Breath

Sit, or stand, in a position that feels comfortable and well-supported.

Begin to deepen and slow down your breathing.

Notice the movements and sensations associated with inhalation and exhalation.

Notice the movements and sensations present when your inhalation is complete, and you begin to exhale.

Notice the movements and sensations present when your exhalation is complete, and you begin to inhale.

This is a sequence of cues that I frequently offer students as a warmup for breath work. It helps them engage their breathing anatomy, and it also helps them to engage their powers of observation. I watch them breathe and make internal observations, and then invite them to describe what they noticed about their breathing—before offering any observations of my own. I may not offer them at all yet, because what matters most is what they are noticing. 

I don’t want my observations to compete with theirs. Quite the contrary: I want my observations to be informed by theirs.

Sometimes they jump right in and describe their movements and sensations. At other times, they may comment on what they imagine they’re doing “wrong”, e.g. “my ribs and shoulders are moving too much”, “I’m not feeling it in my lower abs like I’m supposed to”, and so on. They may find themselves at a complete loss for words. 

Any or all of that is fine. However they respond, it provides the information I need to help them improve the things they want to work on. It provides information not only about how they experience their own breathing, but also about how they talk to themselves about both their breathing and their learning process. Their response will inspire the next set of cues I give them, informed by my observations of their movements, their range of motion, how they coordinate their breathing anatomy, and the extent to which their breathing appears continuous or discontinuous. 

As you inhale, where do you sense movement?

Do you sense expansion in your abdomen, your ribcage, or both?

Do you sense expansion in the front? in the back? in your sides?

Do the movements feel segmented, or all of a piece?

As you exhale, where do you sense movement?

How do inhalation and exhalation impact the way you experience your alignment?

Are you simply observing your movements and sensations, or are you also analyzing or judging them?

For singers and voice teachers, breath management, aka breath support, would seem to be one of the great mysteries of the universe. Our discussions are reminiscent of the debate that unfolds amongst Oscar Wilde’s Jewish theologians in Salome as to whether anyone can truly know the nature of God.

Breath management feels mysterious because breath management is a deeply personal thing. In the same sense that your relationship with the Divine is a deeply personal thing.

Like “interoception”, skill at breath management is a lot easier to define conceptually than it is to teach and develop. The general concept is one thing. How to specifically apply the concept to your body and your voice is another.

I define breath management as the means whereby you regulate your subglottal breath pressure to facilitate a greater and/or more specific impact on vocal fold vibration in order to modulate volume, projection, and registration. While most voice teachers would likely agree with my definition, their opinions regarding the “means whereby” part are likely to differ. It’s the “means whereby” part that is a deeply personal thing, not only for voice teachers but also for singers. That’s where the conceptual ends, and the interoceptual takes over.

We recognize good breath management when we see it and hear it. It’s the archetypical Goldlocks scenario:

• Too little breath pressure yields a tone that is too soft, too diffuse to project, and may be under pitch.
• Too much breath pressure yields a tone that is too loud and abrasive, may pull sharp, and shows visible exertion on the part of the singer—at times their face may redden, the veins and tendons on their necks may begin to pop.
• When it’s just right, when the breath pressure is consistently and continuously in balance with the vibration of the vocal folds, we notice nothing but beautiful singing and expressive phrasing. 

No one else can tell you whether your bowl of porridge is too hot, too cold, or just right. If I want to serve you a bowl of porridge that is the perfect temperature, I first need to ask what the perfect temperature is for you.

Breath management is like that. I can see and hear when you are not investing adequate breath energy, and I can see and hear when you’re working too hard. But you are the only one who knows how you are using your breath to generate your sound, and what too little, too much, or just right feels like. 

The “subglottal” part of “subglottal breath pressure” means “below your glottis”, below your vocal folds. Everything that contributes to the overall pressure within your torso while you are singing will have an impact on your subglottal breath pressure. All of the movement that is going on inside and around your ribcage. All of the muscular, postural, and digestive activity that is going on inside and around your abdomen. All of it. Everything.

That stuff is going to vary considerably, not only from singer to singer, but also within the same singer at different moments throughout the day and throughout their life. Not only is it impossible to micromanage all of the anatomy that regulates your intra-thoracic and intra-abdominal pressure… you can’t really micromanage any of it. 

But you can make observations about much of it.

You can notice whether there is rigidity in your abdomen impeding full range of motion for your viscera and preventing your diaphragm from descending and flattening as far as it otherwise might.

You can notice whether there is rigidity in your upper body impeding full range of motion for your ribcage and preventing it from fully expanding.

You can notice whether your abdominal muscles mobilize and push on your breath when you did not intend to do so.

You can notice whether your sternum collapses or drives down while singing, when you did not intend to do so. 

You can notice movements that accompany inhalation, such as pulling your head back or elevating your shoulders, that you did not intend.

You can notice whether your breathing feels good, effortless, tense, or effortful.

You can notice whether your voice feels free, or whether there is an unpleasant sense of pressure in your throat while singing.

If there is an unpleasant sense of pressure in your throat while singing, there can be only one reason, which is that you are generating the degree of breath pressure required to override some manner of supraglottal resistance that you are encountering, rather than supplying the degree of breath pressure required for healthy phonation. 

The “supraglottal” part of “supraglottal resistance” means “at or above your glottis”, and often involves the vocal folds themselves. The resistance you are overriding could be created by over-adducting your vocal folds, singing higher or lower than you comfortably can yet, singing with registration that is too heavy (e.g. trying to belt higher than you comfortably can yet), a retracted tongue, a tight jaw, or inadequate resonance. Maybe some other things, but the list of potential culprits is finite.

If you want to find out what is creating the resistance, there are a number of ways to troubleshoot, all of which benefit from enhanced interoception. But one of the best ways to troubleshoot for this is to get good enough at noticing when there is an unpleasant sense of pressure in your throat while singing so that you can dial back the breath pressure. The excess breath pressure is a compensation for the excess resistance. Stop pushing, and you may be able to notice what it was that you were pushing against. Then you will know whether the coordination you need to work on has to do with phonation, resonance, and/or articulation.

My early voice teachers taught me to “support” my voice by mobilizing my abs and overriding resistance in my throat with breath pressure. Many, if not most, of the more experienced singers who show up to my studio were taught the same thing. They usually freak out when I invite them to explore what happens when they let go of habituated abdominal tension. Especially if it means undoing something they deliberately developed with a view to overriding resistance and creating a sense of pressure in their throat that they have come to associate with powerful singing (just like yours truly here).

Can learning to mobilize your abs contribute to your overall breath management strategy? Absolutely!

So can learning to release your abs. Most of us are walking around with crazy compacted visceras already, thanks to a culture that inexplicably values the aesthetics of washboard abs. What matters is the ability to sense what your abs are doing, and to allow them to become increasingly responsive to the demands of singing, whether that means mobilizing or releasing them at a given moment.

Breathing regulates more than voice-related activities and experiences—it is a significant component of how we self-regulate, period. My next post will explore the relationship between breath, emotional regulation, and expression in performance.