Have you been looking for a SIMPLE singing breath? Fists breath is the exercise for you if you’ve been overthinking your breath and still not finding that healthy engage-out-release-in cycle. Let’s keep it simple by doing something you already know how to do – make a fist!
You see, the main reason singers have trouble with their breath is because, even if they know intellectually that the singing breath needs to move lower in the belly and that singing support comes from below, those muscles deep in the belly are not ones that most of us are used to sensing. How can you control something you’re barely aware of?
Well, you might not be consciously aware of the low belly muscles that should be funding your singing, but you do actually use them all the time, when you cough, or belly laugh, or lift a heavy object. So today, we’re going to recruit some muscles that you’re super used to using (the hands) to get those belly muscles engaging alongside your exhalation. Clear your mind and give it a try!
How to do the Fists Breath Exercise
The first step here is to release all your previous learning and effort around breath. I don’t mean that you need to undergo a full course of therapy before you can do this “simple” exercise. I just mean that if you have a whole checklist of things you’re trying to do each time you breathe, you don’t need to do them here.
In fact, it’s ok if your posture gets misaligned while you do this exercise, or if some of the “wrong” muscles coarticulate with the “right” muscles. Just focus on making fists and blowing and let the other bodily chips fall where they may.
Hopefully, after you do this exercise a few times, a few salient bits of previous knowledge will float to the top of your brain as being consistent with what you’re FEELING, but for now, it’s important to go in without a lot of extraneous efforting around the breath. Just follow the simple directions below.
- Make fists with both hands. REALLY TIGHT FISTS.
- Release them, allowing the fingers to open.
- Try it again – can you feel your hand muscles engaging and releasing?
- Now, blow out as you make fists again. Don’t limit your air so it makes a big hissing sound, just blow it out. There are no awards for blowing out longer, so don’t be a hero.
- When you’re done blowing out, simultaneously open/release the fists and let your air back in.
- Do it again!
- Variation: When you’re done blowing out, wait 3 or 4 seconds, keeping the fists TIGHT, before opening/releasing.
Hopefully, as you cycle this exercise through a few times, you’re starting to feel that the engaging and releasing is happening in places other than the hands. You might feel that when you inhale, you’re opening up in the back and along the sides of the ribs, and opening or dropping in the belly and maybe down into the pelvic floor.
Once you have the hang of this, and you’re familiar with the sensation of engaging and releasing in those other places, you can try recreating that engagement and release as you sing, without fists.
Did this work for you? Let me know! And thanks for practicing.
