OVS Blog

The alignment of the pelvis is crucial to your support for singing!

Alignment might not be the best word because it indicates a held position or posture...the way we think of our pelvis or the way we "wear" our pelvis might be better. Either way, the pelvis is starting to get a lot more attention lately, especially in the natural health world. People are really starting to realize that the pelvis and the muscles that span between it and the tailbone (often called the pelvic floor) both influence and are influenced by many other areas and functions of the body. These areas include the feet, the hyoid (kind of important in our singing!), our postural system, glutes, hamstrings and piriformis among others. Our structure as a whole is affected.

Additionally, an alignment of the pelvis that doesn't work with your particular body structure will cause the engagement of either the low back or abdominal muscles in a way that inhibits our natural breathing function.  All of these things taken together highlight the effects on our support structure, including our breathing and our deep core system. 

Considering that our pelvis is often one of the harder areas to sense in our own bodies (interoceptively but also because our society as a whole has been taught to ignore this area of the body), this can be challenging to address. Back in the day, many of us (me included!) had teachers tell them to tuck their tails/pelvis. For me, personally, that was uncomfortable and actually caused my fingers to go numb. Others I know are working now to re-think the way they wear their pelvis and it is having a profound impact on their singing.