The incoming president of Mullingar Toastmasters, Maria Costello.

‘Your Whole Voice’ with Mullingar Toastmasters

The community of Mullingar Toastmasters met on September 24 for their open night. Open night is about welcoming new people into the community and giving them a flavour of what goes on in the club. We had five new guests who were interested to learn more and we were delighted that three new members joined after the meeting.

While we all love to meet in person, we are embracing the challenge of not being able meet in the Greville Arms by taking advantage of what the online world of Zoom has to offer us. It gives us a way of running our fortnightly meetings but also gives us the opportunity to be ‘a club with no borders’.

It also allowed fellow toastmaster members from around the country to join us. We had guests from Athlone, Tullamore and Longford Toastmasters. We also had the pleasure of Elizabeth Jordan from Toastmasters International joining us from Hertfordshire in the UK.

Our incoming president, Maria Costello (above), introduced the theme of the night, which was ‘your voice’. Maria and her committee want to promote lesser heard voices this year and on this night it was to promote ‘Your whole voice’. Barrack Obama said it best when he said: “Your voice can change the world.”

Pace, Pitch and Projection:

Our speaker of the night and special guest was Judith Quin. Based in London, she has family roots in Limerick on her father’s side. She is a trained actress, life coach and specialises in voice – vibration sound healing.

She gave us a masterclass on how to use our whole voice. Her speech was based on pace, pitch and projection. There was great advice on how to control and leverage those parts of your voice when speaking.

When it comes to pace, she advised us to vary it, to keep people interested. If we want to soothe, slow down. If we want to energise, make sure to speed up, and don’t forget the power of the pause, which when used sparingly, can have a great effect. If you are pregnant, you can of course use the pregnant pause!

Pitch is really important and Judith encouraged us to practise humming daily in order to help vary our pitch. Practise humming high and low and watch the effect it will have. A useful tip was when reading to children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren, was to use large and small voices to experiment. This will help the pitch and increase the overall fun!

When it came to projection, Judith identified that it does not mean volume. It is the energy you are projecting. Are you projecting fear or passion? She encouraged us to work with the energy in the room. A key focus was to open our mouths wider and open our chests, which opens the body.

Judith answered some great questions after and encouraged us all to use ‘our whole voice’. Judith’s website is yourwholevoice.com if you would like to learn more.

Meetings on second and fourth Thursdays of month at 8.30pm

The second half of our meeting included table topics, where the speaker uses improvisation to answer a question asked of them. It is similar to the show that used to be on channel 4 called ‘Who’s line is it anyway?’.

There were a lot of laughs and interesting answers conducted by our excellent Topics master on the night Daniel Lynam.

Our grammarian on the night, the melodic Rose Marie, gave us the word of the night ‘beseech’ as in to ask someone to do something.

Our eccentric time keeper Pat Cavanagh rang his bike bell to keep everyone in check.

The cool John Waldron concluded our meeting with his usually understated skill and sharp watch.

Joshua Yoon, as Zoom master, kept us all on track and we wish him the best as he and his family move to the wild west of Galway. We look forward to him keeping in touch with us all in the club and regular visits. Our loss is Galway’s gain.

Our next meeting is October 8 at 8pm, when we will have a contest night and you will get to see a collection of our great speakers in action. We meet on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 8.30pm.

We welcome you into our community and would be delighted to have you along.

Maybe this is the year you will join us, and we would love to have you. Please contact us with any queries, and we are happy to answer.

Facebook: Mullingar Toastmasters

Website: www.toastmasters.org

Email: mullingartoastmasters@gmail.com