Sophie Bierens de Haan
2 min readJun 17, 2021

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Minimising the recurrence of a soreness on the left side of my throat is like a blindfolded search, but I am definitely getting warmer. Lying down on my back if I put the tip of my tongue just a little bit behind my front teeth and, while leaving there, slowly open my mouth as far as it will go, I can feel a stretching sensation in some muscles on the left side around the jaw hinge and underneath my chin. I have no such sensations on the right side. Then if I slowly switch from that position of my tongue to begin to form to consonant K this triggers a sudden soreness far down in my throat even before K is enunciated. I can ‘bypass' that trigger by encouraging the tip of my tongue to protrude out of my mouth just a tiny bit, which encourages the back of the tongue to meet the hard palate also just a little bit nearer to the front (mouth opening) than it was before. This sudden soreness is very rarely triggered when I’m upright, but a more progressive fatigue can build up after a long singing session whereby, a few hours later, I have an enduring soreness on that same location in throat, deep inside on the left side. These sore throats have been a feature of my singing practice for decades, and were non existent during my decade of not singing. Decades ago I used to grind my teeth and the dentist told me that I had an uneven bite. Until recently, when I brushed my teeth I could see that my jaw was opening less widely on the left side compared to the right one. In January I became to do some physiotherapy for temporomandibular jaw disorders called the 6×6 Rocabado exercises many times a day. Doing these already helps me in loosening my jaw and opening my mouth more easily generally, but practicing singing for an hour will still leave me with that sore throat on the left side. So this why I’m digging a bit deeper into the problem. Following the information I’m getting from the sensations around enunciating the vowel K while lying down, my hunch is that, standing up in my singing practice, my jaw might often be less loose and my tongue held further back on the left side compared to the right. In the last Friday Focus on Virtually Vocalise, Gillian Gingell Wormley gave me detailed feedback on enunciation. Continuing with the physiotherapy, detailed attention to vowels and consonants in singing, alongside with the basics of singing technique, will help me progressively use my tongue in more comfortable ways.

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