Here are a few more exercises to
help you.
Try lying on your back to practice
breathing exercises. When you are lying down, the breathing is deeper and you
can easily feel the movement of the muscles. Another thing which helps is to
hold a heavy object above your head: use something heavy enough to make lifting
it an effort- a bucket of sand or a bar-bell. Your breathing should fall easily
into the right place.
Bear in mind that the expansion of
the lungs and rib-cage is not only at the front of the body- the whole of the
chest from the waist up also moves outwards at the back and the sides. Here is
an exercise which I find very helpful- it emphasizes this all-round expansion.
When you are doing it think of a balloon expands in all directions.
Sit on firm straight-backed chair,
hang your arms loosely and move the elbow away from the sides of the chest.
Without moving the shoulders and with your back touching the chair back take a
long, slow, deep breath from the bottom of the lungs. Try to expand so that
your back swells and presses against the chair. This exercise should quickly
establish the sensation of waist and back expansion while breathing. So much
for maximum intake of breath.
Super breathing also involves the maximum
outlets of breath, and this is where the pains begins! As you know, completely
emptying the lungs gets rid of the stale air in the bottom of the lungs, and
makes way for the new, clean air to re-oxygenate the entire lung tissue. Let’s
look at the outlet of air from the lungs.
Standing up and having taken a
full breath begin slowly to blow out the breath. When your lungs are about
empty, your rib-cage will probably starts to collapse: subconsciously you will
assume that your lungs are empty and you will automatically take another
breath. Your lungs will not be completely emptied. However, and a considerable
amount of air will still be inside, so you will need to squeeze a bit more to
complete the spring-clean.
Two skills have to be developed.
First, holding the rib-cage as expanded as possible while breathing out, and
second, pulling-in the abdominal muscles in order to exert a gentle upward
pressure on the lungs from underneath. This will give a support to the lungs as
they are being emptied of the remaining air.
Now that you understand what goes
on when you breathe and what super breathing is all about. I will like you to
focus on the next exercise that I am
about to show you. This will make stand out in any singing group or just as a
solo artist. Make sure you do this exercise every day and measure your progress
daily, here is the SECRET exercise.
1.
Start by breathing in for five seconds
2.
Pausing for five seconds and
3..
Exhale for ten seconds
Over a period,
increase the number of seconds to ten for breathing in, pause for ten, and out
to twenty.
