Warming UP Part Two -Breathing, the beginnings.

In this episode I'm going to refresh our basic understanding of breathing anatomy and isolate each of the main areas for breath with a few simple exercises.   If you're a singer or an actor, you're going to need more breath than someone who's not. There's a balance that we need to work on between how much breath is released so that the vocal folds can manage the airflow and produce vibrations to get the result you want without blowing  apart, and not having enough air to sustain the sound to the end of the phrase.  We'll get into that more in later episodes. But for right now, I really want you to think breathing = easy. It supports your vocal expression and it helps you to relax. When you're doing nice deep belly breaths, it can really calm the nervous system. You'll probably notice that if you're just chest breathing, it can make you feel a little bit more anxious? Whichever way you look at it. The most important thing is that the intake of air is easy. The exhale is controlled and the shoulders aren't involved so that the singer or actor has enough breath to sustain long phrases without running on empty, which puts extra pressure on the vocal folds. Enjoy and please grab this download for further practice :) 2 Minute Breathing Exercise Audio Link Messy Transcript  Hello, and welcome to episode three, which is part two of warmups. I could have thought that out better anyway, but here we go. It's all about the breath. Well, it's not even gonna be all about the breath, cuz breathing is such a massive topic, especially for singers.  So    this is gonna be a little intro to the breath. And the very first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just make sure that we all have the basic facts of how we breathe and what is happening. I'm sure we all do, but just in case you have kids in the car who don't know, this is how it works.   We breathe in through the nose or mouth. If we breathe in through the nose, which is preferable in nearly all circumstances, the air is filtered warmed, and humidified,  the filtering continues as air flows down through the throat, the larynx trachea and the bronchi, , which are the two main branches, which divide at the bottom of the trachea. And finally into the lungs, filterings happening all the way down.    Each lung has a tree like branch of tubes that end in tiny air sacks called alvioli where the oxygen and the CO2 diffuse in and out of the bloodstream. That's the basics, that's what's going on.    The lungs are spongy and dome like, and are tucked away behind the ribcage. And on top of the diaphragm, they're there to absorb oxygen and get rid of, uh, CO2 from the bloodstream. And the tissue surface area is actually about 40 times greater than the outside of the body's surface, which is massive actually.   I think it's the question that I get asked the most probably is how to breathe properly.   The glib thing that gets said is, well, we know how to breathe because otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me right now, that kind of thing. Um, and that is true to a certain extent, but I think that the more that we can understand effective function of the breath the more we can benefit.   During my research, I've found that while many teachers might have different ways to talk about breath control, we're all trying to find the point of most ease and efficiency for our students. I'm always gonna talk about belly breathing because that's something that works for me. It's something we can actually feel, and it helps to keep the shoulders down and the chest lifted, which is what seems to work for my students.   There's a lot of debate amongst voice teachers about focusing on the role of the diaphragm in breathing for singing. But what's clear is that the diaphragm works all the time as it's part of the autonomic nervous system. And it seems to share responsibility with the intercostal muscles in between the ribs.   Dr. Rena Gupta, a fabulous, laryngologist in LA says in her book, the O H NNI voice book . "In addition to the intercostal muscles, the abdominal oblique and back muscles play a role in controlling the rate of breath release and therefore sound. The lungs are designed to recoil to allow exhalation and intake of the next breath.. The job of the exhalation muscles are to provide resistance to the passive recoil. In other words, exhalation muscles are designed to slow, exhalation down and control it so that breath can be used for singing".   Okay. So the first thing I want to teach you today is the different areas that you can locate breath right? Now. I often, in fact, I was trained to, teach singing, using, um, breathing in through the mouth.   I'm having a little bit of a Renaissance right now, um, in terms of nose breathing. I will come back to that in a later episode.    If you are able to breathe in through your nose, into the lower belly without raising your shoulders or lifting your chest up. Go ahead. If your nose is not open enough yet, then feel free to use your mouth for this, uh,  practice. Okay. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have you stand feet hip width  apart.   You're gonna hear me say that a lot. And of course, with everything I teach you, I want you to just do what feels comfortable for you. Right? Don't do anything. That's gonna put you at risk. So stand with your feet, hip with the part knees soft and just put your hands on your belly. Let your belly relax. Just let it relax and rub your belly in a clockwise direction. Just encouraging it to soften. Unfortunately, we live in an age where the belly gets held in a lot, especially for women, but for everybody, unfortunately. So let your belly just relax and soften. Maybe bring your fingers up to the top where rib cage, you can feel the V of the rib cage and just kind of get your fingers under the, under the ribs. There're a bit ow.  so I've got a little bit tension there, myself. Get your fingers in there. See if you can kind of massage under there, release the diaphragm a little bit and then come back to just rubbing the belly. Let that just be soft.  and what I'm gonna invite you to do is you're gonna exhale.   You're gonna breathe into your belly, just your belly, and you're gonna hold and then exhale again. Okay. So first of all, let's just take an exhale with your hands on your belly. Breathe in.   Hold your breath and then exhale, and then just let your belly drop and fill. So as we do all of these exercises, I want you to have the idea that you're allowing breath in rather than sucking in. Right? Because when we think about sucking the air in, we get all kind of complicated about it and start tensing and clenching things. Whereas really breath comes into the lungs when space is made.   Right? So if you ever had, um, if you know what a bellows are from an old fireplace where you would open the handles of the bellows, which would create an air sack in the middle, it would suck the air in from the outside. I want to think of breathing, kind of like that, right? We open the bellows, which means we let the belly relax. You're not sticking out. You just let it relax. And that in turn will draw air into the lungs. Right? It's kind of this vacuum. So every time we make space, whether it's in the side, ribs, the lower back in the chest, wherever we make space, we allow air to come into the lungs.  And we're always really trying to draw the air as low as we can cuz that's where the good stuff happens down there in the base of the lungs.   Ah. Okay. So let's do that again. Put your hands on the fullest part of your belly and if it tensed up again, just give it a little jiggle, like a bowl full of jelly  and let it soften. And this time we're gonna breathe in for five. Hold for five and exhale for five. And at the end of the exhalation, as you exhale, you're gonna feel your hands come in towards the spine.   And at the end of the exhalation, just let you belly relax. Don't push it out. Just let it relax and you'll feel the air gets sucked in. Okay, so exhale first breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4. Five, hold your breath there. 2, 3, 4, 5, and exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Release your belly and just breathe in. You feel that. It's goodness.   That's goodness, right there. If you take nothing away from today's podcast, but that, uh, I would be very thrilled and I'd love to hear about it. Uh, so being able to bring the breath nice and low and the sensation of it being in the belly, of course, it's not in the belly, uh, but the diaphragm, which is a Frisbee shaped muscle that sits underneath the lungs, has kind of flexed and stretched, it domes downwards to make room for the lungs to expand. And  , it moves everything in the belly out of the way, which was why you have this sense of the belly being full, but really just. I like to use visuals for breathing more than anything else. So, so imagine it being either the bellows I talked about, or like you're filling a balloon, right? The only trouble is with a balloon. It feels like there's a bit more effort, but whatever helps for you, right. Find a visual that works for you for filling the belly. So let's do that one more time. This time we are going to breathe in for five hold for five, exhale four eight. Okay. We're gonna try and make the exhalation a little bit longer. So ready, exhale. First, breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hold check for tension three. Four five and exhale for 8 2 3 4 5 6 7, 8, and then breathing. Good. Okay.   Just take a couple of relaxed breaths there. If you've been doing all this breathing through your mouth, because that feels like the open airway. Maybe let's try one with you breathing in through your nose. Right? And if you were doing your nose before, try your mouth, just to see if that feels different to you.   So we'll do five, five and eight. So exhale breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Hold it there. Two, three, relax, shoulders, four, five and exhale for 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. And breathe in. Ah, good.    Okay. So breathing location, number one is the belly. Now put your hands on your lower back, right, right there. Right in the lower back one on each side, either side as if you were gonna slip your hands into your back pockets, but you can't, can't quite get your fingers into the pocket.   So they were just a little bit higher. And this time, I want you to engage the muscles of the belly. So , your belly's not expanding, but you're gonna expand the lower back and maybe put one hand, actually just keep your hands on your lower back. Okay, here we go. So belly is tight, but you're gonna breathe into the lower back.   Here we go. Exhale first and then breathe in. Hold it there. Don't clench your. butt, And exhale.   Let's do five, five and eight there. So exhale, breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hold for five. Release your shoulders, four, five, and exhale for eight, seven. 6 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then just breathe in.   Good. So that feels a little different. You probably felt a lot less movement than the belly. But it doesn't mean it's not really working, so that's great. So lower back is a great place as well. Side ribs feel that there, put your hands on the side, ribs, not your waist a bit higher. So you're really on the  rib cage.   And this time you're gonna hold the belly in again and just try and inflate as if your, your, your ribcage is gonna flare out. Okay. So exhale first, we're gonna do five, five and eight again. So exhale, breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hold it there. Keep your shoulders down. Two, three. Four five and exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, and then breathe into the ribs.   Good. So in between each of your ribs, you have intercostal muscles,  which are also really, really important in terms of expanding the ribcage for breath. So it's a great idea to, to stretch those out, which is why, uh, last week in the warm up exercises we were doing, uh, side stretches, right? Front and back stretches, yes. And also side stretches to really make sure that those, uh, muscles are, flexible.  Ok, Uh, let's do, uh, the chest, right? So belly side ribs, lower back and chest. So put your hands on your chest. This is probably gonna be the most familiar breathing area for you. So this time I want you to, uh, not expand anywhere else, just the chest.   Put your two hands on there. We're gonna do five, five and eight. So exhale. Breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hold 2, 3, 4, 5, and exhale for 8 7 6 5 4 of 4, 3, 2 1, and then breathe into the chest, and, out. . Good. Okay. So you might want to play with those different areas a little bit more like wind this back and go practice those. Try them with nose, breathing, mouth breathing. Um, you can also alternate between a legato breath and a staccato breath. So if we're doing legato, which is smooth and connected, it's that continuous breath in, but if we were doing staccato , you'd suck the air in with each count. Like. , they're just a little different, right? Just a little bit of a different feeling. And I want you to be familiar with all these breathing areas, because sometimes we have constriction or a reason that we can't expand in one area, and so we need access to another and, and the human body is really amazing and we can absolutely compensate when we're injured or ill. To be able to, uh, breathe in a different area.   As with all of these things, I want you to do what feels good for you.  I want you to have the capacity to vary what you are doing so that if you are injured or compromised in some way, uh, you have another option, and you're not gonna be totally freaked out and feel like you can't breathe. Mostly, I want breathing to feel easy and I want it to support you.    If you're a singer or an actor, you're going to need more breath than someone who's not. So there's a balance that we need to work on between how much breath is released so that the vocal folds can manage the amount of air and produce vibration to get the result you want. Without blowing the vocal folds apart or, uh, not having enough air to sustain the sound.    Whichever way you look at it. The most important thing is that the intake of air is easy. The exhale is controlled and the shoulders aren't involved and that the singer or actor has enough breath to sustain long phrases without running on empty, which puts extra pressure on the vocal folds. So there's a complex balancing act that goes on, uh, for singers and actors. We'll get into that more in later episodes. But for right now, I really want you to think breathing easy. It helps you to relax. Um, when you're doing nice deep belly breaths, it can really calm the nervous system. You'll probably notice that if you're just doing chest breathing, it can make you feel a little bit more anxious. Um, so, experiment, let me know how you get on. I'm gonna put a little link in the show notes,  for  a daily breathing exercise that you can do. So if you fancy doing a little daily breathing exercise, It's gonna be a count hold count, hold type of a thing, you can grab that in the show notes. Otherwise I will see you next week. Happy breathing. And, thank you for reviewing and sharing the podcast by the way. I super, super appreciate it. So keep doing that and I will see you next time. Okay. Bye.