I did this for years

To get my voice lighter, I jammed my voice all up in the mask and sang with no body so I could sing all the pants roles that my fach was supposed to sing. My teacher stressed 'ping.' I got hired. For 8 years jaw and tongue tension allowed me to lighten up the voice.

When I moved to NYC my new teacher heard about 5 minutes of my lesson and asked me to try something...and voila...there was my real voice. And it was about 100 times easier to sing, and I had about 100 times more voice.

I think this is part of what TS is talking about with teachers having no patience with bigger voices. It's easier to jam the voice into the mask and have it have lots of ping than to wait out all the ups and downs of training a bigger voice.

Funny thing for me is that I'm singing the exact rep my undergrad teacher told me I would someday sing.