Great chance at work to get some feminine training in.

[JennyA]

I am so lucky here at work. I am in Ohio at a Persian rug store. My boss and I are the only workers. He knows my whole story and lets me wear androgynous clothing at work. He is very open minded, he let me pierce my ears, my nails are painted, I can wear my hair feminine. He might even let me wear female denim and cotton capris in the spring.

During off time at work I'm here in the basement of the store. I'm all by myself, with an internet connection to boot! I'm actually allowed to veg out down here and read, write, and surf the net. I'm only needed when we get customers or a rug delivery. I have a lot of free time and I don't want to use it getting hooked on message boards and such all day, which I am...

I was wondering if I could get some advice on a few things.

I have room to walk and move around. I want to practice walking more feminine and really find my hips and get to know them. What ways did you all use to get your female walk down? I use this webpage to try and study a bit and I think it's useful http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

I also would like to know of a few good stretches I can do. I'd love to do yoga and pilates someday, but for now I was wondering...is their a good stretch I can practice so that I can cross my legs easier? When I cross them at home I can feel my muscles are tight and don't like the position, especially on the outside of my leg near my butt. Sometimes the muscles even wanna spasm.

So I guess I really would love a few good feminine stretches and some advice on my walk. I practice facial expressions in my mirror, and put on mascara and eyeliner here at work too. This job is a godsend, not to mention the fact that I can finally work on my script!

If you had 8 hours a day in a basement, with pockets of time to yourself to practice the art of femininity what would you do?

Thanks, jennifer

[Melody Moore]

If you had 8 hours a day in a basement, with pockets of time to yourself to practice the art of femininity what would you do?

As much voice training as possible because that takes the greatest amount of work.

Walking like a female is really easy and I don't even have to think about that. The link
you posted to http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html is good because it
really shows you the differences between the male walk & female walk & how by keeping
the elbows in you change the look of your upper body giving a narrower appearance to
having broader shoulders.

[JennyA]

Thanks, I enjoy singing karaoke too. I started to sing at this place called the Sly Fox in Ohio. It has a actual stage that you go on, they use a great soundsystem, colored lighting, smoke machine, and a authentic mic stand. It's really cool, you feel like a star. I thought if I worked on my singing I'd get to know my diaphragm and vocal cords. It's been fun. I'm trying to find my highest falsetto like some youtube videos say, and then take it down steps until you find your female voice. I found it once two months back. It was extremely southern belle though.

I have to get over feeling silly while I practice my voice, for one I go all over the place, and if anyone hears you they'll think you're a crazy person. A lady told me to stop using my chest voice and speak with my head voice. Now if only I could perfect that and really understand what it means.

If I find my walk and do it all the time will my walk naturally start to switch over or is it something that I will always have to be conscious of? Kinda like how you could learn a second language and be speaking it full time, but if you get scared bad or hurt you'll instinctively yell out in your native tongue.

[JennyA]

Thank you for the melody. I've been practicing all morning here at work. I have found the rough draft of my voice. I had no idea how happy and calming it would make me to speak like a lady. It's soothing and now that I realize I can do it I am totally jazzed about the possiblities. I was watching Sex Change Hospital last night. Almost every patient that I saw passed as female, but only one of them was using a female voice. The ones who didn't bother seemed very out of place. Their deep voices canceled out whatever physical changes they had made to pass. It seems silly to put all the effort and money into a transition, but not even attempt to work on one of the most important things. And, unless you need a voice coach, it's one of the only parts of the transition that are free.

I am typing addresses in at work on my laptop. I speak out loud anything I type into my keyboad. I'm going to try and do this all the time here at work. Anything I write on the forum, or read on the net I'm going to try and speak it aloud.

I would love to hear myself in 6 months. I'm making progress and it's actually pretty fun too.

Again, thanks for the advice, it's just the kick i needed to get started on this. I would have put it off till later in the transition otherwise.

[Jorja]

I have to agree with Melody on her tip about the voice, practice, practice, practice. The same with your walk and mannerisms. Go to a mall or someplace where women in your town gather. Just sit and watch them move. Don't lear an slobber, please! Watch how they use thier hands in conversation. Look for facial expressions. Watch how they carry themselves when walking. Then go home and practice, practice, practice, then practice some more.

[Melody Moore]

Hi Jenny, its good that you picked up about the voice being the biggest factor that will out you from watching
Sex Change Hospital (http://www.youtube.com/user/ATropicalMelody#p/c/9E437EA41CC6DDB6/0/frc15dyGKcc). And you are right, it seems like a waste of time & money to go through everything else
with transitioning without doing more work on your voice. This is why I suggested voice training as one of the
more important things you could be working on in the basement of your work place where you can get adequate
time & space to practice without feeling embarrassed or annoying other people.

Singing is great and having singing lessons to help develop your falsetto voice is one thing I do really recommend.
I sing at least once, maybe twice a day for about an hour at a time. I have been a muso all my life, but I also had
proper singing lessons some years ago. The reason why I am suggesting to have singing lessons is because it is the
best way to change your voice from being a low male pitch to a higher more female like pitch without doing damage
to your vocal chords. By learning to sing scales that are increasing in pitch, this stretches the vocal chords in a more
gradual way that will also smooth out the bridging between your different vocal registers (Chest voice & Head voice).

Natal females don't always talk in a high pitch and many women have a relatively low speaking voice, but it's more of
a breathy voice when its down low. But they can also raise their pitch up very quickly and smoothly. This will really
come into play when you start to learn more about female type intonation & how women use their voices to say a
phrase or sentence. Men tend to pitch down, when females pitch up towards the end of a phrase or sentence.

You will learn through having proper singing lessons that warm up exercises are vital to preserving your voice for
singing. But in our case where we want to feminise our voices, it's also just as vitally important, so don't ignore
this aspect of vocal training because you can damage your voice by stressing the vocal chords through working
the too hard to quickly. So each day when you wake up & you are getting dressed & ready for the day this is also
the perfect time to do your warm up exercises.

The advice that Jorga gave you about watching the hands & facial expressions of natal females is great, but also
pay more attention to how they speak as well. Sometimes if I am watching a female talking on television show or
in a movie I practice & perfect my intonation by vocalising the lines they have spoken by hearing the female's voice
over & over again in my head. And just to give you an idea on how effective this has been for me, I went for my first
group training session for speech therapy for vocal feminisation last week & the female therapist only complimented
me about the quality of my female voice out of about 4 other MtF transsexuals that were in that group. My speech
pathologist said that she could hear a significant difference in my voice from when she first met me a few weeks ago
and she wanted to know what I had been doing to improve my voice. So I explained to her and the rest of the group
basically the exact same thing as I have told you here about what I have done to improve my voice. She make a joke
in saying that maybe I should come and work for them & teach others. I politely declined her offer and said that having
the patience to teach others was not one of my strongest points and that is was hard enough to have the patience
in teaching myself. But I was also making a point here about how important patience is in this aspect of feminisation.
I really hope this advice helps you and anyone else who might read this thread. :hugs:

[MsBette]

Wow I was going to say something myself about Voice and honestly
Melody covered everything wonderfully.

I'm always working on taking what I call my switchboard speech pattern which is very female in structure and carry it
over into my daily life. It's the formal vocal pattern I used when I use to answer calls for a business office.
The first few times I answered the phone as myself, even my housemate thought she had called the wrong number.
The difference was I WAS being my formal in my speech than when she and I sit around the house talking.

For me the worst time with my voice is when I relate a story from my past. I often drop my voice a bit too much and start relating
my voice pattern to that point in time as the old me butts in and starts telling the story, not me ,Beth.

One thought is, that I have caught in myself and I'm working on currently : coughing, sneezing and laughing.
Since they are spontaneous things that just come naturally, we sometimes forget about them and then oops..
You suddenly have a male belly laugh coming out of a woman, or a bellowing Ahh choo!
I wouldn't know how to tell someone how to adjust it, other tan the main thing is to be aware of it, until you can get
more feminine versions down to being natural for you.