There is something both charming and disarming about Petrina Kow’s approach to voice. In a spacious wooden room at Damai House, Grand Hyatt Singapore, the first instruction is not to project, articulate or sound more confident, but to lie down, breathe and notice what the body is doing. From there, sound enters almost incidentally: a breath becomes a grunt that becomes a hum that becomes a vibration, and gradually the voice begins to feel less like something being deliberately produced and more like something emerging from a body that has been given the space to move. Even better when it’s done in harmony with one another in a sonorous, quiet room away from the madding crowd on Orchard Road.

For anyone accustomed to conventional voice training, the distinction is significant. Fitzmaurice Voicework®, the methodology Kow teaches, is not primarily concerned with polishing the voice from the outside. It looks instead at the physical and psychological habits that accompany speaking: muscular tension, breath, posture, attention, sensation and the ways in which people have learned to hold themselves. Its premise is that the voice cannot be meaningfully separated from the body that produces it, and that becoming more aware of that relationship can change not only how someone sounds, but how they inhabit a room and communicate with other people.

The setting at Damai House lends itself unusually well to this kind of work. Set slightly apart from the hotel’s main pool and spa areas, the two-storey space has an expansive, almost cavernous quality, with timber, high ceilings and enough separation from the rest of the hotel to create a sense of privacy. Sound travels easily through the room, which becomes part of the exercise itself: voices and breath are audible without feeling exposed, and the space seems to encourage participants to listen as much as they vocalise. Mats are laid out across the floor, with pillows and towels provided, and the room gradually shifts from a hotel wellness space into something closer to a studio.

Kow is well suited to making that transition feel natural. Her manner is professional without becoming formal, and assured without dominating the room. She has spent years as a broadcaster, actor, singer, voice-over artist, emcee and trainer, and her own interest in Fitzmaurice Voicework began from the perspective of someone who had already spent much of her professional life using her voice. She had encountered the language of charisma, gravitas and stage presence before, but was looking for something more physical and practical: a way of understanding what happened to the body underneath all that instruction.

Her introduction to Fitzmaurice came through Dr Budi Miller, a lead teacher of the methodology who was also present at the Damai preview and later joined Kow and actress Yeo Yann Yann for the Living Room Session: Finding Your Voice. Kow recalled going to Miller’s living room, lying down and being introduced to Tremorwork®, an experience sufficiently unfamiliar to provoke curiosity rather than immediate understanding. That curiosity eventually led to certification and, subsequently, to her own teaching practice.

A one-hour preview at Damai House offered only a glimpse of what that training entails, and it is worth stressing that distinction. The taster was deliberately accessible and relatively short, designed to introduce the principles rather than take participants through the full arc of the work. It moved through breathing, gentle physical positions and vocal exploration, beginning on the back before progressing through supported positions, the stomach, cat and child poses and eventually standing. The exercises were not physically strenuous; their difficulty lay more in attention and willingness than in exertion.

There was, inevitably, an initial awareness of being observed, even though nobody was actually being asked to perform. Making unfamiliar sounds in a room of adults carries a particular kind of self-consciousness. Kow’s repeated emphasis on choice helped to remove some of that pressure. Participants were encouraged to work within their own limits, rather than trying to achieve a prescribed sound or physical response. As the exercises continued, the collective sound of the room became less conspicuous, and the voice could be explored without the same instinct to monitor or correct it.

This is where the concept of Destructuring®, the first of Fitzmaurice Voicework’s four pillars, begins to make sense. The aim is not simply to relax in the conventional wellness sense, but to become aware of habitual muscular effort and the ways in which it can shape breathing and vocal production. Miller describes this through a deliberately straightforward image: the body as a stack of bones. The skeleton provides structural support against gravity, while muscles move the bones; when unnecessary muscular effort is constantly recruited simply to hold the body in place, the system is doing more work than it needs to.

Miller’s point goes beyond the mechanics of speaking. He describes physical tension as something that can become entangled with identity: the way a person learns to hold the body in order to fit into a family, community or social environment can eventually become so habitual that it feels indistinguishable from personality. What begins as an adaptation can become simply “the way I am”. His instruction is almost deliberately matter-of-fact: “it’s all physical. It’s not personal.” Rather than immediately turning a sensation into a psychological story, participants are first asked to notice what is physically happening, where effort is being used, what is being held, and what changes when some of that effort is released.

Miller’s insistence on what the body already provides feels philosophical. We arrive with a skeletal structure, breath, gravity, the capacity for movement and an instinct for connection without having had to consciously create any of it. Much of the work, therefore, is about recognising what is already available rather than continually adding another layer of technique.

That idea recurs throughout the practice. Rather than instructing participants to manufacture a particular vocal quality, the exercises encourage them to notice where effort exists and what happens when some of it is allowed to fall away. Kow describes the voice as having no single location in the body, but as being “of the body”: a useful distinction for a methodology that treats breath, movement and vocalisation as interconnected rather than as separate technical problems.

Kow quizzes the room during the discussion: where, exactly, does the voice come from? The answers varied, which was precisely the point. Voice has no single location in the body, she explained; it emerges through a series of mechanisms involving breath and the body as a whole, while our experience of it is also shaped by thought, attention and circumstance. Fitzmaurice slows that process down, making something people normally do automatically available for observation.

Yeo Yann Yann, who had never experienced Fitzmaurice Voicework before the preview, arrived with considerable experience of her own. She already incorporates vocal exercises into her daily routine and has worked with techniques including Alexander Technique, but found the approach unexpectedly holistic. Describing the experience afterwards as a “whole body stretch of my voice”, she noted that she became more aware of the relationship between releasing tension throughout the body and the resulting quality of the voice. At one point she joked that her voice had acquired the sultry quality of a midnight radio host, but underneath the humour was a useful observation: changing the physical conditions around the voice can change the voice itself.

For Yann Yann, the discovery was not so much learning another vocal warm-up as reconsidering the exercises she already knew. She regularly works with vocal exercises such as trills, but the preview reminded her that the voice does not operate in isolation. Even for an experienced voice user, it is possible to become so accustomed to working on the voice itself that the physical system supporting it fades from attention.

As an actor, that relationship between body and voice is not theoretical. Yann Yann described building characters through their histories and circumstances, considering how they grew up, what they have experienced and what might have changed them, then allowing that imagined history to alter the way she inhabits the body. The voice is not necessarily imposed on the character first; it emerges as the physical life becomes more specific. She has noticed the reverse process when returning to a role for ADR months later, by which point the character has effectively been “packed up” and the physical state associated with the role has changed. The voice, however, can reveal how much of that physical transformation had once been present.

Her comments helped connect the more abstract ideas of the workshop to the realities of performance. Voice is not simply an instrument that an actor places on top of a character. It can be part of the character’s physical architecture, changing as the body changes.

Later on, The Living Room conversation expanded that idea beyond acting. Held downstairs at 10|Scotts, The Living Room conversation had a different kind of energy: intimate, convivial and deliberately unhurried, with the room set up less like a formal panel and more like a gathering among people who had come to linger. Grand Happy Hour Indulgence added to that ease, with glasses of wine, red, white and rosé, and, for those opting for the fuller beverage package, the classy Moët & Chandon Impérial Brut Champagne flowing alongside a generous spread of food. There were seasonal small bites and appetisers, seafood tartares and smoked specialities, finger sandwiches and local favourites, followed by charcuterie, a selection of Les Frères Marchand cheeses, breads, hot dishes and sweets. In the cosy setting, the atmosphere was relaxed without becoming casual in the careless sense; people ate, drank and listened, while the conversation moved from the mechanics of breath and physical tension into questions of emotion, identity and what it means to inhabit a voice fully.

Here, Miller returned to the physical habits that can become so familiar that they no longer register as choices. The way someone sits, stands, breathes or tightens the jaw can become bound up with how they understand themselves, even though those patterns may have developed through years of social conditioning. Fitzmaurice Voicework asks participants to examine those patterns without immediately deciding what they mean psychologically.

That does not mean the work is emotionally neutral. Kow spoke candidly about the range of responses she has encountered in her own practice, from laughter and anger to tears and grief. But she was equally careful about the distinction between something being potentially therapeutic and being therapy. “It can be therapeutic, but it’s not therapy,” she said. The work is not designed to force emotional catharsis, nor are participants encouraged to manufacture a dramatic release. Rather, the physical practice can sometimes create enough room for a response to emerge without being immediately suppressed or controlled.

The longer programme therefore promises a substantially different experience from the preview. Four sessions allow the work to move beyond the initial novelty of making sounds and noticing the body, into a more sustained exploration of what happens when those observations are carried into speech, performance and communication. The progression through Destructuring®, Restructuring®, Presence and Play gives the methodology a useful architecture: first becoming aware of habitual effort, then developing greater economy and support, followed by attention to presence and finally the freedom to apply the work to speech, text and song.

The preview is best understood as an introduction to that vocabulary rather than a compressed version of the full programme. An hour is enough to make the relationship between body and voice apparent, but the four-session format gives participants the time to revisit those observations and take them further. The work becomes progressively more demanding not necessarily in physical intensity, but in the degree of attention it requires: moving from release and awareness towards support, presence, expression and play. In that sense, the full programme stretches both mind and body, giving the practice enough time to move from an unfamiliar physical exercise into a more sustained investigation of habitual behaviour and communication.

This is also where the relevance to non-actors becomes clearer. Petrina Kow’s experience as a professional voice user gives her an understanding of the difference between knowing what communication should look like and actually practising it in the body. She argues that public speakers often devote enormous attention to the content of a presentation, the deck, the facts, the wording, and comparatively little to the physical experience of delivering it. Actors, by contrast, spend considerable time rehearsing what happens when they enter a room, speak in space and respond to an audience.

Kow makes a deliberately simple distinction between actors and public speakers: actors memorise their material, while public speakers often have to make theirs up. But the more important difference is what happens before they enter the room. Actors rehearse not only their lines but their physical relationship to a space, an audience and the other people on stage. Public speakers can spend days refining slides and wording while giving comparatively little thought to the physical act of standing in front of twenty, fifty or five hundred people. When the presentation then feels uncomfortable, it is tempting to conclude that the problem is confidence or natural ability. Kow’s argument is that the body, like the content, can be practised.

Of course, not everyone needs to become an actor. Instead, such training helps one recognise that communication is inherently physical. Nervousness changes breathing. Attention changes posture. A fixed gaze can alter how connected someone feels to a room. A clenched jaw changes the ease with which someone speaks. The desire to produce a particular reaction from an audience can itself interfere with the spontaneity of communication.

Kow illustrated this through a discussion of audience laughter. An actor who becomes preoccupied with making an audience laugh can start anticipating the response and subtly pushing towards it. The same phenomenon occurs in professional communication: when a speaker becomes too invested in getting a particular reaction, the delivery can begin to feel forced. Presence, in this context, is more about being able to remain responsive to it.

Miller’s work with focus and the “focus line” develops this further. Rather than allowing the voice to disappear into a generalised space, a speaker can direct attention towards particular people or areas of a room while remaining aware of the wider environment. The objective is not simply projection, but contact.

Miller also draws a distinction between suffering and freedom, particularly in relation to actors. An actor may need to inhabit a character who is frightened, angry or grieving, but that does not mean the actor has to reproduce every aspect of that suffering as unnecessary physical strain. Understanding the body’s habits allows the performer to enter difficult material while retaining a degree of physical freedom, and then return to themselves afterwards. He extends the idea beyond acting: people in demanding professional roles may similarly need to inhabit pressure, conflict or authority without allowing the physical strain of the role to become something they carry into every interaction.

For leaders and professionals, this may prove to be one of the more compelling aspects of the programme. Fitzmaurice Voicework does not offer a formula for sounding authoritative, charismatic or polished. Instead, it asks what happens when people become more aware of the physical habits underpinning their communication. As Miller put it, “when you know yourself, you can use yourself”, not as a prescription to eliminate difficult emotions or demanding situations, but more of a way of having more choice in how the body responds to them.

The programme also reflects a broader evolution in how wellness is understood at Damai. The spa and fitness centre has traditionally been associated with physical recovery and movement, while Damai House has expanded into yoga, Pilates and other mind-body practices. Vocal Breathwork adds another dimension by considering the body not simply as something to strengthen or restore, but as the place through which people experience pressure, communication, performance and connection.

There is no dramatic promise attached to that idea. The value of the practice is more measured than that. After the preview, the most noticeable shift was not a spectacular transformation of the voice, but a heightened awareness of the physical conditions surrounding it. The exercises encourage participants to notice rather than immediately correct, to listen rather than perform, and to consider how much effort is actually necessary. The simplicity of the movements is part of their effectiveness: because the physical demands are relatively modest, attention is left for the less obvious work of observing sensation, breath and response.

Finding your voice, in this context, is then about examining the relationship between the voice you have and the body you bring into the room, and discovering what changes when some of the habitual effort between the two is allowed to shift. For a one-hour preview, that is perhaps enough: not a transformation, but an introduction to a practice that asks increasingly interesting questions of the body, the voice and the person using them.

Photo Credit: Grand Hyatt

The full Vocal Breathwork programme comprises four sessions at Damai House, Grand Hyatt Singapore, led by Petrina Kow and built around the four pillars of Fitzmaurice Voicework®.

Destructuring® — Undoing and Being
4 October 2026, 2:30pm–6:30pm
The programme begins with awareness of habitual muscular tension and breath holding, using Dynamic Efforts and Tremorwork® to explore the relationship between physical release, breathing and vocal expression.

Restructuring® — Building the Foundation
11 October 2026, 2:30pm–6:30pm
The second session focuses on breath and vocal support, resonance, economy of effort and the relationship between the voice, language and listener.

Presence — Permission, Presence and Power
25 October 2026, 2:30pm–6:30pm
Participants explore presence, nervous-system responses, vocal variety, storytelling and the ability to remain connected to both self and audience.

Play — Application to Text, Song and Speech
1 November 2026, 2:30pm–6:30pm
The final session applies the work to speech, text and song, encouraging range, flexibility, spontaneity and individual exploration.

The programme is capped at 20 participants. The early-bird rate is SGD 1,288 nett for all four sessions, available until 27 September 2026, with the regular rate at SGD 1,488 nett. Registration closes on 3 October 2026.

Each session includes Afternoon Tea from Oasis at Damai House, a complimentary four-hour parking coupon and one hour of access to Damai’s spa and hydrothermal facilities before or after the workshop.

Vocal Breathwork with Petrina Kow
Damai House, Grand Hyatt Singapore
4, 11 and 25 October, and 1 November 2026
2:30pm–6:30pm each session

Registration costs SGD 1,488 nett, with registration closing on 3 October 2026. For reservations and enquiries, contact the Damai team at +65 6416 7132 or damai.sg@hyatt.com.