How to reduce tongue tension

Author

Ivan Lu
February 09, 2024

How to reduce tongue tension

Jen asks

“How do you reduce tongue tension?”

In today’s episode, let’s tackle this question. I’ll share with you what exactly causes tongue tension and very practical vocal exercise that you can use to improve this. Let’s dive in.

The first thing to understand is tension isn’t inherently a bad thing.

Think about it. We want tension in certain contexts.

When you’re lifting weight you want tension in your muscles. Otherwise you can’t lift.

Tension simply means we’re activating the muscles.

This can be useful in the case of the tongue, when we eat. The tongue is a huge muscle that helps us swallow.

However, the problem is when we’re activating it when we don’t need to. And we keep it excessively engaged.

So how do we tackle tongue tension?

Step 1: Get the right muscles first.

For most beginners, our initial instinct when we feel tension is to go and work at the tension directly.

Now this can work and in the 2nd step I will share specific exercises to help with this.

However, for most people.

A big part of resolving extrinsic tensions is LEARNING to engage the right muscles.

So many of us tend to grip on with our tongue, our jaw.

Because we don’t know what are the correct muscles to engage.

Often when i’m teaching students, by simply learning to engage the right muscles.

A lot of my students will naturally resolve their tongue tension WITHOUT direct vocal exercises.

So what are these correct muscles?

Now I’ve raved on this time and time again.

But there’s really 2 key ones it.

STRETCH and CONNECT.

If you don’t know what it feels like to STRETCH your cords which adjusts pitch.

If you don’t know how it feels like to appropriately close your cords which helps you create sound.

No matter how much of the EXTRINSIC you engage. You’re always going to run into problems.

Because you’re basically just guessing each time you’re hitting a note.

So if you’re listening to this and you have no idea what I’m talking about. Take the time to understand this and build in control of these fundamentals. For specific exercises on this, check out episode 129, 131, 132, 147.

Before we dive into step #2. For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

Okay let’s talk about a very simple practical exercise you can use to work out tongue tension.

Step 2: Practical exercises

Now if you feel like you’ve got a good idea of what it feels like to stretch and connect the cords appropriately.

But you still feel tension with your tongue.

What can you do?

Try this.

Remember this, the opposite of tension is freedom of movement.

We’re not aiming for a sloppy lazy tongue. Ultimately we want the tongue engage just enough to articulate but in a way that doesn’t feel constricting/effortful.

Think about how you use you’re speaking.

You don’t think of tongue tension yet they moving around.

So this is the exercise.

  1. Let’s speak through the word “NO”

    1. Here I want you to establish a reference for how easy it is to make this sound.

    2. Notice how the tongue is moving but you don’t feel much effort.

    3. You’re also closing your cords appropriately to make this sound

  2. Now repeat it on a scale

  3. Then compare the two.

    1. Did it feel just as easy to articulate with your tongue?

    2. Or did something change?

  4. If it did change, I want you to keep repeating them both. Until you can make the scale feel just as a easy as speaking through the note.

  5. The rationale here is we need to teach out brain that TONGUE tension has got NOTHING to do with moving up and down your range.

  6. Once you feel like you have the hang of this. Move up the piano!

Anyway! I hope this episode was useful. If it was, please support this channel through all the usual social media stuff. Like, comment/subscribe.

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Last but not least, if you’ve always wanted to improve your singing faster and with less confusion. Remember you don’t have to do this on your own.

I’ve got ways to work with me in the description down below. Make sure to check it out. Apart from that, my name is Ivan, I'm your voice teacher, and I'll see you for our weekly tutorials every single Thursday or Friday.

Take care.

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