Excitations and good vibrations

A SPECIAL DEVICE women use to rock the little man in their boat may also be used to clear up that frog in your throat, according to a Canadian scholar who spoke yesterday in Philadelphia.

The University of Alberta drama professor David Ley was in town to present his findings to The Voice Foundation's 42nd Annual symposium at The Westin.

Ley, a spoken-word vocal coach, said two years ago he was working with an actress friend who had overworked her vocal cords after coming down with laryngitis a month prior.

Ley manually massaged her neck, but when that didn't work he went looking for massagers, but found them all too big.

"I thought 'Well, I know where they make small, handheld, vibrating massagers,' " he said.

Together, he and the actress went to a Canadian "love shop." With the help of the tattooed lady behind the counter, they tried out a half-dozen different vibrators on their throats before settling on one called Siri made by the Swedish company LELO.

"Ergonomically, it works well for what we're doing. It's good for pressure point work, it has variable speeds of vibrations and it's the right amount of amplitude," Ley said.

The impact was "significant" for his friend, according to Ley.

"She noticed a difference right away," he said. "And slowly, over a period of a week or two, things really resolved themselves."

Since then, he's used the device on more than 150 people, and a video about his discovery has more than 190,000 views on YouTube.

He's presenting at the symposium, but said he also hopes to meet researchers there to look into why this works.

"One of the reasons I'm here is I'm hoping to meet someone in the science world who can tell me what exactly is happening," he said.

Patty Callahan, U.S. spokeswoman for LELO, said the company is "enamored by" Ley's discovery and finds it "beyond exciting."

"We never expected this twist to take place," she said. "Leave it to the public to come up with an off-label use for everything."

Callahan said since Siri is ergonomically designed to fit in your hand, it can pass for an everyday massager and is even sold in stores like Brookstone.

The device has six modes, six speed settings in each mode and operates at 110-120 hertz, Callahan said.

Susan Mannino, owner of The Pleasure Chest on Walnut Street near 21st, said the vibrator retails in her store for $99.95 and comes in red, pink and purple.

"It's a great product," she said. "The voice is not what we use it for, but I don't think there's rules."

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