Ashtanga Yoga Shala

Breath is automatic and mechanical. But like any machine, your breathing habits can go into disrepair. Take a moment to notice your breath. Does your stomach expand as you inhale or do you breathe into your chest? If you breathe mainly into your chest, you may sometimes feel out of breath even when you are not physically active. In addition, those who consistently breathe into their chest often feel more nervous than those who practice abdominal breathing (Bourne). Chest breathers also have the tendency to be shy and nervous compared to abdominal breathers who are more relaxed and outgoing.

There Are Many Benefits Associated with Abdominal Breathing:

• Efficient excretion of bodily toxins
• Improved circulation
• Increased state of calmness and serenity
• Improved concentration (Bourne)

Breathing Exercises

It is possible to retrain your body to breathe more deeply. Practice these simple exercises for about five minutes every day, and you will find that you will begin to breathe into your abdominals naturally.

Three-Part Breathing

1. Breathe slowly into your lower abdomen.
2. When your lower abdomen is full, move the breath into your rib cage.
3. When your rib cage is full, bring the breath into your chest. As you bring the breath into

A guide detailing the proper way to breathe for singing. Often described incorrectly; I hope this guide will help a new generation of young vocalists.

So if we are breathing into our lungs, why does our stomach push out? The reason for this is the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a muscle below the lungs. When we breathe air into our lungs, they expand. Ideally, they should be expanding downwards which will press down on your diaphragm and push out your stomach. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt. In fact, you’ve done it naturally all of your life.

A good way to notice this feeling occurring in your body is to lay flat on the floor and breathe in gently whilst resting a hand on your stomach. Do you notice it raise and lower? Another way to indirectly notice this is to observe a baby whilst they are asleep. Their stomachs move up and down with their breathing. N’awwww!

Expanding the chest

Or more accurately, the rib cage. To ensure the correct passage of air flow the ribs must be expanded at all times. This will also give you’re singing more resonance and power. How do we do this? Firstly, stand up …

Why does breathing make a difference in the way you sound when you sing?  First, you cannot produce sound without air.  It’s humanly impossible. When you speak, even one word or sound, it is because air strikes the vocal bands (folds) which causes them to vibrate. With vibration, sound is produced.

When we speak, we “let go” of the word quickly which doesn’t require a lot of air.  So, just by inhaling and exhaling, using the upper chest cavity, we can carry on a conversation. No big deal. And it is so easy, we seldom ever think about breath at all.

However, when we sing, the very act of singing requires the word to be held (sustained), which demands more air. As hard as we try, breathing for speech, will not supply us with enough air for singing.  As a result, we run out of air too soon, fail to project our singing, find that we can’t reach the high notes and even may strain our voice.

Our tone (singing sound) suffers the most when there is not enough air for the tone to “ride on”.  Air, is what supports the tone. It acts as a cushion …

In daily life, the process of breathing goes on naturally and automatically. We are mostly unaware of our breathing until a problem comes along. Every organism and every process in the body requires oxygen to sustain its life and activities. There is a great amount of medicinal value to our breathing, if only we can become aware of it and take care of it.

The best way to do this is to become totally and keenly aware of our natural breathing cycle. This awareness helps us to inhale larger amounts of air and oxygen. Such an inhalation process also enables us to exhale the air intake, slowly and gradually .This process of the real awareness of our breath, its slow and gradual inhalation and exhalation is called deep breathing.

Deep breathing has several benefits in maintaining good health. Some of these are

1. It gives more energy,
2. Reduces fatigue and stress of the body and mind,
3. Reduces chest pain caused by muscular stresses and strains,
4. Reduces the intensity in suffering from chronic illnesses such as Asthma and Bronchitis,
5. Help in reducing the intake of prescription drugs and medicines,
6. Accelerates the process of eliminating impurities from the body,
7. Improves