Vocal Myth #2

Breathe From Your Diaphragm

This is not so much a myth as an opportunity to give clarity to a familiar phrase.

We’ve all heard it from our teachers, shoot, we’ve all said it to our students, but here’s the ugly truth.  You can’t actually feel your diaphragm, directly. 

Now before you start a war with your voice teacher, it may be helpful to know that you can, in a sense,  “breathe from your diaphragm,” but perhaps not in the way you originally thought. Here are some facts about the diaphragm that help to give clarity:

• First of all, air fills the lungs, not the diaphragm or the stomach,
  just the lungs.
• The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle wall.  We can’t feel it directly, but we do have some control over it indirectly/subconsciously. 
• The diaphragm contracts and flattens when you inhale, pulling air into the lungs.  Think of when you have blood drawn.  The action of pulling the plunger and the resulting suction is what draws the blood out.  This is much like the way we inhale. 
• During exhalation, the diaphragm simply relaxes and is passive, but during singing, we sometimes try to delay its ascent and  pressurize the air with the abdominal muscles.
• The diaphragm is one of only a few unpaired muscles in the human body (not really helpful, but interesting, if you’re a vocal pedagogy geek! )
• There are a a few important structures that pass right through the middle of the diaphragm such as the esophagus, vagus nerve and the aorta. So it’s not actually a solid muscle sheet.
• The diaphragm is higher in the body than we normally think.   It separates the abdominal cavity from the thoracic or chest cavity. 
• The lungs are up in the rib cage, not down in the stomach or the “guts” where we see movement when we breathe in, in addition to the movement of the rib cage.

Now, here are some reasons why we probably say to breathe from the diaphragm: 

• Though we do not have direct control over it in the same way we do many of the processes involved in singing, the diaphragm is still the principal muscle of inhalation, so it is incredibly important.
• We feel motion down low when we inhale, because the viscera (or guts) are displaced.  In other words, when your belly moves outward during exhalation, that’s the guts moving as a result of the diaphragm descending and pushing down on them.  Gross, right?  
• Again, during exhalation, we feel motion down below the ribs, but it’s the abdominal muscles pushing the guts back in.  The transverse, rectus and oblique abdominal muscles work to pressurize the air and help us supply the necessary breath pressure for singing.
• Habit.  It seems that for years and years, teachers and students alike  have said “breathe from the diaphragm” without describing specifically to what we are referring,  or purposefully trying to simplify our instruction with one solidified, uncomplicated idea, even if it does leave out a few of the details.  If it gets the desired results, why mess with it, right? 

So, the question now is, “who cares?”  Does it really matter how we describe it?  If we’re doing what we’re supposed to, does it even matter what we call it? Yes.  

If we try to “breathe” by using a muscle we can’t directly feel (or at least not in the way we think we can), it will most likely lead to muscle tension, frustration, and lots of expended effort without any specific kind of return except the occasional “accidental success.”

It turns out, it’s hard to make a career on accidental successes…

Agin, when you inhale, you feel the belly (or the viscera) move out.  That relaxation of the abdominal muscles and engagement of the external intercostals (outer rib muscles), is what we can control. That’s what you think of when you try to inhale, but we’re actually inviting the diaphragm to contract and flatten when we do this.  Our brain sends a signal to the phrenic nerve, which causes the diaphragm to contract and makes inhalation start to happen. 

We sometimes say “breathe low,” in addition to or in place of “breathe from the diaphragm.” Though we can’t directly feel the diaphragm, we can sure feel that belly move as a result of its constriction.  Air rushes in to the lungs to equalize the pressure, and we have a full tank of air. 

 
by Katherine D. Burgess

When you exhale, the abs become the most important muscles in that process.  Remember that we have a few different sets of ab muscles.  The Rectus, transverse and obliques.  The rectus are kind of the “show room” muscles.  That’s where you’ll see your six-pack if you have one.  I don’t, back off…its my genes, and bread…ok, mostly bread…

The transverse abdominals  are positioned horizontally  and the obliques in a criss-cross fashion, across the abdomen. 

As the abdominal muscles contract (and remember, muscles can only move in one direction, constriction or contraction), they push against the “guts” which causes a chain reaction of pressure upward pressurizing air in the bottom of the lungs, and helping us to control the pressure, volume and speed of the air the comes up through the trachea to meet the vocal folds.  That’s where the “magic” happens or where the air facilitates vibration of the folds.  Think tube of toothpaste or pushing liquid out of a syringe. 

Though we’ll get in to breath control and breath support in another post, its worth going over briefly a few different methods of breath support to lay some groundwork. 

In terms of breath support for singing, some prefer what is sometimes called the “down and out” approach.  This involves simply trying to maintain the sensation caused by the flattening of the diaphragm and pushing the guts down and out as long as possible.  This forces you to  rely on the natural elastic nature of the lungs to do the bulk of the work, along with the basic high pressure/low pressure equalization that occurs when we breathe in.  

Others prefer to meter that air out and exercise more direct control over it with an “up and in” sensation caused by contraction of the abdominal muscles.

Some use a combination of both. I personally find that a combination of both methods helps as different styles of music require slightly different techniques to achieve ultimate precision while maintaining ease of production.  Think Rossini coloratura vs. a long Richard Strauss line. 

Bottom line?  When you are breathing, remember that what you are feeling is not in fact the diaphragm, but the surrounding processes triggered by its constriction.  

You’re still facilitating diaphragm movement, but you can’t directly feel it.  If you want to have more direct control over your breath, look for engagement in those ab muscles, especially the transverse and obliques.  Those are the groups that run horizontally and diagonally respectively.  The rectus muscles (the six-pack) are not as involved as they are the outermost layer of muscle and are more of a “lid” for the intestines rather than an active contributor to the breath support. 

Remember the elements you can control in order to help that process, happen as naturally as possible.  Locked and tight muscles, anywhere in your body, will get in the way of good singing. 

So next time you hear “sing from your diaphragm,” just smile and nod…you’ve got this.