🎉 Welcome to Season 2 of Vocal Tips in 10! We're starting 2025 with an inspiring and important conversation that every singer needs to hear.
In this episode, I’m joined by Ingela Onstad—licensed psychotherapist, high-performance coach, and international vocalist—to explore the mental and emotional side of singing. From stage anxiety to everyday overwhelm, we dive into what it really takes to calm your nervous system so your voice (and confidence) can thrive.
Ingela shares simple, practical tools you can use right away to feel more grounded, focused, and emotionally connected to your voice—and we even previewed her exclusive workshop for Vocal Pro Members, Start Your Year with a Calm Nervous System, which took place on January 17.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
00:42 – The Importance of Mental and Emotional Health in Singing
04:37 – Breathing Techniques for a Calm Nervous System
06:28 – Journaling and Body Awareness for Singers
08:06 – The Spiritual Aspect of Singing and Audience Connection
10:23 – Upcoming Workshop and Resources for Singers
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Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode in 2025 of Vocal Tips in 10. I'm Amber Mogg-Cathey. I'm so excited you're here and I'm so excited to have the wonderful Ingala Onstad on today to talk to you all. Ingala is a fabulous vocalist herself. She is a licensed psychotherapist.
She is a high performance coach. We've worked together on a number of occasions and I just think the world of her. And she's also doing a workshop for the Vocal Pro membership this month. And it's all about how to start your new year with a calm nervous system. And so I thought this is the perfect time to have her on to talk to all of you to help give you some tips for that as well. So welcome Ingala and thank you for being here.
Ingela (00:42)
Thank you for having me, Amber. It's always fun to collaborate on things with you and I'm looking forward to our workshop coming up later this yay, we're gonna have so much fun. Of course, everybody's in that New Year's feeling right now and whether you make resolutions or not, I think that energy is just in the air and sort of on your mind, what do I want this new year to look like?
So with all of your singers that you work with or who are in your vocal pro membership, of course, everybody's very focused on the voice, what it sounds like, vocal production, vocal health, erasing your break, know, how to mix all of all of the things that we singers think about. But I find in my line of work, so often we spend maybe zero to one percent of our time thinking about how we actually
feel and think about our voices. We spend so much time thinking about technique and we spend very little time thinking about our mental and emotional health and mindset surrounding our voice. So I wanted to focus on a few tips today. Of course, we will expand upon all of this and much, much more in our workshop later this month. The first tip I wanted to give people was to challenge yourselves to maybe take
Amber Cathey (01:32)
Mm-hmm.
Ingela (01:54)
five to 10 minutes maximum before your practice sessions. And I would say, especially before a lesson and especially before a performance To take stock of how you are doing. And these five to 10 minutes could contain a lot of different pieces. But if we were just going to focus on a few for today, I would like to focus on something that helps us calm our nervous system.
I would like to focus on another tip that helps us get in the right mindset and then focus on another tip that goes into how we're feeling in our bodies. So let's start with the nervous system part. One of the favorite things I do with my clients that I always teach everybody right at the beginning of their time working with me is a breathing strategy that is designed to help us stimulate the vagus nerve, which is the nerve.
in our system that is responsible for creating a calming response, our rest and digest response, also known as the parasympathetic response. So the way we stimulate the vagus nerve via breath is through a type of breath that has a much longer exhale than inhale. So I like to call this one the snake breath or the hissing breath, and it's super simple and easy. All you do is you take in a very easy
I repeat, very easy. Inhale through your nose, not over tanking. If I'm working with people, say aim for gas tank third full, half full maximum. So no over tanking. Taking a very easy inhale through your nose and then hiss or blow like you're blowing through a teeny tiny straw, like one of those coffee stirrers straws. Blow out or hiss out the exhale.
Now why blow or hiss? That is in order to create the teeny tiny tiny aperture through which the exhale leaves the body. If we just exhale through a wide open mouth, can only control that so far. It's all gonna come out in one big poof. But if we hiss or blow like we're blowing through the teeny tiny coffee straw, we effectively dam back the breath enough that we can control the length of the exhale. Now what does this do?
it stimulates the vagus nerve. And if you think about it this way as a singer, what do we do when we're singing? We take in a quick and easy inhale, and then we sing on a long extended exhale. What do all singers tell me? ⁓ I feel calmer when I have sung a few phrases.
Amber Cathey (04:20)
Absolutely.
Ingela (04:25)
Once I'm past the first opening phrases of my song, I tend to feel calmer. So I would encourage folks to do this breath five to 10 times in a row, really challenging yourself to extend that exhale,
and then you pause, ask yourself how you feel, do it another five to ten times and just get your body and your nervous system ready. Alright, next tip would be to have a practice journal. Keep a small notebook, a stack of paper, something near your music, near your piano, near your guitar. And this is not a practice journal like you used to do as a kid when you were in piano lessons where you'd write down how many minutes you practiced and what you did.
This is a practice journal to ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? What's on my mind? What's going on? What am I bringing into this practice session or lesson or performance today? And challenge yourself to just write for a few minutes. Many people say, I don't know what to write. It doesn't matter. Write anything. Write down a stream of consciousness if that helps. But just start writing. And after a while, you will likely find that the words will start flowing and you might start tapping down more deeply into how you're doing that day.
and what are your goals for today? What's on your mind? What are your fears? What didn't work last time? What do you want to work better this time? Okay, third tip would be do a brief body scan. Start at the top of your head and go all the way down to your toes very slowly and ask yourself, am I carrying tension in my face? Can I release that? Am I carrying it in my shoulders? Can I release it? How does my abdomen feel? How do my glutes feel?
How do my thighs feel? How do my calves feel? How do my feet feel?
developing awareness of and then releasing all of the tension you feel in your body. And that would be my three tips for today.
Amber Cathey (06:10)
I can I just give you like a quick... That was so impressive. That's so much massive information and you just like, woo, got it out there. yeah, I'm like, someone understood the assignment of 10 minutes or less and it's you. I was gonna say a couple of things.
Ingela (06:21)
I had to keep looking at the time Amber, I'll be honest.
Amber Cathey (06:30)
When you talked about, you know, I know that I was talking to people how singing helps trigger the vagus nerve. know, you know, it can be such a, like in times of stress, we don't necessarily feel like singing. Every time we power through and sing anyway, everybody feels better.
Ingela (06:39)
Yes. Yes.
Bingo. Everybody does
singing is so healthy for us.
Amber Cathey (06:49)
Yes, well, I always think about the number of reasons why that's the case, but this might be the first time that my brain went, yeah, that extended exhale that we know triggers the vagus nerve is what singing is over and over again. So thank you for that. Yeah.
Ingela (07:03)
Yes, ma'am. Yes, that's a big part of it. think, like you said, it's multifaceted,
but we really are just speaking directly to the calming aspect of our nervous system. And that's a beautiful thing. We all need more of that in today's world.
Amber Cathey (07:16)
my gosh, yes, I love it. And then when you talk about the journaling and the body scan and a big thing that that makes me think of is just taking the time and creating the space for awareness, right? Like where am I mentally? Where am I physically? And I know I say this to singers all the time and I know you do too. We're on the same page here, but I'm like, trust me, I wish as much as everyone else that I could separate my mental, emotional where I am that day.
Ingela (07:28)
Yes.
Amber Cathey (07:45)
and or my physical health from my voice, it's not ever gonna work. And I think that's one of the reasons obviously the voice is so powerful. And if we don't pay attention to those pieces, I don't care how golden your vocal folds are or how great your technique is, you're not gonna ever get to your full capability and fully where you want to go.
Ingela (07:47)
Mmm. Nope.
Yes, I believe that too. Singing is such a spiritual activity in so many ways and taps us into something greater than ourselves. And I believe it's our duty in a way to know the full self and to bring the full self to our singing, to our expression, not only to wow the audience and to get bigger and bigger gigs, but really to have the most beautiful healing.
meaningful experience that we ourselves can have.
Amber Cathey (08:35)
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that when we have those experiences and when we're able to access that, that translates to our audience and creates that experience for them, which is gonna make your crowds and your audience get bigger and bigger. They feed each other.
Ingela (08:45)
Yes.
Yeah,
and there's biology behind this too, Amber, which is that we have mirror neurons in our system. When I appear before you and I am as calm and centered as I can be, you feel more calm and centered when you are around me. So if we can walk out onto stage and bring this energy that makes people feel good, whether it's joy, whether it's calm, whether it's a mixture of all of these things, people read our energy.
It's not magic, it's not ESP, it's called mirror neurons. So this helps us be the best performer we can be. It helps people be able to listen to us better and pay more attention to us because we are drawing them in with this exchange of energy.
Amber Cathey (09:34)
Yeah, I love it. the workshop that you're doing. You're doing an hour long workshop.
I believe it's January 17th. Does that sound correct? Friday, January 17th, Kiss my brain.
Ingela (09:40)
Let me pull up in my calendar. believe you're correct. Yes, Friday. Yes, it is Friday, January
17th at 11 Mountain Time.
Amber Cathey (09:49)
Yay. Yeah, I'm so excited for that because You all year long, but this is a time of year where we start to just kind of reflect back and think about how can we set up new
habits that are going to make us feel better and more successful So I think it's a perfect time to do it. I know I sure can benefit from it. Obviously, every human can benefit from it. But for those of us that are singers, which is who we're specifically talking to here and who this workshop is for, like we said, it makes a huge difference in your vocal production and your performance and your artistry and everything.
I'm so excited for that. anybody that wants to check it out, if you aren't a Vocal Pro member now, you can try out two weeks of the membership for absolutely free. That's gonna be down in the notes and then go to Ingala's amazing workshop for absolutely free, along with everything else. And then I'm gonna put in the show notes, Ingala, where people can contact you to work with you directly, but can you share a little bit of that?
Ingela (10:46)
Yes, certainly. the best and most direct way to find me is just to go to my website, www.courageousartistry.com. You can also just reach out via email, ingala.
at courageousartistry.com.
Amber Cathey (11:00)
Yay, this has been so great. And I also should add four Vocal Pro members, and it's also just available on the website for people to purchase on their own. But Ingala and I did a course together. And when I say Ingala and I did it together, it's you are the expert. So it is you doing the course, but you were so kind to do it in conjunction with me to make it available to all of my folks on performance anxiety. And what I love about that course is you really talk about like the biology of it, just so like, where is it coming from?
how does it manifest and then really tangible tips and tools for people to be able to, again, calm their nervous system, which is part of that performance anxiety piece, just to have the best performances that they can have and the best experiences that they can have. So people can check that out too. Everything will be in the show notes. Thank you for listening everybody. I think we might've gone over our 10 minutes, but girl, well worth it. Love it. Thank you for being here Angela. All right, bye everybody. See you next episode.
Ingela (11:47)
We tried our best. Thank you for having me.
