The Deal with the Diaphragm, Pt 2

In the first post we looked at the diaphragm and its role in inhalation - It is the primary muscle involved in the lifting of the ribs and the expansion of the abdomen upon inhalation. To be extra clear, it is always involved in breathing - there is no such thing as a non-diaphragmatic breath. It is just a matter of how efficiently it works. When you are a singer you need it to be very efficient, and the way we use the other muscles of inhalation and exhalation allows the diaphragm to function efficiently.

When we sing we need to slow down the rate at which air is expelled so it matches the needed amount to set the vocal folds in motion at the appropriate pitch and gives you the ability to sing through a phrase. We can't do that with the diaphragm because we have no direct control over it.

We accomplish this by engaging the accessory muscles of exhalation. (When you aren't singing you can slow the breath down by pursing the lips on exhale or by using an ujjayi breath). The abdominal muscle that has the most direct relationship to the diaphragm is the transverse abdominus, the deepest layer of belly muscle, because it attaches to the body at many of the same points that the diaphragm does. We often refer to muscles in pairs as antagonists (think bicep and tricep in your arm). The transverse abdominus is the antagonist of the diaphragm. The other accessory muscles and their antagonists include the obliques (belly) and the costals (ribs), but we're looking most closely at the transverse abdominus here.

Transverse Abdominus in deep red above.


If the diaphragm returns to its resting position quickly, you get a big burst of air that will either make your sound breathy, out of tune or more difficult to create than it should be. So, when we slow its return down by engaging the other muscles of the abdomen and back, especially the transverse abdominus, you create what is often referred to as 'support'.

So, how do you know you are engaging the transverse abdominus muscle?

Try This:

Lie down or sit in a comfortable, well aligned manner. Place your hand just above your pubic bone on your low belly.

Exhale as though you are breathing out through a straw, continuing until you feel as though you are out of air. Like, really, really out of air.

While exhaling pay attention to where you feel muscle engagement - hopefully you feel it beneath your hand in the lowest part of your belly, almost as low as where the pubic bone is. That muscle engagement is the transverse abdominus muscle and that level of engagement is only for demonstration purposes to find it. We use it more subtly when we sing, not wanting to have any visible motion of the belly up and in as we sing through a phrase. If you aren't sure if you engage it when you sing, try vocalizing on the sounds v, m, n, or the ng sound from the word sing with your fingers pressed into your softened belly. Those sounds are good triggers to engage the muscle and you'll feel it press against your fingers when you vocalize.

Enjoy!

Breathing 101: Brahmari - Bee Breath

In this post we're going to add to your tool belt of ways to manage and soothe performance anxiety. If you've read other Breathing 101 posts, you are starting to get a feel for the power of your breath.  Being aware of your breath helps you to be aware of your state of mind: shallow breath = stress/anxiety, deep, full breath = relaxed, calm.

This breath practice is a way to move to a non-anxious state by using sound to help extend your exhale. It is something you can practice back stage before performing, or while riding on the subway, in your car or while simply walking down the street.

 Brahmari/Bee Breath:

To begin this practice, sit in a comfortable cross legged position  or in a chair with your feet flat on the ground, spine tall. 

Inhale through your nose and exhale through your nose while softly and gently humming on an /m/ sound and comfortable, mid-range pitch.

There should be little effort in your hum and the jaw should be soft, the tongue resting between your lower teeth. As you continue your neck, shoulders and jaw will continue to release tension.

 The bee breath are calms the anxious, spinning mind and helps to lengthen the exhalation without additional effort – forcing the breath beyond your capacity will have the opposite effect.

 What you are doing is humming softly. There are many articles out there about the health benefits of humming. Including one from the New York Times that presents multiple studies on the effect of humming to help sinus infections, a short one from mindbodygreen on the health benefits of humming and one from relaxation lounge on the instant benefits of humming daily.

Give it a whirl and see how you feel after!

Breathing 101: Complete Yoga Breath

The foundational breath of yoga is the complete yoga breath, called Dirga* in Sanskrit (pronounced DEER-gah).

Mastering it means you have developed an awareness and freedom of your breathing which will enable other breath practices and also your singing. The increase in oxygen you bring in when you breathe deeply helps decrease stress and anxiety levels, something everyone can use!

Begin by practicing on your back, then try in a sitting position and finally try it standing up.

1. Lie on your back in constructive rest, with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. 

2. Place your hands on your belly. Breathe in and feel the belly rise on inhale and fall on exhale. Do this for a few cycles.

3. Move your hands to your ribcage. Inhale and feel the belly expand and then feel the breath cause the ribcage to expand on inhale and retreat on exhale. Do this for a few cycles. 

4. The final part is to feel the breath move into the area under the collarbones. Breathe in, feel the belly and ribs fill and then a slight rise of the collarbones as breath enters the upper lung tissue. This final step is subtle and small. 

This breath is about finding freedom in the muscles involved with inhalation in exhalation such that your diaphragm can descend enough to allow for a deep inhalation and your ribs expand to accommodate your filling lungs. If you feel light headed while doing this, back off from the practice and lie with your legs up the wall or on a chair for a few minutes while breathing normally.

Enjoy! 

*If you have asthma and are experiencing symptoms, avoid engaging in practices such as this until your symptoms have abated. Then, begin with gentle breathing to avoid aggravating your condition.

The Deal with the Diaphragm, Pt 1

"What do you know about breathing for singing?"

This is one of the first questions asked of new students in my voice studio at their first lesson. My least favorite, yet most common response is, "well, I know you breathe from the diaphragm," uttered as they hold their hand vaguely over their abdominal area.

If that is their answer we go no further.

The diaphragm, for those of you who don't know, is an involuntary muscle. That means we have no direct control over it. We cannot make it do anything. At all. When not engaged it rests at the bottom of the rib cage. When activated it contracts and pulls and aides with inhalation.

Because it is an involuntary muscle, we do not 'breathe from the diaphragm' anymore than we breathe from our stomach. We breathe through our mouth or nose, down the trachea and into the lungs. Breathing occurs through an interplay of muscles, including the diaphragm, that pull on lung tissue, create negative pressure and allow air to rush in (a very boiled down explanation with apologies to those who do anatomical things for a living and would give a more complex, in depth explanation).

What we want is a diaphragm that is free to descend to its maximum position, allowing the bottom portion of our lungs, where the bulk of our lung tissue lives, to fill with air, giving us the best shot at singing long phrases.

What we need is a set of abdominal muscles flexible enough to allow the contents of the abdominal area (stomach, liver, spleen etc) to move forward when the diaphragm encounters them. Because the diaphragm inserts on itself in a central tendon,  its flexibility is also partly dependent on the flexibility of the hips and spine. (Working on flexibility while building strength is one of the many reasons why yoga can be helpful for singers.)

When teachers and conductors and the like tell students "Breathe from your diaphragm!" what they mean is release your abdominal muscles so the diaphragm is free to descend on inhalation.  We 'feel a low breath' because there is expansion in the belly as things move around.

The way the diaphragm is involved with exhalation and how it is paired with its antagonist muscles in the abdomen to provide the foundation for a supported sound is for another post.

Go forth and sing, but know that you aren't controlling your diaphragm as much as you might think you are!

The Very Opposite of Mindful

In general I work hard to practice what I preach, being mindful in my daily life. For the most part I succeed at this but sometimes life gets the best of me.

September was a busy month. This is the first fall that I'm teaching while running yoga programs for singers privately and at a few schools and have my own two children going to two different locations for their daily routine on top of a million other things that come with living life.

The month began relatively smoothly but quickly went south when my daughter's after school program feel apart. I mean really, really fell apart. As in there was no viable after school option for her to be cared for between 2:30 and 5pm on the days I was working. After a totally sleepless night we decided that in the short term I was going to do pick up while we sought out another alternative. All well and good except that my teaching schedule for the week was set and getting home by 2:30 wasn't exactly easy.

To make a long story a little longer, I rushed like mad out of work the first day to get to pick up. I finished teaching in Cambridge at 1:45 and had to be at her preschool, 19 miles away, in 45 minutes (if you live around here you know that this seems like a potential impossibility, but dammit I was going to make it happen). After walking as fast as humanly possible from the building I teach in over to Mass Ave in Harvard Square, I crossed 1/2 of the street with the light and stood on the median waiting for the light to cross the street and it was taking forever (or so it seemed). Suddenly there was no traffic coming south on Mass Ave. I saw my break and went for it.

You see where this is going, right?

Though I had looked to my right and identified that there was no traffic coming, I failed to look to my left to see whether a bus was coming up out of the underground T station.

I boldly stepped off the curb and walked right into the side of a moving MBTA bus.

My bag was over my left shoulder, my elbow bent, sticking out, my hand holding the straps of my bag. I think that very thing is what saved me from potential disaster. My elbow hit the bus first and I instinctively recoiled up onto the median.

Though I was shocked I wasn't really hurt. The poor bus driver very nearly had a heart attack and it took much reassuring that I was actually ok, for him to be able to breathe again. I walked away with a dime sized abrasion on my elbow and the astounding realization that I had very nearly been badly injured because I was rushing and not paying attention.

How often do we all do this? Go on autopilot getting from point A to point B, only to arrive and have no memory of getting there? Have you ever sung a concert and then can't remember much of it because you were so distracted, stressed and unaware? Have you spent an hour 'practicing' when really you were thinking about everything but the music? More often than not those events result in no harm. But, sometimes, you get hit by a bus.

In hindsight I am grateful for the reminder to be present and focused and I'm sorry that it took being hit by a bus for me to remember.

Be present to your life this day, this hour, this minute. Breathe.

Breathing 101: Extending the Exhale.

If you completed the breath ratio exercise and discovered that your inhale is longer than your exhale, or it is equal and you'd like to extend your exhale, here are a few tips on how to do that.

As a reminder, an extended exhale helps to trigger the relaxation response, shutting off the flow of stress hormones (think about the need to fall asleep after you get home from a performance that ended at 11pm...). If you are a singer who struggles to sing longer phrases of music this exercise can help you as well - as will exercises that improve the efficiency of your vocal cord closure, but that's another post for another day!

***Nota Bene: If you are an asthmatic, please don't try to attempt to extend your exhale when you are symptomatic, you are likely to trigger an asthma attack. Please wait until your breathing feels calm to try this. You may do even better to begin by thinking about shortening your inhale rather than stressing your system with extending your exhale.

1. Lie on your back in constructive rest and allow the body to completely relax into the ground.

2. Place your hands on your belly and take a moment to tune into breathing that involves the motion of the belly out on inhale and in on exhale.

3. Do a few cycles of counting your inhalation and exhalation. Let's say your ratio is 6 inhale, 3 exhale.

4. Now try these three options to extend your exhale 1 count at a time:

• Try first just thinking about slowing down your exhale to see if awareness is enough to bring about change.
•  Inhale normally, purse your lips and exhale like you are blowing bubbles. Changing the shape of your aperture (opening) changes the rate at which you exhale, slowing it down.
• Inhale normally, and exhale creating a whisper sound in the back of the throat called Ujjayi breathing - Please, please, please don't make yourself sound like Darth Vader. This should be a noise that is only perceptible to your own ears.

If it feels easy to extend your count by 1, you can work more quickly toward doubling your exhale length, putting your count at 6 and 12.

Once you've mastered things lying down, move on to trying them sitting up and then standing.

As always, just explore without judgement and enjoy!

Breathing 101: Breath Ratio

The next topic for Breathing 101 is that of the breath ratio. In the first post we covered the basics of breathing and a few common breathing pattern problems. In the second post we looked in depth at breath awareness.

Your breath ratio is important because it tells you something about the state of your body. There are three possible ratios -

* Inhale and Exhale equal in length
* Inhale is longer than Exhale
* Exhale is longer than Inhale

Try This:
Lie on the floor in constructive rest.

Close your eyes and take a moment to settle in.

Take a few breaths before turning your attention to your inhale. Count the length of your inhale over 4 or 5 cycles of breath. Though the pace of your counting doesn't matter, try to be consistent about it so you get an accurate count. File away the number you get most often when you count: this is the length of your inhale.

Now turn your attention to your exhale. Count the length of your exhale over 4 or 5 cycles of breath. Again, keep your pace consistent to get an accurate count. Compare this number to the length of your inhale and you know your breath ratio!

What your ratio means:
 A ratio of equal length is what we strive for in physical (asana) yoga practice. In every day life an equal ratio indicates balance and ease as you move through your daily activities.

A ratio of inhale longer than exhale means you are over inhaling. When your inhale is longer than your exhale, you will over oxygenate the body and contribute to your stress level. Over breathing sets your sympathetic nervous system in motion (this is the branch of your nervous system that oversees fight or flight mode. While fight or flight mode is appropriate if you are running out of a burning building or away from a charging elephant, being in this mode as a chronic state will create a loop of stress and anxiety. You may over inhale out of habit, or if you are an asthmatic, it may be part cause, part effect of your asthma.

A ratio of exhale longer than inhale means you are relaxing and also able to sing through longer phrases of your music! This process triggers the parasympathetic nervous system which governs relaxation. In this state you are able to be present to your surroundings, calm on stage and connected to your breath and body.

In our next post we'll look at some exercises to do to help lengthen your exhale and shorten your inhale.