Special Guest - Emma O'Neill - Mind and Body Health in Voiceover

VO BOSS

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 our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Free distribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.