Apr 23, 2024
Anne Ganguzza and special guest BOSS Emma O'Neill talk
about enhancing your voiceover performances through a fusion of
fitness and wellness. Emma is an award-winning voice actor who's
also a seasoned yoga instructor. the BOSSES discuss how the
disciplines of health and performance are deeply connected. Emma
shares her inspiring transition from a gym enthusiast to a holistic
voice professional and illustrates that a strong body fosters a
strong voice. Anne also discusses her current health journey,
shedding light on the profound influence of nutrition and exercise
on the art of voice acting. Navigating the world of mindful eating
is no small feat, especially with the demanding schedules of
voiceover artists. The BOSSES talk about instinctual eating and its
benefits for those who rely on their vocal cords for a living.
Plus, we delve into strategies for managing mental health and how a
strong support system can be your ally in maintaining peak
performance for both mind and body.
00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level.
These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being
utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business
like a boss, a VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne
Ganguzzaa.
00:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne
Ganguzza, and today I am absolutely thrilled to have a very special
guest, Emma, O'neill, with me today. Hello, yay, Emma is a
multi-award-winning voice actor and gosh, don't I know what. I've
seen her receive multiple awards at these ceremonies in the last
few years. She specializes in radio, tv commercials, tv narration,
promo and corporate training videos and, of course, outside of her
major success in the booth outside of the booth, she is a fitness
and wellness enthusiast and I'm so excited to talk to her, and
she's been a certified yoga instructor for more than 25
years.
00:59
So, emma, thank you so much for joining me and I'm so, so excited
to talk to you today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really
excited to be here, absolutely so. I'm excited because you've
combined now two of the things that are becoming my favorite thing,
and what I've proven to myself over this health journey is that
fitness and wellness has really helped me in the booth so much, and
I'd love to talk to you about it and your experience, because, I
mean, you've known this for forever, I'm sure, and, however, for me
it's just kind of like wow, I can't believe how amazing I feel and
how it's really helped me in my voiceover and my voiceover
business. So tell the boss listeners a little bit about your
journey, how you got started and how you got in voiceover as
well.
01:43 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
My mother was a dance teacher, so I was in dance as a kid, in
gymnastics, and then we moved to Canada and I continued with
gymnastics but discovered the gym and discovered step classes at
the age of like 16 or something and it was just really fun Step
classes.
01:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I have to interject and say that my husband, when I met my husband,
he was teaching step at a gym in addition to spin, and I would
watch him on the step. I just have to say this because I'm not
coordinated and he'd be like doing great vines up around the step
and all sorts of dance moves and I would be like in the back
because I liked him back then and I would just be kind of like
trying to follow along, you're cute, but I'm not going to kill
myself on the step.
02:19 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, I'm just going to stay in the back.
02:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I'm going to beat him so I didn't want to hurt. Well, maybe hurting
myself. God is attacking right? Didn't ever know.
02:28 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, so I did step. I was a gym kid for a really long time and I
got into yoga because I was at the gym all the time and I had hit a
plateau. I was into fitness competitions and I was training for a
fitness competition and I had hit a plateau and nothing was
changing. Nothing was working. I would change my nutrition, I
changed what I was doing, and someone suggested going to a yoga
class and I was like, yeah, that's just like stretching. They're
like no, no, no, go to this woman's class. I went to this class and
the woman was in her late 70s, early 80s. One of her arms did not
work. She had a stroke and I crawled out of that class. She handed
my butt back to me. It was one of the hardest things I had ever
done and I was like, oh well, now I must do that again because,
yes, it was something. I just fell in love with the
practice.
03:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
That's fantastic. I can't believe you're doing step when you were
16. One thing that I'm excited to talk to you about, because I mean
bosses who have been following me know that I kind of went through
a health journey. I've been through a few health journeys in my
life, but this last one seemed to be more significant than others
After I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
03:34
Things just kind of catapulted after that and literally my hormones
got thrown off balance. I had actually just lost a significant
amount of weight before I was diagnosed and I believe that that
saved my life, because I think that my doctor was able to find my
tumors because of that, because otherwise I had had a little, you
know, she was able to feel them, so I'm very thankful for that.
However, after treatment, mine was estrogen-based. I then had some
chemo treatment which started kind of trying to block estrogen,
because that's it was an estrogen-based cancer. I went through
menopause and then it became one hormonal thing after another and
then the pandemic, and so everything catapulted.
04:12
I gained a lot of weight. I gained at least all the weight back on
that I had lost previous to it and then some, and this shirt that
I'm wearing right now. So if bosses are watching on YouTube is my
Wonder Woman shirt, which was given to me by Natalie. It's a big
shout out to Natalie because after I was reconstructed and declared
cancer-free, she said you are like Wonder Woman. And I'll tell you
what. I have not fit into this shirt, since I have now discovered
again how important nutrition is and exercise, and I've come back
from my health journey losing a significant amount of weight. So I
feel like Wonder Woman and I think you're going to be able to
explain to our boss listeners why that's so significant and how
that can really impact us in the booth. So I'm really excited. Tell
us, tell us, tell us. What are you seeing is the most important
thing that bosses can do to positively, let's say, affect their
performance in the booth through nutrition and fitness and all of
that good stuff.
05:09 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Thank you. One of the things I always try to drive home and people
tend to not want to believe it I think it's not that they don't
believe it, they don't want to believe it is that health and
fitness is 90% nutrition and 10% what you're doing in the gym, on a
walk in a yoga studio. It's 90% what you're putting into your
mouth. And the health and fitness industry I put that into air
quotes it's a business and it's a multi-billion dollar business
because we're fed all of these lose a dress size in 30 days, but no
one's taught how to maintain the loss.
05:41 - Intro (Announcement)
Hello, exactly, so we yo-yo and all of us do it, and all of
us.
05:44 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, you are not alone. You are not alone. We need to learn how to
reverse diet, and reverse dieting isn't something that's taught.
So, yes, you need to cut calories, calories, calories out it's just
science. But you need to learn how to then build back up the
calorie intake to maintain the weight that you've lost without
gaining back the weight by increasing your calories.
06:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I think that's key, and I think if we all had the magic pill or the
magic injection, that could help us to do that right. Isn't that
what the craze is now? Everybody wants these injections to
magically lose weight, and I think there's one thing to be said for
me, having had a significant amount of weight to lose, it took me a
significant amount of time to lose it, which I think is good
because, during that time I was able to really develop, I think,
what I hope to be health habits that will stay with me.
06:31
I, for one, will tell you, I've lost and gained multiple times in
my life, and I am at this point in my life. I am too old. I do not
want to gain it back again. I'm terrified. I'm terrified to gain it
back again, and so I literally am committed right now in my mind,
in my mental space, to continue with the eating.
06:49
I think that's where it starts, right With the nutrition that you
put in your mouth, because for the first year I couldn't exercise
really, because I was so out of shape. I just couldn't. I thought I
might die. To be honest with you, and people say that, oh my God,
you work so hard, but I literally had a hard time breathing and so
I couldn't exercise for a good year. And now I'm finally starting
to and I've seen where I still need to make sure that I know
exactly what's going into my mouth at all times and that's what
really is helping me to keep weight off right now. That and I want
to be accountable, which is one of the reasons why I'm so happy to
talk to you and to find out more from you, because I feel like if
I'm accountable to the bosses out there, I'm accountable to people
who can educate me on this. I'm going to stand a better chance of
keeping the weight off. Yeah.
07:38 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Movement is important, like one of the best things you can do for
your body is walk. Walking is fantastic. If you're sedentary we're
all sedentary being voice actors it doesn't matter if you're
working out on a daily basis. You're sitting for longer than you're
moving, so that means you're sedentary. But if you can get your
5,000 to 10,000 steps in a day, like aim for 5,000. If you're
sitting down all day, aim for 5,000, that's a good start. If you
can get up to 10,000 by increasing it by a minute of walking a day,
it's doing things in bite-sized pieces and it's the same with food.
Everyone's biodiverse, so it means they're bio unique. So what
works for me isn't necessarily what's going to work for you or
what's going to work for anybody else, but in general, especially
for women, we tend not to eat enough, especially during the day,
and then we over eat at night.
08:25
Because then we're really, really hungry, and especially as
self-employed people, and our business hours are crazy and they're
all over the place and we're working as the work is kind of coming
in. I know that's what I do. So it's like I'll get up in the
morning and I do my meditation and I do my workout or I do a yoga
practice and I have a great breakfast, and then it's six o'clock at
night and I've had tea and I'm like now I'm going to stand in front
of the fridge and eat the contents of the fridge because I'm
hungry.
08:49 - Intro (Announcement)
Why am I making dinner?
08:50 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Why am I making dinner? I'm eating the contents of the fridge. Meal
prep is a huge step. It's very helpful to have grab and go foods in
your fridge, because the grab and go foods will grab bread will
grab, chips will grab a banana will grab easy food.
09:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
The quick stuff.
09:04 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, but if you've got like boiled eggs, tuna salad, chopped salad
ready to go, chopped vegetables with hummus, if you have things
that are grab and go and easy to grab and go but they're good for
you, it's much easier to maintain or it's much easier to lose. If
your goal is to lose weight, you have to meal prep. If your goal is
to maintain, I think that everybody really needs meal prep, meal
prep, meal prep. Just keep repeating myself Grab and go and meal
prep.
09:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
You know, what's so interesting is that I've tried every diet under
the sun. I've been on every diet. I've lost weight on most diets.
It comes down to like maintaining and keeping up, but the one
difference about this last plan that I went on was that I was
eating, every two and a half to three hours, small high protein
meals, and that worked for me, and I was that person that said no,
I need to fast. I never was a person who ate breakfast in the
morning. I always waited, and you're right. I mean when you wait,
when all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I'm hungry, I'm
starved, and then everything goes in my mouth quickly, and then
it's hard to really control what it is, and so I like, six times a
day, at least tiny little meals, and for me that's perfect as
well.
10:07 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
You don't need to be full. It's one of those things. I come from
Ireland, originally born and raised there. I came over to Canada.
We did not have a pot to piss in, so it was whatever was put onto
your plate. You consumed because you did not waste.
10:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
What was there?
10:20 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
And if there was too much food on your plate, it didn't matter, you
had to eat it Like it wasn't put away, it was. You will sit there
and you will finish that. So I was raised with that mentality. So
you would eat a meal and you would be full, full, full, full, full,
full. You don't need to be full, you need to be satisfied, and it's
learning how to instinctually eat that you're eating until you are.
I'm good Like, could I eat more? Absolutely Do.
10:43 - Intro (Announcement)
I need to.
10:44 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
No, I don't, Because I'm going to eat in another two hours
anyway.
10:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Right, right, and that makes a lot of sense, because I found that
when I did eat small meals, I could hold off until the next two and
a half to three hours. I will tell you, though, the other day I
came back home from a trip and I'm still kind of on that plan, but
I my time was off, like I went from the East Coast to the West
Coast and so I was overtired. And then, when I'm overtired, I think
that's so dangerous, because then you just don't, you're not
thinking straight, and then you just want to put anything in your
mouth, and I probably ate one more tiny meal than I should have,
and I actually got full, and I was like whoa, it's been so long,
and I was really uncomfortable at that point because I had not been
full. And then I was like I might have indigestion. I'm not sure,
and that certainly doesn't help me when I try to voice anything in
my studio, right when I've got like reflux, because that definitely
affects my vocal chords.
11:36 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Well, especially speaking of being full when you're in the booth,
you don't want to feel full, you don't want to feel bloated, you
don't want to feel gassy. You're voicing something and your tummy's
making all sorts of noises because you're like oh, hang on a
second. Oh no, there's another gurgle in the belly, so you want to
be eating fibrous foods, high protein foods and thermogenic foods.
Thermogenic food basically means that it takes your body more
energy to consume, to digest the food, than the food is
worth.
12:04
It was like there was the old myth that celery was a negative
calorie food because you consume more energy eating the celery than
the celery had in caloric value. It's not true, but it's the same
idea. Instead of having a protein shake, have a piece of chicken.
It takes your body longer to digest something solid than it does to
digest something liquid. That's what thermogenic means, very
interesting. So you're asking your body. It's like so you need to
burn more calories to consume this food. Cool, because it takes
longer. It also keeps you fuller for longer.
12:35
So, you're not full. It's not that I can't take a proper deep
breath. I can't use my diaphragm. It's I'm full, I'm satisfied, but
I'm going to be fuller for longer, so that when I'm reaching for
food again I'm not starving and shoving. It's usually carbohydrates
we're looking for when we're really hungry.
12:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Well, yeah, I find, if I try to stay away from carbohydrates, that
was my guilty pleasure was carbohydrates. It wasn't sweets, it was
carbs, because I was also well raised in a large family and I think
my father might have had a piece of bread and butter with every
meal and it was like that kind of bread, potatoes sort of thing and
that's what I loved, and so that did not do my waistline any good
for sure. But how do you feel? In addition to like what you put in
your mouth, how do you feel about your mental state? Because when I
got into this I was like, oh, I just can't. I've lost weight before
it, just nothing I am doing is working. I find that I had very
negative. I can't lose weight. How do you feel mental health
effects? And I also had very bad body dysmorphia so I couldn't look
at myself, and so how does that affect weight loss and how does
that affect your performance on any given day in your business and
in the booth?
13:43 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Your mental health is paramount, absolutely. I start my day every
day with meditation. When the alarm goes off, I sit up and I
meditate because I'm still in kind of theta brain, so I'm not in
awake, let's do things. Brain. I'm still in a different state where
you can kind of program your brain to learn new things and it's
about exercise releases serotonin, which is the happy chemical,
like you want to feel good and so you want to find ways to feed
your brain and calm yourself down.
14:18
Losing weight can be really challenging. If you are struggling with
your weight, it can be challenging and it's also it's the devil,
you know. It's so much easier to just go back to old ways because
you know them, even though you know they're not good for you or
they're not healthy, they're not beneficial. They're easier because
you know them and it's more difficult to stick on a track that's
initially a little bit challenging. Once you get past the first
hump, I think things get easier. But mental health is really
important, like getting off your screen before you go to bed.
Easier said than done.
14:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, that is the truth.
14:49 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Surrounding yourself with really positive people, surrounding
yourself with cheerleaders especially in those times because we all
have them that we're not going to be kind to ourselves, like we're
not going to be our biggest cheerleader, we're going to doubt
ourselves, we're not going to be. As I can do this, as we possibly
can, you need to be surrounded with people who pick you up when
you're in that state. So feeding your brain proper foods,
breathing, exercises are fantastic. What you're reading, what
you're consuming from an intellectual and mental level is really
important for your brain health. But this is why yoga, for me, has
always been. When I found yoga, it was so helpful for my mental
health because I struggled with anxiety and I'm an
introvert.
15:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
So talk to me a little bit about. I do some cardio. I actually,
because I had complications with my weight gain and age. I was also
diagnosed with diabetes, which also affected my feet a little bit
and my balance, and so walking on uneven terrain is sometimes a
little difficult for me. So for me I have a pre-core in the garage,
which I always love pre-core because it's not impact. So if I want
to walk right, that is my walking, and I also do Pilates. So for
me, I think trying to build some muscle through that is also going
to help me. But let's talk about yoga a little bit, because I've
not really done much yoga. But tell me, what does that incorporate
for your body and also for your mental health, and how can that
help us?
16:14 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Me personally, I practice what's called Ashtanga yoga, and Ashtanga
yoga is one of the older lineages of yoga. It's kind of the parent
of power yoga or vinyasa yoga. So the faster paste, the faster
moving styles of yoga, and I studied extensively in India. I spent
a lot of time in India at the source with a guru and it's not
Western yoga at all Like, it's not pretty.
16:37
You don't listen to music, no one tells you to open your heart, you
are told to shut up and bend your knee and do what you're told. And
it's a really interesting way of being, especially from a Western
mindset. When we're speaking like I am independent and don't tell
me what to do and I will do it, but it's like no, then you can't be
here. Ashtanga yoga is about doing the practice, doing the
movements and paying so much attention to what's happening in your
body and your breath that you stop thinking. You stop the spiral of
the I have to do this or the negative thoughts or any of that,
because if you think too much, you're going to fall over the
practice is. It's challenging, it's a very physically complicated
practice to do so it gets to a point where it becomes a moving
meditation, because all you're doing is paying attention to where
your foot is, where your hand is, how you're going to
balance.
17:25
Pull your core in. Where's your breath?
17:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
That's so interesting. Do you incorporate that at all in your
booth, maybe, or during performance? Because that's so interesting.
I find that for my students. When I talk to students, I say stop
thinking about what you sound like and be in the moment and be in
the scene. It almost sounds like you could use those principles to
keep you in a scene so that you can be more authentic as a
performer.
17:48 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
That's a really interesting way to put it, because I'm a
classically trained actor and I haven't been in proper acting class
for decades. So I decided to go back to actual acting versus voice
acting, and I've gone back to Meisner, and Meisner is exactly that.
Like Meisner is about making something real in imaginary
circumstances, and it's the same idea. All of this has nothing to
do with the sound of your voice. It's got everything to do with
connection.
18:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Right, absolutely.
18:12 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
And your breath. Mind, body connection is what we're trying to do
in all forms of movement. And it's the same in what we're doing in
our booths. It's breath, mind and body.
18:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Right, and it's absolutely. We are trying to connect with our
listener and that is.
18:25
I think it's such an important concept and it's such a difficult
concept, I think, for people that are just starting out in this
industry, because they just know it should sound like this, and I'm
always trying to get my students out of their listening, out of
their brain and into a scene where they can actually react and tell
a story, and I feel like that's got to be so interesting in terms
of you practice it in that style of yoga that that makes sense,
that you could do the same principled thing in the booth.
18:54 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
It can be difficult to cross the two of them over. But when you
have those moments of magic like I mean, obviously you don't record
with your cans on. You've got your headphones off so that you don't
fall in love with the dulcet sounds of your voice, and we all do,
and a lot of people will talk about like you've got your engineer
hat on and you've got your actor hat on and they should never be
worn at the same time. So that's why you're not listening to
yourself when you're recording. There are those magic moments where
you just feel like you've dropped into. I am really telling this
story.
19:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
It felt right. I'm always saying like what did it feel like to you?
Did it feel right? Then it probably was, it was probably authentic.
You were in the moment. It's so hard, I think, for people that are
thinking so much and they're in their head when they're in the
booth. So do you have any special tips or exercises that you would
recommend for voice actors to kind of help them? Because I think a
lot of times it's a performance anxiety in the booth, even when
you're by yourself. Sometimes you can just be too much in your
head. Is there an exercise that you can do that can help you maybe
relax, so that can help you get more into your
performance?
20:02 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
You can do. I think it's called square breathing. I speak in
Sanskrit when it comes to yoga stuff. I don't know the English
translations of a lot of the stuff, but I think it's called square
breathing and it's just about balanced breath, that you're counting
your breath in for five, holding for five, exhale for five, hold
for five and repeat that until you calm down. But the breathing is
about it's diaphragmatic breathing. So you're trying to make sure
that when you're taking an inhale, when we're nervous, when we're
scared, we only breathe into the very, very top part of our chest,
like from our collar bones, kind of like to above the boob, and
there's nothing else happening. And with breath that's going to
calm you down, you have to get it into your body. So, putting your
hands on your belly, putting your hands on your lower back and
trying to feel your body expand, as you breathe and not trying to
stuff breath into your body.
20:50
So it's just a very simple kind of seeing your body as a jar or a
vessel and you fill that vessel like any vessel, from the bottom to
the middle to the top. Let it hold and then exhale it from the top
to the middle, to the bottom, and if you just let yourself, slow
down for a second and feel the breath enter the bottom of your
body, the middle and the top, immediately the nervous system calms
down.
21:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, you know, what's so interesting is that I don't want this to
be all about Anne's health crises, but I'll tell you what I mean.
Being unhealthy, I mean it affected every part of my body and the
other part, besides being overweight, being diagnosed with
diabetes, having neuropathy, I also was diagnosed with high blood
pressure. I mean that's what my oncologist had said to me, that I
want you to get more blood work because your blood pressure is
stroke level high, which scared me, really scared me, and so,
interestingly enough, I had done a lot of breathing exercises since
I had a double mastectomy and when you have surgery on your chest
after that surgery, it was hard for me to. I did a lot of long
format narration, so I needed to figure out new ways to breathe,
because a lot of times narration is lots of long sentences.
Sometimes they're not written wonderfully well, and so I think the
better you can breathe, the better you're going to be able to
execute your sentences that are long and unwieldy and make them
sound more natural.
22:16
And so there's a lot to breathing, and I found that being diagnosed
with high blood pressure. Then, of course, they put me on
medication which I'm now off, which I'm so thankful for, but I
still take my blood pressure every day just to kind of keep it in
check. And I found that if you're breathing and then exhaling and
you're breathing before you take your blood pressure, it's amazing
how low your blood pressure can go once you've done a few of those
breathing exercises. And it's funny because my doctor will ask me
she'll say are you breathing before? Because my blood pressure was
so significantly lower. Every time I go in there and I take it and
I said, let's see how low I can get my blood pressure this time
right, so I'll just do some breathing and then exhaling too through
my nose really helps a lot and it lowers your blood pressure
amazingly well. That and mentally going to that place where you're
happy and not stressed.
23:06
So, it's incredible Like I see the numbers change, how it really
can help. And it's so interesting because people say, just take a
couple of deep breaths and I'm like, yeah, what does it really do?
Okay, but in reality I've seen the numbers, I've seen the numbers
go down and it's incredible Just what good breathing will do and
what good breathing will do in order to execute your scripts more
believably and authentically, because you're not just like, oh my
God, I'm just going to read and then I just went. Oh, I just went
out of. Because we don't really run out of breath when we talk,
naturally, because we pace ourselves right and we know where we're
going to take that breath. But when there are words that aren't
ours, if you have good breath support, you can certainly navigate
them and make it sound a whole lot more natural. So breathing to me
is incredibly important, and especially in a live directed session,
I would imagine that. Do you ever get nervous, like when you're in
a live directed session, and do you practice your
breathing?
23:59 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, it probably just comes naturally to you, like breathing
is meditation and there's a great book that I got one of the trips
that I was in India. The preface began with people think that
meditation is about turning your mind off. That will only happen if
your friend hits you on the head with a hammer. I don't recommend
it.
24:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I like that because that's what I always thought. It's
not.
24:21 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, it's about not getting engaged with your thoughts. The way I
describe it is like you're at Starbucks, you're reading your book.
It's really quiet, yeah, but then it gets busy, like now the lunch
rush has come in, but you still want to read your book and you
don't want to leave because you've got the chair in the sun. It's
great, it's wonderful, but everyone's talking around you and you're
being really distracted. So you focus on that book. And you're
focusing on that book and you fall straight back into the story and
all of a sudden, everybody else in Starbucks fades away. They're
still there, you're just not paying attention. That's meditation,
and you do that with breath.
24:51
I love that. It's just you paying attention, that's all meditation
is. And if you can do that with your breath, of paying attention to
the feeling of the inhale, feel the breath coming through your
nostrils.
25:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
All right. So in the morning, when you're up and you're meditating,
right, are you simply just breathing? You're not necessarily
thinking.
25:07 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Let's say positive thoughts or some days I do positive thoughts.
Most days I just do breath because it helps me start my day with a
really calm peace of mind. I feel much more grounded because you
know an alarm will jar you as you're waking up and it kind of pulls
you out of your sleep. You're not necessarily ready to be out of
sleep. So if you give yourself five minutes, 10 minutes, before you
get out of bed and just sit in a comfortable position and breathe
and ground yourself, it starts your day in a completely different
energetic place than launching yourself up out of bed, running to
throw the coffee on, do whatever it is that you're doing in the
morning. Take five minutes, 10 minutes. It doesn't need to be
long.
25:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Our days are busy, so you just sit, breathe and start your day from
there In terms of, let's say, if you're in the studio for a long
amount of time, maybe somebody is doing an audio book or a long
e-learning module. What are your recommendations? Because, for me,
I know what my limit is in the booth before I have to kind of get
up and shake things around and go pet my cat. Because, for me, I'm
super hyper focused because I am trying so hard to just be in the
story and to be in the moment. It's exhausting mentally at some
point. What are your tips on if you have to be in the booth for a
really long time, in terms of should they get up and stretch,
breathe? What are your thoughts?
26:23 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely Generally I stand for most of my sessions just
because I'm comfortable doing that. But for long stuff I do have a
stool that I bring in to sit in. I do chair yoga if I'm in a booth
where I'm sitting for an extended period of time. So just simple
body stretches, twists, bringing my knees to my chest, turning my
body side to side, deep breaths, back rolls. Spinal rolls are
really helpful, especially when you're waiting for release or
you're waiting for approval for something. But yeah, get up. If
you're sitting down, get up and move around as quietly as you can
and stretch, breathe, reach as high as you can to the ceiling and
stretch, especially stretch out your ribs, stretch out your torso.
It's helpful.
27:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Have you found that physical stretching exercise breathing has
actually changed your voice in a physical sense?
27:08 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Probably. I mean you can change the shape of your body by changing
your lung capacity. So because you can change your ribs, because
it's just muscle, it's the same as working a bicep, right
I?
27:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
mean it's muscle and bone.
27:19 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
But if you're working your intercostals a lot, you can actually
change the shape of your torso and broaden your ribs. But yeah, I
think that in general with my voice, when I'm calm, my voice is
much deeper.
27:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
When I'm not calm, my voice pitches up into my head because I'm
tense and I'm breathing Sure, that makes sense and I feel like your
voice is coming from here in your vocal. Any specific exercises
that can help maybe relax vocal cords, because I feel like that's
where a lot of tenseness is, when people are reading and their
voice tends to pitch up a little bit higher. Anything that can help
relax in terms of I think your tongue out, does a ton of fantastic
stuff.
27:58 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Oh really, uh-huh, uh-huh. I love that you grab your tongue with a
tissue, just because it's difficult to hold your tongue with your
fingers, because it's slippery.
28:04 - Intro (Announcement)
But if you grab your tongue with a?
28:05 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
tissue and pull it out and try to speak. It actually stretches the
tongue root. Simple pressing in with your thumbs into your tongue
root and turning your head up, so you're pressing underneath the
jaw, because the tongue root can get really, really tense,
especially again if you are uncomfortable, if you are stressed out,
all the things that your tongue will hold. So getting your tongue
out of your mouth and then tying toothpick, as I said, tongue
turning up will relax the tongue root.
28:33
And one of my favorites, which can be uncomfortable but very, very
beneficial, is stretching out the muscles of your jaw. Okay, by
putting your heel of your thumb, okay, just below your ear,
underneath your cheekbone. Yes, so you go underneath your
cheekbone, so up over your jaw, between your jaw and your
cheekbone.
28:51 - Intro (Announcement)
Oh yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh.
28:52 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
And push and pull down. So you're pushing you pull down and the
bone of your thumb will press right into that muscle. It's like oh
yeah, do them both at the same time. Wee, I love that.
29:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I want to be able to keep my voice in a more relaxed, lower sound,
and I feel like that might be something that could help me to do
that, that when you said, when you're more relaxed yes, when I'm
more relaxed, my voice is lower.
29:18 - Intro (Announcement)
At the end of the day.
29:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I have to be careful when I'm doing long. That's the e-learning
modules, right. Because if I start to just go into like automated
mode, right, then my voice tends to get higher and higher and
especially, I think, for females, it tends to get a little
screechy, and then I'm kind of talking like this, I'm a little bit
more stressed and I will tell people like, shake it out, do some
breathing, because what you're not realizing is that all of a
sudden, your voice is now starting to sound very strained. So what
tips can you give for our boss listeners out there? What would be
your best tips for mental, physical health, for impacting
positively their voice and their voiceover careers? What are your
best tips Take?
30:00 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
time for yourself. All of us just people in general tend to give
too much Like we're making sure we're taking care of the kids,
we're taking care of our partner, we're taking care of whatever
we're doing we're taking care of. Make sure to take time for
yourself because you cannot. You cannot pour for an empty cup, so
you have to make sure your cup is full and then from there you can
give.
30:21
So it's again as you're waking up in the morning, take five minutes
and it's like if you've got a busy house. Take five minutes in the
bathroom, sit down and close the door. No one's allowed in. It's
five minutes and just be with yourself and breathe. If you can get
out for a walk, whether it's on a treadmill or outside, it doesn't
matter where you're walking. Walk it's just beneficial for your
lungs, it's beneficial for your mind and it's beneficial for your
body.
30:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I'm so happy you said that, because I finally have made that time
for myself.
30:53 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
It's so important. It's so important you have to take the time and
meal prep. I take about an hour on a Sunday to meal prep for most
of the week. It doesn't take that much time. Keep things simple.
It's almost like when you're packing for a trip and you don't want
to take too much clothes, so you mix and match, Like you make 12
outfits from like four pairs of pants and four shirts.
31:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Okay well, I have already done that. I know I'm terrible. I have a
really hard time doing that.
31:17 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
I haven't figured it out, but other people are good at packing.
We're just using this analogy.
31:22
But it's the same kind of thing with food that if you pick kind of
like eggs, tuna, chicken and tofu, they're your four proteins that
you really like, and you really like this type of lettuce and you
really like this type of vegetable and you really like this type of
carb, like sweet potatoes or whatever it is that you're liking.
Make all of those and then you can mix and match them into meals
and they're ready to go already there.
31:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Oh, so I want to kind of expand on that. So what do you do? Now?
We're going to be at Vio Atlanta, so what would you recommend when
you are traveling? Are you prepping food for when you go or are you
researching, like places that you might eat and healthy
options?
31:59 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
I am known at conferences for figuring out where the grocery store
is or if I can order from a grocery store into the hotel. I always
bring a blender. Oh okay, so always I always bring a little magic
bullet.
32:13 - Intro (Announcement)
So I can make protein shakes.
32:14 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Okay, so I'll bring my own protein powder. I'll bring anything that
I can. I'm probably going to get arrested at some point flying
because I've got all of these powders in Ziploc bags.
32:23 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I've been doing that too, I have that like I'm drinking my
electrolytes here and I have all the powders and yeah, I did get
stopped, actually, and they said, oh you've got a lot of special
food in here.
32:33
And I'm like you're right and it's helped me so much to plan. As a
matter of fact, I end up either losing or maintaining weight for
the last few trips that I've gone on, and I'm so thankful for that,
because typically that's the time where I'm just going to let
myself go and have a drink or I'm going to let myself go and have
the bread at dinner, and thankfully that has not
happened.
32:51 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
So yeah, there's tricks around it. It's like if you want to have a
glass of wine, have a glass of wine, just like if you have
generally. If you have a lot of fruit during the day, cut out a
couple of pieces of fruit and then you have your glass of wine. So
it's about balancing things out and understanding where calories
come from and how things are burned. But yeah, big planner, I
always get spinach and boiled eggs and whatever fruit. I'll always
have something in the fridge so that I have breakfast in my room.
So I get up and I go to the gym.
33:17
And then I have breakfast in my room and I have snacks in my bag,
whether they're protein shakes or something handful of nuts or
whatever. And then I only ever have dinner in the
restaurants.
33:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
That makes a lot of sense. I'm so glad you said that You're
validating me, because I bring all of my stuff for breakfast and
during the day, but then at night I'll go and I'll have my lean
protein and vegetables.
33:39
And it's amazing how accommodating restaurants are these days,
which I'm very, very happy for. I'll just be like, oh, I have
dietary restrictions, and if I think they're not, they don't
understand. I'll just say I'm allergic. I'm allergic to potatoes,
I'm allergic to bread, no, but they always come through for me. So
I'm very happy that I've been able to make that work. So I'm
excited to kind of see you in Atlanta, and so now I feel validated.
Thank you so much.
34:03 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
Oh, absolutely.
34:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And it's been an amazing conversation. How can bosses find out more
about you and find you on the internet and maybe, if they have any
questions for you, chat with you about health and fitness? And
voiceover?
34:14 - Emma O'Niell (Guest)
On the interwebs you can find me. My voice website is Emma at
EmmaOniallvocom, or my yoga website is mysoretocom, like my
M-Y-S-O-R-E-T-Ocom. I love that Because that's where it comes from,
and Instagram is my name, emma.
34:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Oniall. Okay, perfect, I'll put those links on the show notes. Emma
has been so wonderful talking to you. I'm so excited to see you in
person again at Vio Atlanta and maybe I'll get to work out with you
in the morning, absolutely. And we'll compare notes on our meals. I
love that.
34:46
I love that. Thank you so much, bosses. I want you to take a moment
and imagine a world full of passionate and powered diverse
individuals giving collectively and intentionally to create the
world they want to see If you can make a difference. Visit
100voiceswhocareorg to learn more. Big shout out to our sponsor,
ipdtl. You too can connect and network, like Emma and myself. Find
out more at IPDTLcom. Have an amazing week and we'll see you next
week. Bye.
35:17 - Intro (Announcement)
Join us next week for another edition of Vio Boss with your host,
ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for
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