Toronto Star article:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...2f7ChAX&tacoda login=yes
Mar. 18, 2005. 01:00 AM
Star voices get helping Hands
Specialist is often backstage at concerts to treat performers
moments before they go on Wide-ranging treatments include pain medication
and ancient Buddhist teachings, Bill Taylor write Bill Taylor:
Every picture tells a story: Mick Jagger, Gordon Lightfoot,
Lionel Richie, Tom Cochrane, Amanda Marshall, Phil Collins, Sigourney
Weaver.
Dr. Brian Hands can't talk about them individually, can't even
confirm that they've been his patients. But the signed celebrity portraits
elbowing each other for space on his congested office walls each have the
same cautionary tale to relate - of how artistic talent can be a two-edged
sword, giving you the means to soar creatively and at the same
metaphorically cutting your throat.
"The arts ... it brings to the fore individuals who have a
certain amount of ... angst that wants to be expressed through singing,
speech, painting, sculpture, whatever," says Hands. "The performer is one
whose angst has to be released. It's the problem that allows them to be an
artist and it's being an artist that gives the problem."
Which is where the doctor comes in. Hands, 61, is an ear, nose
and throat specialist who has seen his practice become almost exclusively
voice therapy for anyone from lawyers to rock stars to opera divas.
It's not unusual for him to be backstage at a theatre or concert
hall for an emergency consultation only moments before the headliner is due
to take the stage. He has an emergency 24-hour pager number for performers
who need help.
"It's reassuring to have my chords in your hands," mezzo-soprano
Kimberly Barber wrote on her picture. And Sigourney Weaver, in Toronto in
1998 to film A Map of the World, gushed: "Thank you for restoring my
obnoxious voice. You saved me."
His approach is unorthodox, wide-ranging, creative. From
state-of-the-art "video strobe" equipment for detailed examination of the
vocal cords (or folds) to ancient Buddhist teachings.
"I can't tell you who I've seen," says Hands, citing patient
confidentiality as he sits in his consulting room on St. Clair Ave. W., his
feet up on an open drawer, revealing orange socks.
"But this is the deal. I take care of professional voices;
anyone who has a problem with their voice who earns their living with their
voice. That could be the CEO of a large company, a lawyer, a judge - though
I don't have a lot of judges' pictures on my walls - a broadcaster, a
singer, an actor from Stratford to the movies.
"About 70 per cent of my practice involves singers and actors.
It's enriched and changed my life. I think performers are special people. It
happened by coincidence. When I completed my residency in 1973 and did my
fellowship in ear, nose and throat at Wellesley Central Hospital, my chief
of staff, Dr. Paul Rékai, also sat on the board of the Canadian Opera
Company. He said, `You'll be the doctor for the opera.'
"This was about the time when musicals - Cats, Phantom - were
just starting to burgeon. People would call the opera company: `I have a
problem with one of my singers. Which doctor do you use?' Movie companies
would call: `Who's the guy ...?'"
Their commonest problem? "You'd expect me to say hemorrhages,
nodes and polyps; terrible stuff. But the big problem is muscular tension
dysphonia. It means excessive tightness in the muscles surrounding and above
the larynx, which is located behind the Adam's apple. You get hoarseness,
pain after you've used your voice, constant coughing or clearing your
throat. You can't sing high notes or your voice breaks in the middle
register."
The primary treatment, he says, is reassurance "that this can be
treated with speech therapy plus or minus medication. I find patients who
have this condition usually have some other frustrations or stress-related
tension that they've isolated to the most vulnerable part of their body.
"I try to relate this to an aspect of energy medicine derived
from Buddhist teachings - the seven ethereal energy centres that exist in
the body from the top of the head to the base of the spine. The emotional
issues associated with voice problems are dealt with somewhat
unconventionally ... dealing with the energy centres, or chakras, and what
they represent.
"The most vulnerable area is the throat, the fifth chakra.
Problems there are usually associated with neck and shoulder pain, headaches
and grinding of the teeth. We find excessive muscular tension in the neck
and shoulders.
"The third chakra is what is called the chakra of
self-confidence, self-trust, self-love. It's located in the solar plexus in
the area by the diaphragm, that large, large muscle that is critical to the
production of sound. It's roughly the size of your derrière, your fanny, and
a quarter of an inch thick. Difficulties occur when ... sound tries to be
produced exclusively by the fifth chakra. Your larynx is the size of your
thumbnail and the white of your nail is the size of each vocal fold. There
aren't enough muscles in this area to produce all that sound."
And so it goes through all seven chakras. The energy between
them, Hands says, "has to be smooth and continuous up and down the body, a
perfect flow where the mind and body are totally focused on the work. When
they're `in the zone,' an artist or musician, their body is in perfect
alignment."
Blockages in the energy flow, he says, are caused by tension.
"Patients I've worked with suggest that the problems are usually related to
stress in the individual's life - overwork, job insecurity, marriage, even
problems dating back to infancy."
Hands also works with a speech language pathologist and his
holistic approach comes only after conventional medical diagnosis and
treatment have been applied - "a program of speech therapy and exercise,
homework, vocal warm-ups, diet, hydration and rest.
"But it has to be an integral process that involves the entire
body. Most performers have taken yoga; most understand energy systems and
chakras. Most, too, are intimidated by doctors. And they've now come with
their most prized possession, their voice, wanting to know if they're going
to sing again. The unconventional approach reassures and comforts them; that
here's someone who understands the problem, who has empathy, concern and
understanding. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet. But it has to be done
with love."
His own voice, Hands says, is one that ought never publicly to
be raised in song. But he's not without his artistic side. In his spare
time, he dabbles in ceramics and he has a degree in landscape architecture.
A man, you might say, who can also make a garden sing.
