Mythbusters: Breathing Edition
by Christine Elizabeth Clancy. May, 15, 2020.
We all breathe. We have to. Most people don’t think much about their breath outside of their weekly yoga class, but anyone who plays a wind instrument or sings probably spends a lot more time consciously aware of it. These musicians also get a lot of advice about the best way to breathe in order to achieve their musical goals. Unfortunately, there is a lot of (well-intended) misinformation circulating out there. I personally struggled because of it during my musical development, but found relief and empowerment once I started learning musician-specific anatomy through Timani. Learning how to use my body to improve my playing made such a profound difference to my practice and performance that I can’t seem to keep quiet about it. So I decided to set the record straight on some of the most pervasive myths in this article.
1. Truth or Myth? “When you inhale, your diaphragm goes down, so that means the belly has to stick out to ‘make room’ for the air.”
Mostly myth.
The belly doesn’t *have to* move to make room for the air because your body has the possibility to expand in other ways. Yes, the diaphragm goes down when you inhale, but it also goes out, expanding your rib cage 360°. And ribs are moveable at the costovertebral joint (where they attach to the spine). When you breathe in, the ribs can “flip up” at this joint – almost like window blinds – to increase the volume inside the rib cage. Approximately 2/3 of the lung tissue is located toward the back of the body. Most of us are more focused on the front of our body since that’s where we see and do everything, but try focusing on breathing into the back of your rib cage while allowing a lengthening of your spine instead of expanding into your belly. Notice what happens.
Many musicians point to the fact that babies naturally breathe in to their bellies. This is true! But how similar is a relaxed baby to an opera singer? What about a baby screaming at the top of their lungs? That’s more like it. If you’ve ever held a crying baby, you might have noticed that their abdominal area is ACTIVE, not loose and relaxed. I want to point out that breathing into the belly IS healthy, natural, and can be very relaxing for the nervous system, but the caveat is that this really only applies when you are lying down (supine). In this position we can truly relax because no muscles need to work to hold us up. Anytime you are standing or sitting, however, muscles do need to work to hold you upright – especially muscles protecting our vulnerable lower back region between the pelvis and rib cage. One of the most important is the transversus abdominis muscle, a deep muscle which wraps around the whole abdominal area like a corset. It is one of our primary breath support muscles (most efficient when differentiated from other abdominal muscles), and if we stick the belly out while we’re playing or singing, we are making it more difficult for it to do its job. Inefficiency leads to more effort, and often to a reduction in sound quality or control.
Experience:
Try lying comfortably on your back with your knees bent. Breathe calmly and let the air entering your lungs dictate how the body moves, using as little effort as possible. Notice what happens without trying to change it. Next try to breathe mostly into your belly, still as relaxed as possible. Then breathe more into your rib cage, noticing especially the contact of your backside ribs against the floor as they expand. Keep your neck and jaw relaxed, and use as little effort as possible. Go back and forth between belly breathing and rib cage breathing and observe what you do differently between the two. Then sit or stand and repeat the exercise paying attention to what feels different in the upright position.
2. Truth or Myth? “When you take a deep breath, the air goes to the bottom of the lungs.”
99% myth.
No matter how much we want to control our air, we can’t control it this much. Air isn’t water, so it won’t sink to the bottom; it will go anywhere it can without resistance until the pressures inside and outside are equal. We don’t have any muscles in the lungs and cannot control where the air flows inside the thoracic cavity.
The 1%: What we can control is where we allow expansion. For example, if I clamp my shoulders down and round them forward, I prevent the upper part of the rib cage from expanding fully, which in turn would mean that the lungs inside the upper part of the rib cage wouldn’t have much increase in space, so more air might go elsewhere if there is more expansion elsewhere. I think it’s worth noting that the air’s location in the lungs in and of itself does not determine anything about the quality of sound you can produce with it. This is more dependent on how the different parts of the breathing apparatus are working together and how well you can control them.
The key thing to differentiate here is where the air goes versus where you feel an effect. We don’t have many sensory nerves inside the lungs compared to the surface of our body. So we can’t really feel inside the rib cage where the air is, but we can feel the skin and muscles around the rib cage expanding as a result of air entering the lungs, as well as in other parts of the body as these mechanical effects are distributed along chains of muscles intertwined by fascia (connective tissue). The even distribution of tension is called tensegrity. This is preferable to some muscles relaxing while others bear more than their fair share of the load (excess tension).
Below the diaphragm lies one of the deepest muscles in the body, the psoas major; it attaches to all five vertebrae of the lumbar spine (lower back) and connects them to the inner thigh bone (femur). The psoas and diaphragm are extensively connected by a mass of fascia. Textbooks show muscles as separate from each other, but fascia is in fact between, around, and inside all the muscles in your body. So when the diaphragm contracts, the tension created doesn’t stay only there, but rather it is distributed to the structures around it and the structures around them via fascia. This means that every breath affects a whole chain of muscles, from the diaphragm to the psoas, down your legs and even to your feet! You can’t actually breathe air in to your feet, but it’s possible tofeel the effect of your breath in your feet. Whether this is available to you or not depends on alignment and coordination in your whole body. Tensegrity and good alignment in the whole body usually result in a richer sound and more ease in playing.
3. Truth or Myth? “Good posture means shoulders down and back; your shoulders shouldn’t go up when you breathe.”
Myth. (Although it of course depends what your starting position is).
This one was drilled into me for years, anyone else? I had great posture my entire life – I got asked if I was a dancer all the time – but I couldn’t breathe. I could get a lot of air in, but for a while I wasn’t able to fill up to the top of my breath no matter what I did. It turned out that my excellent posture was part of my problem. Shoulders down is something everyone has heard, and it’s very well intended. So what’s the deal? We have to look at what’s being avoided.
High Breathing is what you do when you’re scared or surprised and make a sharp inhale. Tense people often have raised shoulders that come up and in toward the neck. This is because muscles in the neck like the scalenes are (in concert with other muscles) essentially “lifting up” the rib cage to quickly get air in. But they’re not meant for that! It’s a really heavy job and they are delicate muscles that primarily aid head and neck mobility on top of a supported rib cage. High breathing can stimulate a stress response (it’s a bit of a chicken-egg scenario) and generally doesn’t feel particularly good. So since we don’t want to do that, we tell people to keep their shoulders down. The problem with shoulders down is that they can easily get too low, or just locked for fear of raising up. This usually involves excess tension in the upper chest, which reduces our ability to expand and breathe fully.
This is where it gets interesting. Shoulders are 3D. There are at least 24 muscles that move the shoulder joint and allow us all kinds of movement possibilities (fun fact: we need at least nine of them to work just to hold the shoulder in neutral). They don’t just go up and down. In optimal 3D breathing, the shoulders actually can rise up and outwards. Outwards as in away from each other. Instead of being pulled up and in by delicate neck muscles, the shoulders can be supported from below, and naturally move up and out as a result of the full expansion of the rib cage underneath. Free your shoulders and fill your lungs!
Experience:
Lift your left arm out to your side to shoulder height, arm slightly in front of you instead of straight left. With your right hand, find the left accromion: the boney part of your shoulder blade furthest up and out, just above the shoulder socket. Try to lower your left arm back to your side without your right hand moving. You can do this a couple times on one side and notice if you feel a difference, with breath or movement, before doing the second side. Try taking these stable, wide shoulders to your instrument and see what happens!
You might have noticed that some of these explanations are very specific and that the anatomy can be quite complicated. It is! That’s why it’s so important for music teachers and musicians to know more about what’s happening under the skin when we play music. How well we can play our instrument or sing is determined by how optimally all our parts work together, and a trained eye is required to see all the subtle differences in movement. When I started learning about what happens under the skin of a musician at the Musicians’ Health and Movement Institute, I was astonished that many aspects of performance became less mysterious. There was an anatomical explanation and an anatomical solution for my sound, technique, and even expression. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve learned is possible. I think every musician deserves to know how much potential exists naturally in their body. With the right tools and guidance, we can all can learn to harness it and become effortless musicians.
Sources:
All images from Thieme Atlas of Anatomy, 2nd edition.
BIO:
Photo credit: Mattias Eklund
Christine Elizabeth Clancy is an American flutist living in Sweden. She is an active orchestral musician and a founding member of Trio Sumbisori. As the creator of Effortless Musician, she teaches yoga, Timani, and audition training, and mentors musicians to achieve individual performance success with a positive mindset. Christine holds a Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience from Brown University and postgraduate flute performance degrees from conservatories in the UK, Sweden, and Denmark. She is a Timani Master Teacher at the Musicians’ Health & Movement Institute in Norway and she believes in you.
Email: hello@effortlessmusician.com
Facebook & Instagram: @effortlessmusician
Website: www.effortlessmusician.com
For more information about Timani, visit www.Timani.no/en