Our Spring Study Day with Meribeth Dayme was a rich feast indeed giving VCN members an opportunity to benefit from Meribeth’s vast wealth of knowledge and practical experience. She began the day by telling us that our education system is full of “old wives tales”, especially those associated with the voice.
There is a part of our brain, the size of a peanut, which honours the proof of everything and we’ve been honouring this peanut for far too long! Whilst anatomy is the basis, for without structure you can’t build anything, we need to discover how we can move from the basis to working creatively.
Meribeth then got us all up on our feet and took us through a fun Qi gong exercise to warm us up. We then looked at the skeleton and physical alignment and Meribeth worked with volunteers to show how slight adjustments to posture, including positioning of the feet, could immediately improve the vocal function. She reminded us that it’s feet first – being grounded then the feeling that the crown of the head is growing upward to lengthen the back of the neck and to help you feel your spine lengthening as well. Always check that the knees are slightly loose and able to bend if necessary. There should be a feeling of growing taller and wider but at the same time pulling yourself together. We then did an exercise working in threes to discover how a slight change in postural alignment affected us vocally. Beginning with a neutral position and then leaning our bodies forward and then back we were able to detect how even this slight change altered the sound.
Moving on to breath and support, Meribeth referred us to the skeleton again to show us that the largest open space of the chest is at the bottom of the rib cage so it makes sense that when we want to create more space for air we need to expand in that area. Using a bush hat to represent the diaphragm, Meribeth inserted it into the skeleton to demonstrate the downward movement as the diaphragm contracts displacing the lower ribs and the organs and soft structures below it. She showed us that when the body is in good alignment abdominal expansion happens easily and breathing is efficient.
In the afternoon Meribeth presented us with the challenge of making a clay three-dimensional model of a larynx. She said that this was one of the best ways of understanding the larynx as by going through the process of making the model would give us a very different understanding of the structure which would then give us the basis for understanding how the muscles work.
So armed with our plasticene and a sheet of instructions we all undertook to build a larynx with Meribeth reminding us that it wasn’t the artwork that was important but the process. This was good to remember as I was endeavouring to get my wayward arytenoid cartilages to sit on the back of the cricoid cartilage I’d fashioned! But Meribeth was absolutely right. Having gone through this process I certainly have a much better understanding of how my larynx works and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
In the final part of the day, Meribeth introduced us to the energy work she does with clients and students and we explored several exercises using positive and negative energy and the physical impact this has.
Meribeth is certainly able to make the complex accessible and her passion for her subject is inspiring and enduring. We want more Meribeth, please. And as Phyllida Furse so aptly said: we’ve all now got peanut allergy!
Susan Beresford, Actor and Voice Coach, London.