The Thinking Voice

This week, Stephen interviewed Speech and Language Therapist and Doctoral Researcher Sophie Harkness. Sophie is a Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist with over 10 years of clinical experience across healthcare settings in the North West. She specialises in breathing, cough, voice and swallowing difficulties, with particular expertise in conditions such as inducible laryngeal obstructio...

Maurice Goodwin, Dr Jenevora Williams and Stephen R. King sit down to talk about the complexities of the Functional Neurological Voice Disorder diagnosis. The three hosts chat about what updates have been released around the category of diagnosis, the positive signs, how they might work with the person behind the diagnosis and the nuances of being interdisciplinary therapists in this profession.

In this podcast takeover, Gillian Ramm interviews Hannah Sandison, mezzo soprano and performance psychology coach. They discuss the world of performance psychology and how Hannah learned with sports coaches and actors about how our mental landscape has such an impact on our performances.  The conversation meanders down laneways including what we wish all training singers could learn about nervous...

Maurice Goodwin, Dr Jenevora Williams and Stephen R King sit down to chat about what makes evidence, why we need evidence, and the limits of the evidence we have in the field of vocal health.  A provocative and enlightening conversation, this is a set of personal opinions and anecdotes around educating the next level of practitioners. We hope you enjoy the show!

oin Robert, Stephen and Jenevora as they talk about learning through alchemy, exploring ontological security or resistance, and the meaning of love.

Jenevora is talking with Maurice Goodwin about our interactions with clients, and how we can do less and achieve more. They talk about the place of silence for reflection and consolidation. There is consideration of what student-led learning might really look like, and the place for the teacher’s expertise in a process which may look more autonomous for the student.

In this episode, your hosts talk through Stephen and Jenevora's new paper, The Guarded Larynx. This paper was published in the Journal of Voice (2025) and discusses the concept and phenomena involved in 'guarding'.  If you are interested in learning more, why not join Stephen and Jenevora for their short course, aimed at clinicians and teachers at the link below: https://voicecarece...

This fascinating and funny chat emerged from an absence of a question. Stephen, Robert and Jenevora explore the idea of the conundrums we face through linking the body, voice (and some ways) spirit, too. 

Jenevora and Robert are joined by Anita Morrison to talk about Feldenkrais training, lessons, philosophy, and practice. It’s not easy to describe a feeling and somatic learning experience in words, a bit like describing the taste of a mango. They did a wonderful job nonetheless. Please come and join Robert, Anita and Jenevora on November the 8th and/or 9th in London to explore your own feelings ab...

What about when things go wrong? This conversation happened several months ago but has only finished being edited. Jenevora, Robert and Stephen talk about the difficulty that we come across when things don't go well. Stephen tells a story about shower drains, Robert talks about disagreeableness leading to change and Jenevora shares insights from the studio. This episode is full of laughter an...

In this episode, Stephen interviews the legendary voice teacher Robert Price.  Stephen and Robert talk about Robert's time in the circus as a metal clown, dropping out of law school and travelling the world teaching vocal massage.  They also discuss the future of relational vocal massage and establish it -perhaps- as a method of Body Psychotherapy. Celebrating the launch of their co-authored...

Join our hosts as they take us through their thoughts on breaking free. As you’ll hear, the conversation develops into whether we break free from, or break free in to new habits, behaviours and spaces. This episode is a precursor to the breaking free conference listed below. Booking through the vocalhealth.co.uk website. Breaking Free One-Day Vocal Health Education Conference 9th March, 2025 Frien...

In our latest episode of The Thinking Voice Podcast Stephen King interviews Carles Expósito Rovira. Carles is a performing arts physiotherapist specialising in the artistic voice. When one brilliant vocal manual therapist (Stephen King) interviews another you know you are going to be in for a magical conversation! Stephen and Carles discuss his ongoing Phd research into the tongue and the all-impo...

Stephen and Jenevora are chatting about the process of collaboration. What happens when we look at something with different eyes and skills and backgrounds. They talk about the difference between diagnosis and description, and how often a description becomes misinterpreted as a diagnosis. Specifically the conversation relates to the forthcoming course with Kerrie Obert SLP, who is spending three d...

What is a safe space? How can we respect another person’s autonomy whilst opening up possibilities for change? Does learning always need a challenge to our sense of safety, or do we need the safety in order to learn? Robert, Stephen and Jenevora discuss boundaries, ethics and the nature of learning in this episode of Thinking Voice.

As ever, the three hosts chat about how this most interesting topic of 'imposter syndrome' matters for singers and voice users. Robert Sussuma talks about how we might come to learn to be an imposter in Facebook groups or forums, Stephen King talks about how The Wizard of Oz is a perfect example of imposter syndrome and Dr Jenevora Williams begins a discussion around the frequency of the...

CONTENT WARNING In this episode, we discuss things related to trauma. Whilst we don't give any clear examples or case studies it is worth noting that we define trauma and talk around the subject. In this conversation, your hosts Dr Jenevora Williams, Robert Sussuma and Stephen King discuss the way in which psychological and vocal trauma precipitate. There are definitions, revised definitions...

Our three hosts, Stephen King, Robert Sussuma and Dr Jenevora Williams explore the what they might have said to their younger selves.  This is an intimate conversation that pulls apart the past, present and future, as well as exploring what it means to “do the hard yards” in your career.

Acupuncture has been used and documented to help voice and throat problems since the Book of the Yellow Emperor in 180BCE. In this ancient tome, there is mention of “Plum Stone Throat” or as we would say, Globus Pharyngeous.  Caroline Van Looy, a Masters level Speech Therapist from Belgium joins Stephen King as they discuss the inclusion of Acupuncture in their voice therapy work.  Join the up com...

In this weeks, episode of the Thinking Voice podcast, Robert, Jenevora and Stephen discuss the complexities of gatekeeping and the lengths we go to to keep our education, titles and information truly representable.  This episode also discusses the intricacy of ‘the journey’, be it to our studio, to work, to learn or heal.

Dr Jenevora Williams is in conversation with Maurice Goodwin SLP. There is much talk about ‘staying in your lane’ as a clinician or practitioner. What does this mean? Who makes the decisions? What happens if you wander over the line? If we are comparing the regulations in the US with those in the UK, is there really much of a difference, and what are the real practical necessities for us to remain...

In this episode, Stephen interviews Chris Johnson. Chris Johnson's performance career began in a casual choir, but then the joy (and, sometimes the fear) of stepping out in-front of hundreds of people got addictive. So addictive that it made him develop his own performance which led Chris into the professional world of singing for twelve years; years through which he learned a lot about himse...

Join our hosts for the “Love Conversation”, where they explore how we might begin to love our voices, and the processes involved in becoming a vocalist. As ever, Dr Jenevora Williams, Robert Sussuma and Stephen King move around the realms of philosophy, music, pedagogy and psychology in order to better flesh out the theories presented in the present.

Join our hosts Dr Jenevora Williams, Stephen King and Robert Sussuma on an exploration of Reflux. In this episode you’ll hear about the details of Stephen’s latest research paper, the somatic world of Robert and Jenevora’s clinical observations. Of course, the biopsychosocial model makes a timely appearance, as well as an unexpected intruder into Jenevora’s studio (listen to the blooper at the end...

The “Tremor Conversation” sees our hosts take you on a whirlwind adventure through coffee snobbery, inevitability, vibrato, orgasms (yes you read that right!) and more! As ever, Dr Jenevora Williams, Robert Sussuma and Stephen King bring an illuminated perspective on what it is to teach, and work with voices.