10 days, it really helps me.
And it just got me thinking as I was like, let me go ahead and shoot my podcast episode. me, because I know I'm gonna be out of commission for at least a day, very likely to, potentially more. And that's going to affect what I'm able to do, what I'm able to offer people, what I'm able to do with my voice.
And that's just an example, another example, just like my singer with the quad injury of how it can affect us as singers. All of the different things that happen to us, voice, body and mind affect our singing.
And so I just wanted to jump on today more than anything to remind you of that, because I say that to singers all the time.
And everybody's like, yes, absolutely. And then we go out in the world and we live our lives and we kind of forget a lot of that, how connected it is. One of the wonderful things about being a singer,
It's the only instrument that comes from the body, comes from the soul, however you want to look at it. You are getting to see an aspect of inside of someone. It's just so powerful and it just connects us as people, right? That's why it's so powerful. It's one of the things I love about it so much. It's also one of the things about it that makes it such a tough instrument. We can't see it.
It's inside our body, And then anything that happens to our body affects it. You get a head cold, you're stressed out, you get an injury, any of those things, body and mind affect the voice. And I just think it's really important for all of us to remember that. Sometimes I have to remind myself, I am a work, work, work.
person because I love what I do. I feel so insanely lucky
to work with great people, to get to bring more positive things, more communication, more connection into the world, And singing is so great for us physically and mentally, And it's such a connector. And I could go on and on and I will stop right now.
But even I can forget, even though I preach it all the time. I will get into work, work, work mode and think, okay, well, I'd really love to take a walk outside. I feel like I could use that mentally, but nope, I wanna get this done and I'm gonna get that done. And if I ignore my body and mind for too long, my voice lets me know really quickly, hey, we're all connected. We're not pleased, Amber, okay?
notes, they're not feeling great, are they? Everything feels a little bit more tiring, a little bit more tight. It's because you have got to step away and take care of the whole person. I need that reminder sometimes.
I hope this is helpful. I am sending love and good thoughts, voice, body, and mind to all of you. Thank you for listening. See you in next week's episode.
