Does Singing Lead to Over Breathing?

Breath is not just the fuel for our voice giving us the ability to communicate incredible sounds and emotions, it is our very life force. However, it can also be a silent saboteur of our vocal production and our well-being.

Over breathing for singing and over breathing in every day life look slightly different, but both can have major impacts on us.

When singing we cannot breathe solely through the nose. Not only are we frequently breathing through the mouth to take in air, singing calls for higher volumes of air AND, sometimes (many times? nearly all the time?) we over estimate how much air we need to get through a phrase.

In your singing, have you ever experienced…

• Excess tension in neck and upper trapezius.
• Greatest expansion in belly area on inhale?
• Lots of shoulder and upper chest motion on inhale?
• The belly moves IN on inhale, rather than out?
• Ribs swinging forward, like a bell, on inhale?
• Your sound feels effortful?
• Vocal Fatigue and lessened stamina?
• Left with extra air at the end of a phrase?
• Had someone comment on your speaking voice that it sounds like no air is moving?

In your body have you ever experienced…

• Frequent yawning, sighing or holding of the breath?
• Cold hands and feet?
• A sense of narrowed nasal passages though you aren’t stuffy?
• Chronic stress and/or anxiety?
• Asthma or Exercise Induced Asthma?
• Sleep Apnea or Non-restful sleep?

If you answered yes to any of those statements about your body or voice, you may have a habit of over breathing on and off the stage!

Discover the patterns of your body and work on solutions.

Inside this 90 minute workshop you will learn what your baseline patterns are and develop strategies to work with them. You will explore suppleness in the torso and apply, with curiosity, elements of the work to your singing.

• We will begin the workshop with vocalizing a bit to establish a baseline for our voices.
• Next, we will talk a bit about what constitutes over breathing and review the basics of respiration and assess our current breathing patterns.
• Then we will look at mobility in the thoracic spine, shoulders and neck, seeking to improve ribcage mobility over all 3 dimensions.
• We’ll do a few breath work practices before returning to singing to challenge the idea that we need a big breath to sing phrases.
• Throughout the workshop we will check in with our voices and bodies to see what we notice.
• There will be time at the end for Q & A.

**Workshop participants will need to dress in clothing they can move well in, have a mat, and a chair or cushion is you want to sit on the floor.