Vocal Myths Dispelled, Part II: "Breathe From Your Diaphragm!"
We all know that breathing is important to singing. We all know (I hope) that you're not supposed to hike your shoulders all the way up toward your ears when you take a breath. We all seem to know that the diaphragm is involved in breathing somehow.
These are all good starting points, to be sure. But if you had to explain to someone exactly how the breathing process works when you sing, would you be able to? Do you really understand what's happening with your lungs, your diaphragm, and your ribs? Do you even know what the diaphragm is, and where it is in your body?
If the answer is no, then this blog post is for you! We are going to tackle that mystical, ever-elusive muscle, the diaphragm, and its role in breathing.
You may have heard the phrase "breathe from your diaphragm" or "breathe from your stomach" before. However, these phrases aren't technically correct. Meaning, they're not a physiologically accurate or well-expressed explanation of what's *actually* happening when you breathe.
Let's start with what the diaphragm actually is. It's a large, unpaired muscle (meaning that it's the only one of its kind in the body) that sits in the bottom of your ribcage (the set of bones that go around your upper torso and form a protective cage around your heart and lungs). It's shaped like a lopsided, upside-down bowl. Contrary to what you might have heard, you cannot "feel" where it is, and cannot "control" it, at least in the sense of choosing when or when not to engage it.
Now, why is it incorrect to say "breathe from your diaphragm?" Well, think about it. We already have an organ in our body that does the breathing - the lungs. You don't breathe "from" your diaphragm, ever. You breathe with your lungs. When you take a breath, the lungs - located in the chest cavity, not the stomach - fill up with air, and when you exhale, they deflate. This happens every time you breathe, whether your are singing, running, washing the dishes, trolling Facebook, watching TV, or sleeping. This is basic anatomy and physiology, k?
Now here is another piece of information that usually surprises people: just like the lungs, the diaphragm is involved in all breathing, not just singing breathing!
I mean think about it. If the diaphragm was only to be engaged when one is singing, what would it do with the rest of its existence? Our bodies have evolved over time in order to shed useless appendages or organs that have come to have no necessary physical or physiological function. For example, we still have tailbones, but when was the last time you saw a human with a tail? (I hope the answer is "never.") If the only thing the human diaphragm did was aid in singing somehow, evolution would've been like, "Eh, I don't think we need this anymore."
So how does the diaphragm actually work?
When your body senses a drop in air pressure in your chest cavity (meaning, when it's like "I NEED OXYGEN"), your diaphragm descends, or moves downward, to create more space in you chest cavity for the air that will be filling your lungs. The ribs also move outward and upward, giving the lungs room to expand. When the air pressure becomes too high (meaning, when the body is like, "OK I'M GOING TO EXHALE NOW"), the diaphragm ascends back to its original place near the bottom of your rib cage. Until you breathe again. At which point the process repeats.
(The orange thing is your diaphragm.)
This happens with every breath you take. Your diaphragm is always involved, and there is no way to un-involve it.
So why then, you ask, is a "singing breath" so different from a "regular breath?"
Have you ever watch a baby breathe? If you have, you might have noticed that their lower bodies do all the work when they breathe. Their chests and shoulders don't move. Basically, babies are born learning how to breathe like singers. (Well, that's a bit simplistic, but you get the idea.) The kind of high, shoulder-raising breath that we non-babies tend to take in everyday life is a learned habit. And one that's bad for singing.
Basically, when you take a "high" breath, meaning a breath that causes your shoulders to rise and your chest to heave, you're taking a very shallow breath. It probably doesn't feel that way to you, but it's true. You're likely taking in less air than you would if you breathed "low" (i.e., like a singer). Also, the "high" breath causes you to hold all the air pressure very high up in your thorax (chest cavity), causing tension in the neck and shoulders. Not only will this muscle tension feed directly into your vocal muscles (which are nearby), but the amount of pressure under the vocal folds is WAY too much for free, coordinated singing.
So basically, there are two not-ideal things happening with the "high breath" situation: 1) you're not taking in as much air as you could, and 2) the air pressure is in too high a place in your body, which causes tension too close to your vocal muscles.
When you take a "low" breath, however (meaning one that causes your tummy area to puff out like a balloon), you are 1) maximizing the amount of air you can take in, and 2) keeping the locus of the air pressure in a lower place in your body, making it easier to control. This is the good kind of air pressure - the kind you need for coordinated, well-supported singing.
So why does your tummy puff out? It's because your diaphragm, which has descended to its lowest point, is pushing on all the other organs in your abdomen, and they have no place to go but outward. And ideally, you want this kind of outward expansion all the way around your torso, not just in the front: you should also be able to feel your sides and back expand. It's easiest to see this expansion in the front, but in reality it's your side abdominal muscles, along with the muscles that run along the sides of the rib cage, that play the biggest role in "supporting" the sound.
Now, there are lots of other components to a coordinated breathing mechanism than just being aware of how your diaphragm works. I could write a whole series of posts just on the various aspects of breathing. (Maybe I will...) But, at least now you are informed about what the diaphragm actually does! So when someone says to you, "I've heard you're supposed to breathe from your diaphragm when you sing," you know what to tell them!
