This eye opening exercise, -well, really, it’s a throat opening exercise but it will open your eyes to what your voice can do with just a little work and attention. It will take you less than a minute.
Stand up and read aloud the following (it’s the opening to A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow):
Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream
For the soul is dead that slumbers
And things are not what they seem
Now yawn and at the very top of that yawn let out a full deep (from your belly) AHHHHHHHH that lasts at least 6 seconds.
Now read the poem out loud again. Notice the difference? Is your voice a little deeper, a little richer?
Do it again. Yawn and at the very top of that yawn let out an AHHHHHHH. And read the poem again.
Let me know what you noticed.