The voice exercises in the course will automatically help your breath control, because the head-focused voice they help develop requires less air, and effort, than a throat-based voice.
Unlike some vocal techniques there are no complicated explanations of how to use certain muscles when breathing, just encouragement to allow your body to breathe in a natural, healthy way.
The candle test is an easy visual demonstration of how much breath your voice is using: the more the flame flickers, the more breath you’re expelling.
This exercise will show you whether your normal breathing is natural breathing.
If the hand on your abdomen was moving, congratulations. You are using the diaphragmatic breath. This simply means that your diaphragm, the sheet of muscle between your chest cavity and your abdomen, is moving up and down as it should to maximise the air going into and out of your lungs. It is the natural way to breathe at rest.
Watch a baby or small child asleep. They haven’t had time to develop bad breathing habits so they do it as nature intended: their abdomen rises with the in-breath and falls with the out-breath.
For many people, though, it’s not their abdomen that moves but the top of their chest around the collarbone. This is partly a natural tendency with ageing, but is exacerbated by stress, a tight waistband, or holding the stomach in so as to look as slim as possible.
Unfortunately this shallow breathing not only is less efficient at getting oxygen into the lungs, it also doesn’t make you feel good. The exercise in the next section will encourage you to switch your breathing back to a natural diaphragmatic breath.
The voice exercises in the course will automatically help your breath control, because the head-focused voice they help develop requires less air, and effort, than a throat-based voice.
Unlike some vocal techniques there are no complicated explanations of how to use certain muscles when breathing, just encouragement to allow your body to breathe in a natural, healthy way.
The candle test is an easy visual demonstration of how much breath your voice is using: the more the flame flickers, the more breath you’re expelling.
This exercise will show you whether your normal breathing is natural breathing.
If the hand on your abdomen was moving, congratulations. You are using the diaphragmatic breath. This simply means that your diaphragm, the sheet of muscle between your chest cavity and your abdomen, is moving up and down as it should to maximise the air going into and out of your lungs. It is the natural way to breathe at rest.
Watch a baby or small child asleep. They haven’t had time to develop bad breathing habits so they do it as nature intended: their abdomen rises with the in-breath and falls with the out-breath.
For many people, though, it’s not their abdomen that moves but the top of their chest around the collarbone. This is partly a natural tendency with ageing, but is exacerbated by stress, a tight waistband, or holding the stomach in so as to look as slim as possible.
Unfortunately this shallow breathing not only is less efficient at getting oxygen into the lungs, it also doesn’t make you feel good. The exercise in the next section will encourage you to switch your breathing back to a natural diaphragmatic breath.
