They call it the “breath of life”! And most of us, unless you suffer from asthma or emphysema, take it for granted. We inhale, we exhale, we inhale, we speak. We inhale, we sing. But not all students who come to my voice lessons and singing lessons in Marin are experienced with using the breath for singing. Some, like children, even need to be told we sing on the exhale. Breathing is so unconscious that when we make it more conscious for singing, we often start to interfere with its natural rhythm.

 

Many years ago, when I went to my first Alexander Technique lesson, I didn’t really know what my instructor had done. All I knew was that walking down the street, I was taking big, sighing, reflexive breaths as I’d never taken before. For a lifetime, it seems, I had experienced tight and heavy ribs and trouble with getting a good breath but didn’t know what to do about it. I continued my lessons and learned that the freedom of the ribcage has everything to do with what is going on in the spine. As a “slumper,” my ribs tended to bear down on my diaphragm – creating a true “cage” for my lungs, which wanted badly to expand. When my teacher taught me how to direct my head off the top of my spine, so the spine could lengthen, the ribs started to unlock and thus began my journey toward a more flexible and reflexive breath.

 

Many voice teachers talk about the ribs as “bellows” or “expanding bucket handles.” These are all visualizations to encourage greater expansion under the arms and into the back, where much of the lung dwells. However, the problems start when we start to directly lift or fix the ribcage into a “position” or “posture.” This partial rather than whole body movement in my experience creates great tension in the ribs and limits a full breath. The trick is to attain buoyancy in the ribs indirectly, through a balanced alignment.  

 

Here are a few ideas for becoming aware of the ribs and the breath:

 

  • First, give yourself a nice slump and notice that it’s not just the ribs, but the whole spine that drops forward. Now arch your back, raise your arms, and look at the sky. You’ll see that the whole rib cage lifts. See if you can find a nice balance between the front of the spine and the back – not arching or slumping. That point of balance should feel like you don’t have to work to breathe.

 

  • The shoulder girdle, with the scapula (shoulder blade) in the back, collar bone in the front and the upper arm bone (humerus) widening out into the lower arm bones, all have weight. So, they can create downward compression on the ribs. Raise your arms over your head, breathing easily as you do so. Now as you bring them down, don’t drop the shoulder girdle. Bring the arms down and see how much space you have under the arms and in the ribs. You might feel like a football player with shoulder pads. This helps us notice how much space we have in the ribs that often isn’t available because we press our arms down.

 

  • Are you holding in your belly or tucking in your butt? This is sometimes suggested as a counter-action to arching your back. I have found that this creates great tension in my body because it’s a direct muscular action. Instead, let go of your belly muscles. (Do Pilates in a class, not while you’re walking around the world.) When you release those belly muscles and direct your head up so your spine can lengthen, the pelvis has room to dance and move however it likes. And, surprise! You get a nice low breath. Holding your belly muscles in stops the free descent of the diaphragm. And, if you lock your knees back, the pelvis also locks. They go hand in hand…or pelvis and knees! 😊

 

  • There’s a fun exercise they do in yoga where you breathe into three different parts of the torso. The lungs dwell as far up as the collar bones, filling the chest cavity all the way to the lowest ribs (people have different torso lengths). In the yoga exercise, first you take a low breath below your belly button, expanding it like a Chinese Buddha. Then you explore a breath into the waist (a fashion term, BTW, not an anatomical part!) and then a high breath in the clavicular area (the dreaded gaspy breath!) When we experience these breaths, you are limiting the breath to just that one part. At the end, let all three sections expand for the inhale – in back, in front, on the sides, even below in the perineal area. That’s a very full torso breath. Not to say that we always breathe this deeply but usually, if you sense a low breath, all these other areas are quietly expanding too.

 

  • Child’s pose is a great organization for feeling the breath. You can feel the belly touch your legs on the inhale and back up on the exhale. Then you can get up and pant like a dog. This shows you how flexible you are in the abdominal wall and wakes up those lower muscles. Make sure you relax the jaw and don’t pull your head back. You can also go into a little “monkey,” spine straight, to get in touch with your belly pooching on the inhale.

 

So, what ultimately is the goal in good singing? Keep the breath moving!  

 

I like to start with exercises for “moving” the breath with open vocal folds – lip or tongue trills and fricative consonants like s. Humming is great to sense the movement of the breath through its nasal vibration. Later, when you add voicing, like with z’s, and sirens, you start to notice when you stop the breath because of changes in pitch.

 

What is it that really is stopping the breath? Well, the culprit is often the tongue and its root. If it isn’t relaxed forward enough, this strong muscle can pull back on pitch changes. Consonants are notorious for stopping the breath, especially ones like b, t, d, and that nasty hard g, which is made with the middle-back of the tongue. Just try to sing “google, google” and keep the breath flowing!

 

We sometimes over-muscle our enunciation, using the whole tongue instead of the tip, so the tongue root grabs. Also, vowel shapes can affect the breath flow, such as diphthongs (two-sound vowels). The second sound often doesn’t get enough support, so the breath gets stuck. (Such as the “ee” in the word “day.”)

 

And, the jaw needs to respond to the acoustical needs of the vowels. If we don’t make enough space in the jaw for a more open vowel, for instance, the breath vibration can’t journey freely over the tongue and we experience “drag.” Each vowel and pitch has its own amount of support (compression in the lungs created by the upward moving diaphragm and the closed vocal folds). And different vocal styles have different support needs and cord closures. As a classical singer, if I over-support my middle register, the breath locks up. But the higher notes need more breath, but it needs to be loose. In musical theater, the more speech-like singing needs a bit more support than regular talking but the belt needs quite a bit of muscle to keep the larynx in place. Whatever the style, keep it moving, moving, moving.

 

Ultimately, the movement of breath is also the awareness of “life force.” It has psychological components. A static, passive physical or emotional personality or mood often means the breath lacks vitality and forward momentum. Notice your body energy when you’re depressed. Don’t feel much like singing, right? Fear too can make us stop the breath, as in jumping to a very high note. I think of a diver running down the diving board, only to stop before the plunge. I like to think of the breath as less about “control” and more as managing my whole body’s energy, sensation of pressurized air and release. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the more I give the breath away and let it go, the more I have. If one aspect of my vocal mechanism isn’t working optimally, say my voice is tired, it’s hard for the other parts to work well in conjunction. If that’s the case, I go back to square one, get the breath moving and I have a somewhat successful singing session.   

 

In my singing lessons for kids, I love to come up with fun ways to teach releasing the breath. Recently I learned these exercises from a therapist who works with children with ADHD: Raise your arms in front of you, one palm up, the other down, like they are the jaws of an alligator. Open the jaws on the inhale, close on the exhale, without stopping the breath. You can do this with butterfly wings (raise arms to the side on the inhale, down on the exhale) or swinging a baseball bat (back on the inhale, swinging it forward on the exhale. Now do this and expel a sharp “ha”!) These exercises relax you, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and help you get in touch with releasing the breath. When I’m singing my best, I feel like my voice is surfing – on air.