Fourth Trimester Podcast Episode 71: Learn The Y-Buzz
The Y-Buzz Technique
Melissa Hurt is our guest this episode and she offers us an easy and rather fun and funny technique for “finding our voice” as new parents.
This little exercise, known as the Y-Buzz will warm up your vocal chords and open your voice and tickle your face. But it’s not just for fun– this technique is something you may find empowering as well as spirit-lifting.
So, what are we waiting for? Let’s learn the y-buzz technique together.
About Melissa in her own words
“I took my first yoga class in my late twenties and finally found a place where I could feel my breath with ease. Over time, I became comfortable with my body taking up space in the room. One day after class I felt something completely foreign to me—contentment and peace. That summer I took a four-week embodied voice and movement intensive. The work focused on bringing awareness to sensation and vibration in voice and body to develop, among other skills, speech clarity, vocal tone, and expressive dynamics. I noticed warmth in my voice as it vibrated towards the front of my mouth.
When I felt my voice, I felt myself. I became interested in what I had to say. Yoga and embodied voice brought me back to myself—a woman I got to know again and enjoyed being with. These embodiment disciplines don’t only ground me in the moment of practice, but throughout my daily life when I carry over a mindfulness of sensation. They are a way of life.
I became a certified trainer of Lessac’s Kinesensic voice and movement work in 2010. I became a certified yoga teacher in 2012 from Sun and Moon Yoga Studio in Arlington, VA and earned my RYT-500hr designation in 2018. I have taught voice at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (Sydney) and George Mason University (Fairfax, VA). I have taught many levels of yoga, including standard hatha yoga, yoga fundamentals, prenatal, postnatal, and vinyasa yoga.” — Melissa Hurt
Resources for Parents
Melissa Hurt’s website is https://www.melissahurt.com/. Her newsletter signup comes with a free toolkit including a daily checklist with five must-do practices, a diagram of how to balance and and move your feet for a stable foundation, a 7 min yoga sequence sheet, and a 5 min audio meditation.
“The Y-Buzz strengthens the voice without straining the voice. It optimizes your breath so you have to breathe well to really do it and feel it. And breathing well is really the foundation of feeling well.”
— Melissa Hurt
Selected links
Connect with Melissa Hurt melissahurt.com | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn
Melissa’s books I Am the Jungle: A Yoga Adventure | Arthur Lessac’s Embodied Actor Training | Play with Purpose: Lessac Kinesensics in Action
Learn more Encourage Learning, Security & Confidence Through Communication and Play | Top 3 Episodes of the Fourth Trimester Podcast – Start here!
Connect with Fourth Trimester Facebook | Instagram | esthergallagher.com | About & Contact
Episode Transcript
Esther Gallagher: [00:00:40] Welcome back, listeners. This is Esther today on the Fourth Trimester podcast. Our beloved Sarah won’t be with us today, but we have a wonderful guest, Melissa Hurt, who lives in Del Mar, New York. So we had to do some fancy scheduling to be able to talk with her today. I’m going to reintroduce her in a moment.
Esther Gallagher: [00:01:05] But I just want to remind you that we have, of course, in addition to our podcast, which the feedback has been really sweet and lovely lately, everyone really appreciated the visitors podcast, which I thought would maybe be a hard sell, but turns out it’s not, I’m happy to say. But in addition to that, of course, we have our fourth trimester podcast Facebook page, and we have our website for trimester podcast, which we recommend you go to for additional material and little updates here and there and text and things of that nature.
Esther Gallagher: [00:01:54] Again, it’s Esther Gallagher chatting with you today. And I want to reintroduce Melissa Hurt, who is going to tell you her early postpartum story and talk about modality that she practices and teaches. And she is generously going to teach us today her modality. And I’m very excited about it. So. Hi, Melissa. Hi. Hi. How are you today?
Melissa Hurt: [00:02:27] I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Esther Gallagher: [00:02:30] It’s our pleasure. Melissa, go right ahead and and tell us a little bit about you and your fourth trimester and then we’ll launch right into talking about this modality.
Melissa Hurt: [00:02:46] Great. Well, a little background on me. I am a certified yoga teacher and a less certified voice speech and movement trainer. And so my world was all about feeling sensation and feeling good. And that’s what I do for myself. And it’s what I teach other people. And then when I had my daughter, I had her via cesarean, which was a very difficult to recover from.
Melissa Hurt: [00:03:14] And it was not in my original plan, but it’s just was what God gave me. So it was my plan and I took it and I rolled with it. But the recovery was very, very hard. And what I did not expect was how low energy I would be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And that recovery, when you have a C-section, I feel like you are forced to rest a little bit more. Maybe that’s not the case for all women, but for me, I felt like I needed to.
Esther Gallagher: [00:03:48] Well, so I’m going to jump in right away, Melissa, and say that from the vantage point of my 41 years of involvement with the postpartum period, I don’t want our listeners being, having, having the mythology promulgated that if you have a vaginal delivery, you’re necessarily going to feel better and that if you have a C-section, you’re necessarily going to need something more of something. It’s all true that in the fourth trimester period you require rest, nourishment, sleep, nourishment, rest, and a modicum of appropriate exercise. So sure, carry on. You are you are both correct and maybe enlightened.
Melissa Hurt: [00:04:42] I am enlightened. And I think that my assumption there was, based off of how my midwives were preparing me for the C-section because I was planning for a natural vaginal delivery and then it just didn’t go that way. And so a lot of that was just taking on what my midwives had advised me. But yeah, thank you for sharing that. Absolutely.
Melissa Hurt: [00:05:06] So in any case, I was staying at home with my daughter. She nursed a lot. I mean, a lot. And I did not realize how dehydrating that was. She needed to nurse. Pretty much it felt like around the clock. I know it wasn’t until she was almost a year old before I got 5 hours of sleep in one chunk of time.
Melissa Hurt: [00:05:30] And so it just those first few months in particular were just very, very exhausting. And so a lot of things took a hit. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was not eating as well as I wanted to. I mean, sometimes when you’re absolutely starving from nursing a lot, you’re just grabbing what is an arm’s reach in the fridge or in the pantry without having to reach up and or bend over because you’re holding your child. And so I was just trying to get by however I could.
Melissa Hurt: [00:06:03] Well, one day I put my daughter down for a short little nap, and I was talking on the phone with my mentor for my lesson certification and we were just having a friendly chat. And she interrupted me and she said, What has happened to your voice? I said, What do you mean? She says, Your voice has no energy, there’s no life in it.
Melissa Hurt: [00:06:29] You need to find your vocal tone. What happened to your voice? I said, Well, I’m just really, really exhausted. And you’re right, my voice does feel really strained and it doesn’t feel good. And I’m a certified trainer, so I should have known better. But that’s just where life took me. I was feeling exhausted and she said,
Melissa Hurt: [00:06:47] Well, you need to find opportunities to develop your voice again. Do you read to your daughter? I said, Of course. I read to her every single night before bed. She says, okay. Do you play games with her? Oh, sure, all the time. I play games with her. We do like stuffed animals and all kinds of little games together. And she was really enlightening me on all the things that I do all the time that were opportunities for vocal play and exploration.
Melissa Hurt: [00:07:14] And a light bulb went off for me and I said, absolutely. This is my first step to reclaiming myself and body, mind, voice and spirit. And I was very thankful that she had said those things to me. And so right away, as soon as my daughter got up, I started humming to her, just humming a song that I liked so I could feel the vibration of my voice again in my mouth and on my lips. And I was yawning a little bit in the back of my throat so I could bring the vocal vibration forward, which just felt really, really good and that little slight yawn and we could all do it.
Melissa Hurt: [00:07:52] It’s that I call it that office meeting yawn or the church yawn or you don’t want to be rude and yawn, but you really need to yawn. Yawn. And so it’s when your mouth is. Exactly. So it’s when you’re lovely. So your mouth is closed, but you’re yawning. You feel that lift in the back of your throat and your lips and your cheek muscles are moving forward a little bit to accommodate that space.
Melissa Hurt: [00:08:15] But they want to stay closed. Well, just feeling that lift in the back of the throat will help bring the vocal vibrations forward. And it gives space literally. So I was doing that a lot and then I started doing what we call the Y-buzz and the less ACH can a sense a quirk. And so this is a tool that I wanted to share with everybody because it is such a therapeutic tool.
Melissa Hurt: [00:08:42] It strengthens the voice without straining the voice. It optimizes your breath so you have to breathe well to really do it and feel it and breathing well is really the foundation of feeling well. And it focuses your voice forward and a particular part of your mouth that when you bring your awareness to it, it’s very meditative. And so for me, who wasn’t able to get a lot of sleep, finding those little moments of meditation were a way to give my brain some focused rest so I could restore myself and get on through my day and through my night. Even so, that’s what I wanted to share was the Y-buzz.
Esther Gallagher: [00:09:25] Are you ready? That’s very exciting. I am ready. I’m so ready. I’m going to practice with you and I am going to reassert for my listenership that, listen, if you’re a new mom, you and everyone around you needs to learn ways to sleep when your baby sleeps, every time your baby sleeps. So all the things that we can do that are restorative, are wonderful, but our brains need sleep. So that’s true.
Esther Gallagher: [00:10:00] So often it’s a case for people like you yourself, Melissa. Like myself, 41 years ago, like, you know, lots of women in the busy world we live in that we’re looking at devices, we’re talking on the phone. We’re having visitors or visitors or having us and and we’re not being respected in our absolutely essential human need to sleep and sleep in a way that meshes with the fact that we’re the parent of a new baby.
Esther Gallagher: [00:10:37] So I’m going to say it on every podcast if I have to, but figure out the ways in which you are going to protect your need for sleep and you are going to educate those around you. That sleep is the second thing. After food. Only after food, right? That’s great. In the midst of nourishing your own baby and healing and recovering. So let’s get back to this Y-buzz. I’m very excited.
Melissa Hurt: [00:11:08] Okay. So as I said, foundation of everything we do is breathing well. And so we can feel that organically by imagining we have something we love to smell in front of us. Maybe it’s a freshly baked cookie or a fresh brewed cup of coffee. Or maybe it’s the smell of your baby. I mean, babies smell amazing.
Melissa Hurt: [00:11:30] And so you close your eyes and imagine you’re smelling that thing with pleasure. So let’s take a breath. And, like, we’re smelling this thing we love. And then sign it out through your mouth. Can you feel this little effervescent lift in your whole self when you find that sigh? And so we’ll do that a couple more times. And as you pleasure smell, as we call it, and the less work you’re feeling, the expansion of yourself, your belly, your back, your sides, your ribs, your spirit, everything, it feels expansive.
Melissa Hurt: [00:12:03] So we’ll smell this thing we love inside out. With pleasure. And so this is an optimal breathing practice. We’re not forcing anything. We’re not tightening anything to access some great deep breath. We’re just breathing naturally and breathing with behavior because our our spirit is connected with this, because we’re breathing something that we imagine that we love. And so love and feeling good. Those are always a part of what I teach people.
Melissa Hurt: [00:12:46] And so then we’re going to feel that office meeting, John, that I talked about before, that slight yawn in the back of the throat. So you can even feel that little lift and the back, that incipient yawn, and then feel as if you’re about to kiss your baby or do a quiet, just quiet, little shush. So you feel the cheek muscles moving forward and the lips moving forward.
Melissa Hurt: [00:13:13] And so we feel that lift in the back of the throat and that forward moving action of the cheeks and the lips. Arthur Let’s call that the reverse megaphone, because there’s that open space in the back of the mouth and the cheek cheeks and lips move forward to make that smaller mouthpiece. And so we feel that reverse megaphone. We also call it forward facial orientation. So that’s our posture, if you will. It’s not fixed. It’s very flexible and dynamic, but it’s giving space for your voice to move forward.
Melissa Hurt: [00:13:48] So we’re going to just feel some nice breathing with that forward facial orientation. And from here, just hum a song that you like and you’re speaking voice range, so just hum anything. And as you come, you’re feeling vibration moving forward on your lips. So, Esther, can you feel a vibration on your lips as you hum?
Esther Gallagher: [00:14:20] I can when I take that posture.
Melissa Hurt: [00:14:23] Yes, yes. Good. Because that lift in the back of the throat, it’s relaxed a lot of muscles and it’s allowed the vibration to move forward. So now we let the hum hum on an RN constant as if we’re saying nine. So Esther will keep humming as I speak. You’ll feel the tip of your tongue, making contact with the space just behind the upper front teeth. What’s called the Upper Gum Ridge. And so the tip of the tongue is making contact with the Upper Gum Ridge. But the rest of the mouth is pretty relaxed, if you will. So on that contact point is vibration. So, Esther, do you feel a vibration on that contact point?
Esther Gallagher: [00:15:21] Yes. Yeah, yeah, it feels great.
Melissa Hurt: [00:15:24] Yeah, it’s very relaxing and it feels very good. And you might even feel that vibration is moving up because bone conducts vocal tone. It’s like a natural amplifier. And so if the vibration is on that upper gum ridge, which is a bony surface, it will move up into the sinus cavity, the nasal bone, maybe even where the third eye is.
Esther Gallagher: [00:15:47] In between the eyes feel it kind of up into my sinuses and even above them. Almost.
Melissa Hurt: [00:15:53] Absolutely. That’s right. That’s right. So we’re going to keep humming on the end. And now we’re going to transition from an RN to a Y, Z, as if you’re about to say Yes Z, and you can hum on that Y in any pitch you like, just get to feel that it’s a vowel like consonant. Just get to feel the sensation of the Y.
Melissa Hurt: [00:16:29] And then as you’re humming on the Y, let it waft down to where you feel vibration on the same place where you felt the vibration on the end.
Melissa Hurt: [00:16:44] And it’s sometimes as if you’re alternating between saying. Now? Yes. So just so you can feel that you’re in the same location.
Melissa Hurt: [00:17:10] So do you feel a little nominal? Yeah. You feel that vibration on the Y on that same location?
Esther Gallagher: [00:17:16] Yeah.
Melissa Hurt: [00:17:16] Yeah, it’s very relaxing, but it’s also energizing at the same time.
Esther Gallagher: [00:17:22] And so now that we’re flying.
Melissa Hurt: [00:17:25] It is clarifying, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. And so as we hum on the Y and we found that little vibration on the upper gum ridge, we call it the ping, it’s like a little ping. We’re going to gently massage it with the yi
Melissa Hurt: [00:17:44] And we’re staying on one pitch. We’re just really tasting that y buzz.
Melissa Hurt: [00:17:56] And so that Y-buzz. We’re in what’s called the lower third of the speaking voice. So we’re not way up here like Minnie Mouse and we’re not we’re down here in the basement because that never feels good. We’re in her speaking voice. And so I always like to test it by saying, Hi, my name is Mommy.
Esther Gallagher: [00:18:16] Hi, my name is Esther.
Melissa Hurt: [00:18:18] Now you say, say mommy. Yeah, because that ends on the Y bus.
Esther Gallagher: [00:18:22] Esther. Mommy.
Melissa Hurt: [00:18:24] There you go. And you’re there. I can hear it. I can hear it. And your voice. Me and you feel that forward facial orientation, you have easy breath and you feel as if you’re floating through the crown of the head. So we’re going to keep massaging that wide buzz on the one pitch. And then once you find that little pulse, then we can do a little baby siren glides going up and down, but staying where the vibration is on that upper gum ridge. So we’re exploring a vocal range within the Y.
Melissa Hurt: [00:19:04] Buzz Ye. Yes.
Esther Gallagher: [00:19:17] That’s right.
Melissa Hurt: [00:19:18] And so we develop a vocal range there because we’re not robots. We are dynamic, living, expressive human beings. And we get excited. We have emotion, we share love, we share concern, we share all kinds of things through our voices. And we have range.
Melissa Hurt: [00:19:34] And so when we find this potent, resonant, warm tone, which is the Y-buzz, we expand it into this range. So we have what we call a Y buzz like current to our speech. And you feel it like a current, like a current of water moving forward. That y buzz vibration just moves forward and it’s a wave energy that you can feel. At least I can feel it. Yeah.And so that’s the Y-buzz.
Melissa Hurt: [00:20:01] And so I started massaging the Y-buzz again. And when I would read books to my daughter, I would feel the Y buzz like in the light of the moon. A little caterpillar ate a leaf. Whatever the hungry caterpillar is that I read a million times when she was a baby. But as I was reading my board books to her, I was finding those little pings of vibration on the long e vowel and that knew I was keeping my voice in that y buzz like range, keeping my voice forward, moving, which meant I was breathing well, which meant that my posture was healthy.
Melissa Hurt: [00:20:40] I wasn’t collapsed in my throat or my shoulders, which a lot of times happened to me when I was super tired and not aware. So it just kind of kept me in check, kept me self aware and a really healthy, loving way, and developed my voice back so that I felt spiritually renewed because I felt like myself again. That’s what I wanted to share.
Esther Gallagher: [00:21:02] That is so lovely. It makes me think of a couple of things, Melissa. One is that there is always singing in my house. When we were little kids or even up into adulthood, like my dad loves to sing. My mom’s a wonderful singer. Didn’t sing that much because she was always reading to herself, you know? But my dad was more sort of moving around all the time and singing to himself or singing to us. If we if we came up and had a question or something to say, he’d pick up on something we’d said and start a song with it. A song from his his vast archives in his brain of all the songs he knew. That’s right.
Esther Gallagher: [00:21:50] Or if we stopped at the train tracks, he’d sing all the train songs or whatever. So. And it was just, you know, we were learning those songs. Of course we were. He was teaching us those songs. But yeah, there is just such delight, like in liveliness, you know, you’re otherwise just sitting there waiting for the next thing and yeah, and so much life in that.
Esther Gallagher: [00:22:17] But what I’m really appreciating from this teeny little practice with you is also, of course, not only do I feel awake and clarified, but I feel like I can make good choices in this moment, like whether to lie down and rest, whether to sit in my posture, you know, that I’m sitting in whether to get up and feed myself, you know, and I’m imagining, too, like if I had a newborn baby in front of me, I could kind of clear out all of the sort of the physiological slash emotional kind of turbidity and just be more present with that little know with myself vis a vis that little person.
Melissa Hurt: [00:23:13] Absolutely.
Esther Gallagher: [00:23:15] So how lovely this is. Really, really lovely. So, Melissa, you have a Web presence, as we like to call it nowadays.
Melissa Hurt: [00:23:27] I guess I do.
Esther Gallagher: [00:23:29] Could you tell our listeners about maybe a little more about what you do in your professional life, shall we call it? Sure. Sure. And and tell people about how they might get in contact with you.
Melissa Hurt: [00:23:47] Great. Yes. Well, in my professional life, like I said, I’m a certified yoga teacher and a certified embodied voice, speech and movement trainer. And so really, the way I kind of nail that down as I help people feel well and in particular right now I do a lot of work with pre-natal and postnatal yoga and embodiment practices because in my experience with the women that I’ve met, we’re all just kind of making this up as we go along. Right. There’s no there’s no Supreme Handbook. Right.
Melissa Hurt: [00:24:23] And so and a lot of a lot of commonality that I hear is the surprise of how tired they are. Just trying to, like, pull things together to make it work day by day. And so I try to offer strategies and practices just to help them get through moment by moments, whether it’s y buzzing, whether it’s a breathing practice, whether it’s a meditation they can do while they’re nursing or bottle feeding their baby, or whether it’s pelvic floor explorations, I mean, whatever it is, just things that they can do in short little snippets of time to get sensation back into themselves.
Melissa Hurt: [00:25:03] So they take care of themselves, but also restore themselves and mind, body, voice and spirit. And I do think that complex is synergistic. I think that when you nurture your body, your mind and your spirit are there. If you’re humming or singing while you do it, your voice is there too.
Melissa Hurt: [00:25:22] This voice practice we just did. We’re also breathing well. So that’s nurturing our body and our mind and our spirit. And so there’s a synergy to everything that we do. And so I share that with my students. So my website is w w w Melissa Hurt and I have a blog where I try to share different kinds of teachings that will help people with a multitude of different concerns, or maybe give them some new ideas on how to approach something.
Melissa Hurt: [00:25:54] I have two voice classes that I hope to be launching and Jan. Aquarius and stay tuned on my website for that. And I’m a writer. I actually have a book on Arthur Lessac’s work as an embodied actor acting practice published through Routledge and I have a picture book coming out with Sounds True Publishing in spring of 2020. That’s a yoga picture book that I’m really excited about.
Melissa Hurt: [00:26:22] So I’ve just got all kinds of different ways to share these teachings with people, whether it’s in person or through my writing. And I did want to say one thing about your story, Esther, about your dad singing a lot. Singing is very, very restorative, and it absolutely lifts the spirit. And Arthur Lessac used to say, when you speak, do you feel like you’re singing? And so why not?
Esther Gallagher: [00:26:48] That’s a great question to ask.
Melissa Hurt: [00:26:50] Yeah, why not feel like you’re singing when you speak? Because if you can feel the musicality of your voice, which all voices are musical, we’re always speaking on different pitches and different rhythms and tempos. And if we’re feeling the sensation of our speech as we speak, then we’re feeling percussive instruments and and sustainable instruments that we can hum on.
Melissa Hurt: [00:27:14] And so it’s almost like we have an orchestra in our mouth and we’re in where the conductor of all of it. And it’s really, really magical. And so if we can feel like we are singing when we’re speaking, then we will stay connected and body, mind, voice and spirit regardless of who we’re speaking to.
Esther Gallagher: [00:27:33] Sure. And, you know, I, I myself as a student am involved in an authentic movement and authentic voice practice. I’m just a baby student in it. But but you know what I want to add to what you’re saying, and I hope this is appropriate, is that, you know, let’s not just think of baby songs when we imagine singing like let’s think of opera, like where there’s all the drama and authenticity of what’s being experienced, felt, you know, like when we express ourselves, we are entitled to be emotionally coherent. Yes.
Esther Gallagher: [00:28:21] Meaning our voice matches what’s really going on and we’re not talking like everything’s okay. We’re not using the everything’s okay voice when everything isn’t okay, right? It doesn’t mean we can’t learn to contain and express in ways that are effective, right? It just means we don’t lose the authenticity of of what’s happening. And I think that’s what you’re talking about here, Melissa, as well. When you talk about feeling sensation and dynamic living and expressive beings and all of this wonderful language that you’re using with your wonderful voice as we’re here.
Melissa Hurt: [00:29:04] Yeah. And I think also, I totally agree with what you’re saying. And as a as a mom, I find that, first of all, I never did baby talk with my daughter, even like I never said, do you want a cookie now? I just would say, would you like a cookie? You know, I would just speak to her like I speak to anybody. And and I feel my vocal tone as much as possible. And when I get in a moment, that’s a little heated.
Melissa Hurt: [00:29:30] Let’s say she’s like really pushing my buttons and not doing something I’ve been asking her to to do a million times. I’m so thankful that I can feel my vocal tone because all I need to do is kind of yield more into that vocal tone, and maybe you open up that space a little more, and then I get closer to what we call the call. And I’m not shouting. I’m not screaming at her, which is a loss of control and very scary for her, scary for anybody. But instead, I am actually more grounded and I have more vocal resonance and she can feel it and she can hear it and she knows that Mommy’s grounded.
Melissa Hurt: [00:30:07] Mommy’s looking at me and I’m very intentional with my voice. And so she knows that, I mean, what I’m saying and I should listen to mom. And so it’s really valuable for me and I’m so thankful that I know this work so that I can keep an emotional valve system, if you will, through my voice and stay authentic and connected to my expressive need without completely losing myself.
Melissa Hurt: [00:30:35] Because that’s when we feel really scared, I think, is when we get lost in anger or anxiety and then our voices get really creaky or we lose track of them or we’re not breathing. And when we don’t feel our breath and we don’t feel our voices, we start to not feel our bodies. We don’t really feel our groundedness anywhere. And then it emotionally becomes very scary and. So it’s very important to, again, feel your breath, feel your vocal tone, and it really can guide you through a lot of different moments where you can stay connected and stay grounded with who you are and be true to yourself and true to your needs and not lose yourself in it. Yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Esther Gallagher: [00:31:20] I think it makes sense. And when I think in these terms, I think about kind of going back to something that is intrinsic to animals that have a voice, like animals know how to use their voice authentically. And if you’re a human animal, you’re existing in a world that does many, many things on a daily basis to to subtly control you and your voice in ways that don’t serve you, in ways that don’t support and nourish you. And so finding a way to kind of cut through all of those little micro diversions and micro controls that are part of the world we live in, especially for women.
Melissa Hurt: [00:32:10] Yes.
Esther Gallagher: [00:32:12] To be able to come back to the thing that’s true and authentic and use it, you know, use it in our authentic expression is wonderful. You know, the fact that we often have lost sight of it, as you described in your own story, Melissa. Like in the exhaustion and overwhelm and confusion and wounding of being a new mother. Right. Your voice was eroded. And yeah, to be able to just have a way to say, wait, I just have to get back to this thing. And it’s a simple embodied practice, right? And when I do it, I can connect. Yeah. This is a wonderful gift. This is a wonderful gift.
Melissa Hurt: [00:33:09] Thank you. And you. And you feel it pretty instantly. I mean, it’s not something you have to put 40 minutes in the bank to then begin to feel something. Know. Yes, you can. Yeah, you can just start humming and breathing and then find that Y-buzz? And once you once you feel it, you’re hooked into it. It’s there for you. And I think also what you’re saying that really resonates with me is I did lose my voice, metaphysically and metaphorically, when I had my daughter, because I feel like when you have a baby, it’s such a confusing time because here I was before I had my daughter and I was Melissa hurt the professional, I was the wife, I was a daughter, I was the friend.
Melissa Hurt: [00:33:54] And then I have this daughter and I’m a mother and I don’t know who I don’t know who I am as a mother. I’m figuring that out. So I haven’t found my voice in this world. As a mother, I’m reading a lot of stuff that’s telling me what I should be doing and what I should be saying. And I’m trying to take that in and see if any of that lands on me, but I need to find it for myself. And when you find your physical voice, I truly believe it helps you find your voice with a capital V on who you are, what you need to say, and how to be clear with yourself, unlike what you need in this world and how you can share that with other people. Yeah. It comes back around.
Esther Gallagher: [00:34:37] Yeah, I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful, simple teaching. Very. I mean, I don’t know what it’ll be like for other people, but it was immediate for me. I could connect up with it very simply and well, and I’m grateful for it. I’m really pleased that we that you shared this with us and taught us how to do it.
Melissa Hurt: [00:35:01] So I’m so happy that I that I had the opportunity. And you can read a little more about it on my blog and people can always contact me through my website. I am very approachable, I’m a nice person, so please email me if you have questions and I’m happy to shed light on on anything that we talked about.
Esther Gallagher: [00:35:20] Wonderful. Well, thank you, Melissa, again, for coming on the show being with us today.
Melissa Hurt: [00:35:27] It was my pleasure. Yeah.
Esther Gallagher: [00:35:29] And listeners, we have lots of podcast episodes, so do go know however you listen to us, whether you subscribe on your phone or kind of follow us through Facebook or whatever you do, don’t forget that we we’re now up to like 60 plus episodes. Like we’ve been cranking them out here for a couple of years. It’s pretty great.
Melissa Hurt: [00:36:25] That’s true.
Esther Gallagher: [00:36:26] So. So everyone take care. In the meantime and we look forward to seeing you and hearing from you on our next sojourn into the fourth trimester. Tell all your friends, not just the pregnant ones, they are the ones who need the care. It’s everybody else that needs to learn how to give the care.
The content provided in this article(s) is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or other professional advice. Neither Sarah Trott nor Fourth Trimester Media Group LLC are liable for claims arising from the use of or reliance on information contained in this article.