Set Your Voice Free: How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want

by Roger Love

Now I’d like you to put your hand on your stomach, with your middle finger on your belly button. All the action that follows should take place in the space between the base of your ribs and just below your belly button. Keeping your shoulders in that beautiful, open position, back and down, imagine that your stomach is a balloon, and as you inhale, let it fill with air. Concentrate on filling this “balloon” only. And when it’s full, blow the air gently out through your mouth. Try this for a few minutes, remembering that you just want to blow up the balloon without lifting your shoulders or puffing up your chest. How does this feel? Did you find that it was the opposite of what you usually do? Raising your chest and shoulders as you inhale is called accessory breathing, and it’s the surest way to get the least amount of air into the body with the least amount of control. Often, people not only pull their shoulders and chest up as they inhale, but they also feel they should pull in their stomachs. That combination—I think of it as the Hercules breath, because when you do it, you take on the strained look of a guy in the gym lifting heavy weights—keeps all of the movement in the upper part of the body and results in very shallow breathing. Both of these styles of breathing, of course, can be so habitual that they feel completely natural.