Laryngeal tension is defined as a voice quality identified with excessive strain involving respiratory and laryngeal dynamics. Excessive strain may be evident in the articulatory, phonatory, and aerodynamic aspects of speech production. Instruction may begin by teaching the ability to coordinate phonation and respiration in isolated phonemes, and gradually move into controlled tasks incorporating articulation, and finally into more spontaneous speaking tasks to promote generalization.

One such approach to reducing tension is detailed by Brown Spector & Subtelny, 2004, in Correction of Tense Voice (PDF). In this approach, the overall sequencing of tasks involves:

• Education: Teaching the client both the basic processes of respiration and phonation and how tension adversely affects these processes.
• Awareness/Identification: Learning to identify the presence of tension in one’s own productions.
  • The client may benefit from a combination of visual, tactile, and/or auditory cues while learning to identify tension.
• Control: Intentional modulation of tension while phonating, scaffolding through increasing levels of difficulty.
  • Vowels — isolated vowel phonemes
  • Syllables — CV, VC, CVC
  • Phrases — short, familiar phrases scaffolding to longer, more novel phrases
• Generalization: Clients advance to practice relaxed phonation across increasingly complex articulatory targets, including syllables, words, phrases and spontaneous conversation.

Suggested Guided Activities

• Tense-Lax Comparisons
  • Model tensing and relaxing your arm. Have the client imitate. Discuss how the muscle feels when tense versus when it is relaxed.
  • Model holding a pen in your hand and writing your name, then holding the pen as tight as you can and writing your name again. Have the client imitate. Discuss which was more difficult.
  • Encourage the client to try to tense and relax their throat muscles. Cue the client to tense their muscles as if they are about to cough or pick up something heavy.
• Yawn-sigh
• Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract (SOVT) Exercises
  • Sustained /m/ or /n/ in isolation
  • Straw phonation
• Easy onset

Multisensory Cues for Tension

• Visual Cues: Visually observe muscles tensing in the face and neck using a mirror.
• Tactile Cues: Use both internal sensory information (interoception and proprioception) and external sensory information (client touches their own throat).
• Auditory Cues: Compare tight vs. relaxed phonation (own, recorded samples, modeled by clinician).
• Biofeedback Cues: Use spectrograms and pitch meters to observe how tension impacts vocal productions.