Here’s my favorite way of introducing low breath for singers who are just getting started and find it hard to get out of high, clavicular breathing. There are a million variations on this exercise, but for today, let’s start with the basics. Enjoy!
To do the sponge breath, start out by imagining that inside your body, from the belly button down to where the legs are attached, is filled with one of those big squishy sponges they use at the car wash. No more guts! Just squishy sponge filling the whole low belly!
Now imagine that that sponge is connected to the outside world by a long straw that ends at your lips. Not a skinny cocktail stirrer, but maybe a boba tea straw. So the air flow is focused but not limited.
Let’s do it! Sip air in through that not-too-skinny straw straight down into the sponge. As the sponge fills, the belly loosens cause the sponge is squishy, remember? When it’s full, just squeeze that sponge and send the air back up and out the straw. Focus on the directionality of the air – downward as you inhale, upward as you exhale. For those of you who need precise language to proceed, you “squeeze the sponge” by gathering up all those lovely interwoven low belly muscles that surround it, but honestly, I think you get a better, more natural action the more deeply you can just go into imagination land and think about squeezing the sponge more than working this and that muscle.
Keep repeating this cycle, sipping air in and down into the sponge and squeezing the sponge to send the air back up and out. The breath is relaxed and easy coming in (RELEASED IN) and supported but not restricted on the way out (ENGAGED OUT).
I hope you love it – Thanks for practicing!
A note on Sponge Breath vs. Squeeze Out. These are my two favorite breath exercises. They both teach the released in/engaged out cycle that is my heart’s true love, but in very different ways and with very different energies. I use the Squeeze Out to show the body how to release, since that’s quite challenging for many singers, and to really trigger a fully dropped, restorative breath. Once you have that sense memory, you can recreate it more gently in the Sponge Breath, which is much more aligned with the kind of breathing you’ll actually do between singing phrases.
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