Breathing for Singing

Breathing is the immediate topic that comes to mind when we are thinking about any kind of technique for singing. But breathing is a far bigger part of our body-instrument and our lives beyond singing. As you know, breath is required for living (you have likely heard that a human being can only live for three minutes without air). Our breathing, though, can also indicate so much about what is happening in our bodies.

Think about a time you were really stressed and see if you can remember what your breath felt like. You may not remember, and that is often because your breath was locked up. Take a moment and shorten the back of your neck (putting the brakes on the AO joint if you remember from a previous exploration) and see what you notice about your breath and then release it and see how your breathing changes. Imagine what it would be like if you were singing with your breath locked like that! Breathing can have a significant effect on our singing, our communication, our life. And yes, of course our breath is also the power source for our voices to be set into motion, so how we breathe and how we use our breath (we sing on the exhalation!) is super important for singing.

In the embedded videos below, we explore all the different areas where we can expand for a singing breath. (If you're missing expansion in a part of my body when you breathe, there is likely tension somewhere.) There is also a video about catch breaths and how to use them during your songs. These are all somewhat basic, and yet they are things that we can and hopefully do return to and refresh over and over because we can always use more mastery in them to help in our singing.