Power lunch. Power walk. Power nap. Hey, as long as
we’re making ourselves feel powerful by renaming natural activities, allow me to
introduce my superturbo, patent-pending breathing technique for singers. To be honest,
there's nothing new about power breathing. Every baby on the planet has the technique
down. Power breathing is what allows infants to scream for hours on end. Obviously,
newborns don’t have a lot of muscle strength. So where does all that energy come
from? They instinctively harness two universal properties: air pressure and recoil.
The air around us is pressurized and self-stabilizing. When
the pressure decreases anywhere, surrounding air will move in to fill the void. This is
the motor which drives the weather, and why the weatherman is always talking about areas
of high and low pressure. On a smaller scale, when you open a new jar of pickles,
you’ll hear a suction sound as the seal is broken. Pickles are vacuum packed, which
means the air pressure inside the jar is much lower than outside. Unscrew the lid and air
is drawn in. The same thing happens when we inhale. When your lungs are expanded, the air
pressure inside drops. Outside air then rushes in to equalize the imbalance. What’s
important to remember is that air doesn’t make your lungs expand -- muscles do.
The diaphragm is a dome shaped muscle which sits directly
under your lungs. When it descends, the area inside your lungs increases. There are also
muscles between your ribs, which spread the cage, and muscles in the neck and shoulders,
which can lift your chest. Any of these muscles can enlarge your lung space to create an
inhale. Of all these options, the diaphragm is best positioned. We are often too tight in
the stomach area, though, and don’t give it room to drop. Infants are not tight down
there and take full advantage of the diaphragm’s ability to pull in air. Notice how
their belly’s swell like little Buddhas just before letting go of a wail. It’s a
simple principal: the more air you take in, the more pressure you’ll have to cry.
Once expanded, your lungs are like two balloons. The air
pressure inside an inflated balloon is greater than outside the balloon. Everybody knows
that the pressure will come out -- with force -- by simply releasing the balloon, but we
fail to apply this universal law to singing. At the beginning of each phrase, we use
abdominal muscles to drive the air out of our lungs. Not only is this as unnecessary as
squeezing a balloon to empty it, but it causes all kinds of trouble. Singing requires a
specific amount of pressure; too much force triggers your throat to hold back air like
fingers clamping down on the neck of a balloon. Control is lost.
The other under-appreciated source of power, recoil, also
relies on the diaphragm. Most people incorrectly associate the words "breathe
support" with push. They tap there tummy and say, "Sing from here. Right?"
Well, that’s half right. To better understand how the whole thing ties together,
let’s get creative with anatomy. It’s been said that the body is a temple but I
think it more resembles a tenement. Imagine your body as a building that has one studio
apartment on each level. Let’s call the first floor the "legs" of your
structure. The second floor represents your abdominal cavity and the third level is the
thoracic cavity (if you want to get fancy, you can call your head the penthouse). It
doesn’t take very long when you live in a building like this to appreciate that one
person’s floor is another person’s ceiling. This rule is the same in your body.
The diaphragm is both the floor to the lungs (thoracic cavity) and the ceiling to the
abdomen. Move this divider up and down, and it enlarges one cavity while compressing the
other.
When your diaphragm descends, it pushes on everything inside
your abdominal cavity. Since this "room" is jam packed with furnishings like a
stomach, liver and intestines, everything gets shoved towards the walls. This is why your
tummy sticks out when you inhale correctly. It’s not filling with air down there,
it’s just a response to the ceiling coming down. Compressing your abdominal cavity
doesn’t take much effort, as long as its walls are relaxed. Sucking in your tummy
when you inhale locks everything in place, so the diaphragm can’t come down. The
result is a shallow breath that doesn’t pack much punch. We learn from infants crying
that creating a big inhale is important. Even more important, though, is not pushing once
you’re fully loaded. You’ve already worked for the energy; all you have to do is
release.
The automatic reaction to compression is recoil. If you push
down on a spring and then quickly release it will jump back to its original form. The more
force you use to compress, the more force you get back on recoil. Push down on the spring
again but this time slowly raise your hand. The spring returns at the hand’s speed.
This is a controlled release. Notice that, to control the motion, your hand only needs to
push downward; there’s no need to pull up on a spring. The same is true for your
diaphragm. Once the abdominal cavity is compressed, it wants to spring back. As if it was
holding back the recoil of a spring, your diaphragm should continue to apply and downward
pressure to regulate the air pressure passing through your larynx. In other words, it
"supports " your voice by making sure that the vocal folds aren’t
overwhelmed.
Combine the spring-back action of your abdominal cavity with
the momentum of high pressure from fully inflated lungs and you’ll have vocal power
to spare. Notice that both of these power sources are passive, the work was done during
the inhale. If you need more thrust, your abs are always there to add. I know it feels as
if you need to push with your abs in order to make your voice powerful. Just remember that
this desire is a reaction to half-inflated lungs. Stretching your body will help; start
your warm-up routine with some reaches and side-stretches. Reserve abdominal push as a
last resort, not a first line of strength. It takes a while to re-train the body to
release the abs on every inhale, but the pay-off will be a voice that’s truly
bouncing off the walls -- just like when you were a baby.
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