1 simple breathing exercise to fix shallow breathing for singers

Breathing deep and down into your abdomen can be a game-changer for your voice. For some of us though, bad breathing habits have accumulated over the years and it becomes impossible to use belly breathing unless we are constantly thinking about it.

I used this one exercise to start fixing my habit of not breathing properly. One of the hallmarks of good exercise is that you can progressively increase resistance on it to train harder. This exercise allows you to do that and done long enough translates into a rewiring of your breathing patterns completely, so much so that you carry the habit into your daily routine and especially while singing.

To understand the habit, first, we have to understand what happens when you breathe. The air through your nose (mouth breathing is seriously bad and has been covered in another article) moves into your lungs, it helps to imagine lungs filling up from bottom to top like a water container, and then pushing on your diaphragm, pushing the organs in the abdomen outwards.

Now that this image of moving organs is clear to you, we will move on to the best voice teachers on the planet. BABIES! Next time you come across a baby, observe them non-creepily and with permission from their parent or guardian. Look, how they breathe while sleeping, while eating, while playing, literally every time they breathe you'll see their cute little tummy going up and down. Babies know how to breathe properly, it is one of those skills which some of us get worse at as we grow up.

Now, with the scientific knowledge and a demonstration from babies, let's get to work! We shall call this exercise, "I can lift books" You shall name the exercise whatever you want as long as you remember to do it.

You'll need a book or two, human size floor space, time on your hands and a pinch of whimsy.

Step 1: Close your eyes and imagine you are a baby! just kidding, you are an adult and you gotta pay bills. Lie down with your back on the floor.

Step 2: Keep your hand on your belly and regret eating that cake.

Step 3: Take that book you keep promising to read and put it on your belly.

Step 4: Now, take a deep breath and let the air go deep down causing the belly to rise and the book to rise too.

Step 5: Breathe out and let the book come down. Try to minimise all movement of the shoulders and chest and just isolate the belly.

Step 6: Repeat the exercise for 5 mins at different times in the day, every day and it will become part of your wiring.

Step 7: Gradually increase the number of books or get a heavy one for further resistance. Play music if this is too boring or if this alone time causes an existential crisis.

Conclusion:

Do this for a couple of weeks and you'll start seeing your breathing change. One interesting thing that'll happen to you is that you'll start noticing others while travelling, at parties and start seeing most of the people around you take shallow breaths from their chest and do not engage their diaphragm properly. You might want to fix them all but be careful, you might offend them instead. Though, if you know me, Eternalramblings will always say offend them and help them than ignore.

PS: If you run out of heavy books, lemme know, I can lend you some physics textbooks that will surely give your diaphragm a challenge.