Dr Gillyanne Kayes & Jeremy Fisher take a deeper breath and dive lower into part 2 of breathing techniques for singers & speakers.
And we share
RESOURCES
The Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 550 resources on singing, speaking and breathing techniques for less than the price of one singing lesson https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/the-vocal-technique-learning-lounge
SOVT 1 streaming course https://www.rayvox.co.uk/?ref=VOCALPROCESS
SOVT 2 live online course https://store.vocalprocess.co.uk/sovt-workshop
Online Singing Teacher Training Weeks 1 & 2 https://store.vocalprocess.co.uk/singing-teacher-training-online
This Is A Voice: 99 exercises to train, project and harness the power of your voice https://amzn.to/3iEXQ7Z
The health benefits of nose breathing by Dr Alan Ruth https://www.lenus.ie/bitstream/handle/10147/559021/JAN15Art7.pdf?fbclid=IwAR14AvvFa1KiGJ-lkStHSGxR10BBdyzrZvX2aQObp1gkU2CR_1WkHoNStu8
Can influenza viruses be inactivated by a “nose-mouth-nose” breathing technique? Carlos Sanchez https://www.ijirr.com/sites/default/files/issues-pdf/3637.pdf
Ann Coxhead Osteopath https://www.anncoxhead.com/
Dr Gillyanne Kayes & Jeremy Fisher take a deeper breath and dive lower into part 2 of breathing techniques for singers & speakers.
And we share
RESOURCES
The Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 550 resources on singing, speaking and breathing techniques for less than the price of one singing lesson https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/the-vocal-technique-learning-lounge
SOVT 1 streaming course https://www.rayvox.co.uk/?ref=VOCALPROCESS
SOVT 2 live online course https://store.vocalprocess.co.uk/sovt-workshop
Online Singing Teacher Training Weeks 1 & 2 https://store.vocalprocess.co.uk/singing-teacher-training-online
This Is A Voice: 99 exercises to train, project and harness the power of your voice https://amzn.to/3iEXQ7Z
The health benefits of nose breathing by Dr Alan Ruth https://www.lenus.ie/bitstream/handle/10147/559021/JAN15Art7.pdf?fbclid=IwAR14AvvFa1KiGJ-lkStHSGxR10BBdyzrZvX2aQObp1gkU2CR_1WkHoNStu8
Can influenza viruses be inactivated by a “nose-mouth-nose” breathing technique? Carlos Sanchez https://www.ijirr.com/sites/default/files/issues-pdf/3637.pdf
Ann Coxhead Osteopath https://www.anncoxhead.com/
Jeremy
Where I have a problem is the idea of the tongue position. Because actually, if you want to get an ideal tongue position, then you don't want really, to breathe in through the nose while you're singing. And in between, in between phrases, because in order to breathe in through the nose, you're going to have to close something, which means you're going to have to move the tongue in some way. So if you're moving the tongue in some way, for nasal breathing, that means whatever setup you've got there, which is lovely, you've just destroyed by breathing in.
Gillyanne Kayes
It's a tricky one, isn't it? Yes.
Jeremy
Whereas if you breathe in through the mouth, you can actually hold the same tongue position while you're breathing and singing. You don't have to change your vowel to breathe in. Although I will say
Gillyanne Kayes
So you're prepping a vowel shape.
Jeremy
Yeah, it's what do they call it?
Gillyanne Kayes
It's sort of like co-articulation?
Jeremy
Co-articulation, thank you. It's where you preform something before you actually do it. And, yeah, there's something about you can I mean, sorry, rewind, because I had a thought while I was having a thought, which is a very bizarre situation to be in. I have seen a lot of people when they breathe in, they breathe in on a particular vowel. And it doesn't matter what the vowel is that they just sung. And it doesn't matter what the vowel is that they're going to sing. They will then reform while they're breathing in to a different vowel. And people often breathe in on uh which is an uh, or, oh, which is an oh. Particularly if they want a deeper breath, they'll go for a darker back vowel. And it's interesting if you've just sung the word, key, and then you go key *oh*. And you change the whole mouth space. And then you're going to sing another word, which begins with ee
Gillyanne Kayes
I loved that audible sucking in of air, well done.
Jeremy
I mean, in a way, there's a lot more to the whole breathing mechanism than we think there is.
Announcer
This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.
Jeremy
Hello, and welcome to Series 3, Episode 4 AND BREATHE. I'm Jeremy Fisher.
Gillyanne Kayes
And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes,
Jeremy
and we're doing part two of the Breathe thing because the last episode was really popular.
Gillyanne Kayes
And watch out because in this podcast, we get verbal about voice
Jeremy
We do. So what are we talking about today?
Gillyanne Kayes
Well, we've had some interesting questions come up, actually about breathing. And I thought maybe we'd start with some of these.
Jeremy
Okay, great.
Gillyanne Kayes
And the first one is from Sally Martin-Brown. Yes, is on our teacher accreditation training course. And she's a choir trainer as well as a singer. And her question is, which is best breathing through the nose or the mouth?
Jeremy
Oh, okay. Well, that's the that's the one question that we're going to be dealing with the next three hours. Yeah, it's such a big topic.
Gillyanne Kayes
And she had a specific reason for asking it. There's a relatively new book out by an author called James Nester. And I forgotten what the title of it is, the lost art of breathing is
Jeremy
It's called Breath, the new signs of a lost art.
Gillyanne Kayes
Ah thank you. I'm glad somebody did their research there. And she said, she found some of it very interesting. And so what she'd started doing was experimenting with her choral singers and asking them to breathe in through the nose, sometimes instead, through the mouth. And she found that there was a beneficial effect. So I think the first thing I'm going to say in terms of practical investigation was I went off down a rabbit hole, as soon as I saw this question. There I was humming around the house and humming on an M. So that deliberately, I couldn't open my mouth. And doing little vocal exercises with that, you know, just little kind of repeated note exercises, and then following it up by singing the same exercise on a vowel. And what I found was, it was quite efficient in sort of conditioning, vocal fold behaviour, you know, at the beginning of the day, getting the vocal folds closing nicely. So I felt that there was a coordination between the vocal folds and the breath going on. And that may be something about using the nasal breathing to begin with helped me regulate that.
Jeremy
Okay, that's a really interesting thought, I want to before we go any further on this, because this is a real rabbit hole that we could go down, I just want to backtrack and go, let's talk about the difference between oral and nasal breathing, and what we're actually talking about. So I mean, sounds obvious. With oral breathing, your mouth is open, you're breathing in through your mouth, and the air go straight down into your lungs. And with nasal breathing, your mouth can be open or closed. But the idea is that the the air goes in through the nose, and we're going to talk about why that may or may not be useful, because in certain circumstances, it is useful in certain ones it isn't. But the interesting thing for me is when people talk about nasal breathing, they assume that the mouth is closed. And it doesn't have to be
Gillyanne Kayes
No, absolutely not. For instance, if you just position your tongue onto the roof of the mouth, behind the front teeth, as if you're about to say, Mm, hm, that's a nasal consonant. So you don't need to close your mouth.
Jeremy
Well, there are there are three nasal consonants in the English language where... No hang on, I'm going to rewind on that there are two nasal consonants in the English language where your lips are open, but no air is escaping either in or out of your mouth. And that's the N. And the NG and with the N, if the tongue is exactly where you said it is, which is up on the roof of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge, and with the NG, the back of the tongue has risen and the soft palate has come back down. So actually, the blockage if you like, is at the back of your mouth. And it's the way that we can tell whether you're doing an M, an N, or an NG, because they all block the mouth exit in some way, but they block it in different places.
Gillyanne Kayes
Now, there's something else that I found out that was interesting about nasal breathing, and it is to do with the positioning of the tongue. Because maybe it's something that we don't think about in a conscious way, but the tongue is actually resting up on the roof of the mouth, in most cases of people with nasal breathing and this is thought to have beneficial effects which will go on to later. So that was my sort of first experiment in answer to Sally's question which is it could be useful, I think, for particularly helping avocational singers to balance their pressure-flow relationships. Because by doing the nasal breathing, maybe they're taking less air in in the beginning. And then particularly when you're singing on a hum, which was what I chose to do to experiment, then you're kind of adjusting that pressure and flow relationship because there's a smaller outlet through the nose. Dear listeners, I wish I could show you the eye roll that Jeremy is performing right now
Jeremy
I've done a series of eye rolls for a couple of minutes only because it's not not anything Gillyanne is saying is is incorrect. But it's interesting that we assume. And what I want to know is, is the input of air through the mouth, does it create a different pressure from the input of air through the nose? And so I'm looking at the physiology and going Yes, actually, it might because if you think about the the width that you can open the jaw and the width that you can open the lips, and therefore the size of the tube that you're actually breathing in and out of that is much bigger than the width of the nasal cavities, and the nasal. What do they call them? Conchae, the nasal Conchae. We all have six nasal Conchae unless we don't. So the nasal conchae are passages that are I think I've got this, right, the we can always cut this out if I haven't got this right. But they are the passages and we have three on each side, three per nostril that take the air up and down into the throat.
Gillyanne Kayes
Now I have a nice factoid. And this is from the article from Nursing in General Practice. And we'll put the references at the end. Yep. With you talking about pressure and flow with my experiment. Yes, nose breathing imposes approximately 50% more resistance to the air stream as compared to mouth breathing.
Jeremy
There you go.
Gillyanne Kayes
This results in 10 to 20% more oxygen uptake.
Jeremy
Oh, that's interesting.
Gillyanne Kayes
That's why everybody is banging on, quite rightly, about the importance of nasal breathing in everyday life, nasal breathing during sleep, sort of prevention of sleep apnea, etc. and nasal breathing as we go on to it later as a way of calming the sympathetic system.
Jeremy
Okay.
Gillyanne Kayes
So, you know, maybe there's something in now
Jeremy
There's a lot of pluses in there
Gillyanne Kayes
There are a lot of pluses in there. Because that doesn't mean that, you know, in mainstream singing where we have to sing long praises, according to certain musical patterns, etc. That we're always gonna have time to breathe in through the nose.
Jeremy
Yeah I want to talk about timing later. But I want to come back to I mean, we were talking when we were when we were sort of building what we're going to talk about today. We were talking earlier about the idea that people might be mixing up physiology, breathing for health, breathing for sound, yoga breathing, there's a lot of different breathing thing.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah, for sort of mindfulness, relaxation, meditative breathing. Yeah, yeah, that that we that breathing has different functions in that respect?
Jeremy
Well, it has. It has different functions, it also has different desired outcomes. And people can become completely obsessed with one of those desired outcomes or functions, and then attempt to, to you can't speak English today. What was I doing? People can get very tied up with one of those functions or one of those outcomes and then attempt to put it across the board.
Gillyanne Kayes
So they're applying it as a hard and fast rule.
Jeremy
Yep.
Gillyanne Kayes
So for example, this morning, when we were talking about this, I said to you that in yoga, we always breathe through the nose.
Jeremy
Yes.
Gillyanne Kayes
And in yoga, often, ujjayi breathing is encouraged, which is noisy,
Jeremy
noisy breathing. Yes
Gillyanne Kayes
I certainly wouldn't recommend that to singers, because it tends to bring the false vocal folds slightly closer together, which is something that we don't want. But I think it I'm not sure why it's used. I think it's partly a control thing for doing controlled movements. And it could also be that there's something about the noise that helps people to control as well. I don't know, but I don't use it. And my yoga teacher knows that I don't use it. But also, it prompted me to say that if I'm meditating and I do transcendental meditation, and I do it every day, I've been doing it for well over 30 years. I can't get down if my nose is blocked, and I can't breathe through my nose. I simply cannot get into a meditative state. And sort of as I went down this nasal breathing rabbit hole if you'll pardon the expression. One of the things that I found out about the benefits of nasal breathing is that it promotes the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the rest and digest system. So it calms and relaxes the body, slows the breathing and the heart and promotes digestion.
Jeremy
So that's a real well being thing isn't it
Gillyanne Kayes
It's an absolute superduper well being thing. And conversely, I found out that when we breathe in, we tend to activate the sympathetic system. So that you know, both are going on sort of 24500 times a day. But the what tends to happen with the mouth breathing, I think if we're breathing through the mouth, in everyday life, I suspect we're slightly over breathing and overusing the sympathetic
Jeremy
Well, it sounds like you're not getting. I mean, obviously, you're getting oxygen into your lungs, and there's exchange and all that stuff. But it sounds like that there are certain things that you're not getting unless you breathe in through the nose.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah, I mean, this is something else that came up from this article, which was talking about nitric oxide, which apparently, when we're doing nasal breathing, we can I think transfer the nitric oxide into the body. Okay. And what that does, it's apparently it's a potent bronchodilator and vaso dilator. Okay, so what it's doing is that it's, it's going to be
Jeremy
opening your Passages
Gillyanne Kayes
dilating the passages, so we're going to get more oxygen into the lungs and vasodilation is actually going to calm the the blood system, the blood pressure system. So people who are habitual mouth breathers
Jeremy
Me
Gillyanne Kayes
might Yeah, might have a higher tendency to higher blood pressure, hypertension,
Jeremy
Which as it happens, I don't have. But yeah, that's really interesting. Okay, so we're talking about general everyday well being Yes. And actually general, everyday breathing, and every night breathing. I completely see the sense of that. Where I have a small issue is when we're talking about singing, and we did talk about this in the previous podcast in previous episode, because when you are singing, the rhythm that you breathe in, has changed from Ordinary... Ordinary passive breathing is approximately equal in equal out, give or take a little bit. The breathing for speaking is you breathe in faster, and you extend the outflow more, the breathing for singing is even more exaggerated. So you breathe in a lot faster, and you extend a lot the out breath a lot further. And that obviously depends on what music style you're singing, and what genre you're singing in. But in general, the timing for your in breath is dictated by the composer. And therefore it's been chosen for you. It's the only of those three things it's the only one where you don't get to choose when you breathe, give or take. So I'm having an issue about breathing-in timing.
Gillyanne Kayes
I absolutely agree
Jeremy
Because I don't think it is possible. I mean, partly partly I'm a mouth breather because I have very, very narrow conchae, very narrow nasal passages. When we're doing when I'm under endoscopy or stroboscopy, there is in fact, only one of the six passages that can get a camera up now that was a few years ago, and the cameras may have got smaller.
Gillyanne Kayes
TMI Jeremy.
Jeremy
Never TMI. So yeah, that's an interesting one. So I it is impossible for me to take in. And also remember, I'm I'm an ex oboist. So I used to do a lot of long phrases and musical stuff. And it's impossible for me to take in the amount of air that I need for a very long phrase if I breathing nasally. I just cannot get it in fast enough or deep enough. But I think one of the things that Sally was talking about when she was writing to us about this question, and she was talking about, let's say a Bach cantata where sometimes you have very little space to breathe and he doesn't write well for singers. He thinks they're all violinists and they can carry on forever. But often, there will be a big instrumental section where you do have the time to slow-breathe in. And that's the time to use the nasal breathing in a song. When you're talking about, you know, snatching a breath in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a run or in the middle of a word or however that works. I'm not sure that a nasal breath can be either fast enough or silent enough to work musically. And from that point of view. I would always encourage mouth breathing while you're actually singing,
Gillyanne Kayes
and maybe something to explore with choral singers, avocational singers and any students is doing some humming exercises where people deliver Breathe in through the nose just as an experiment, maybe almost as a kind of conditioning exercise. And then repeating the exercise on vowels and noticing whether your student is kind of gasping and pulling the air in with the mouth. And with the mouth, you know, wide open just have the mouth a little bit open. It's also worth exploring singing on an NG where the mouth is open, but you're using nasal breathing. You know, there are reasons, I think why we've been using these NG, M and N exercises for centuries as singing teachers. You know, maybe we thought it was to do with feeling vibration, which obviously it is, and therefore to do with resonance. But now there's a bit of me thinking, Hmm, well, maybe it was actually about getting the tongue into a good position. And, you know, improving that glottal closure from the above point, there's another eyeroll going on, in fact, another three formed in quick succession. Well I'm just putting it out there
Jeremy
I'm agreeing, I am agreeing with the idea that because essentially, this is like your own personal, SOVT, where you can actually alter the pressure just by either breathing in through the nose or breathing in through the mouth. And that's an instant pressure change from above. So I'm actually going with the idea that it's possible that nasal breathing will change... nasal breathing IN will change the pressure above the vocal folds, although obviously, they wouldn't be vibrating. So maybe that's not the case, where I have a problem is the idea of the tongue position. Because actually, if you want to get an ideal tongue position, then you don't want really, to breathe in through the nose while you're singing. And in between, in between phrases, because in order to breathe in through the nose, you're going to have to close something, which means you're going to have to move the tongue in some way. So if you're moving the tongue in some way, for nasal breathing, that means whatever setup you've got there, which is lovely, you've just destroyed by breathing in.
Gillyanne Kayes
It's a tricky one, isn't it? Yes.
Jeremy
Whereas if you breathe in through the mouth, you can actually hold the same tongue position while you're breathing and singing. You don't have to change your vowel to breathe in. Although I will say
Gillyanne Kayes
So you're prepping a vowel shape.
Jeremy
Yeah, it's what do they call it?
Gillyanne Kayes
It's sort of like co-articulation?
Jeremy
Co-articulation, thank you. It's where you preform something before you actually do it. And, yeah, there's something about you can I mean, sorry, rewind, because I had a thought while I was having a thought, which is a very bizarre situation to be in. I have seen a lot of people when they breathe in, they breathe in on a particular vowel. And it doesn't matter what the vowel is that they just sung. And it doesn't matter what the vowel is that they're going to sing. They will then reform while they're breathing in to a different vowel. And people often breathe in on uh which is an uh, or, oh, which is an oh. Particularly if they want a deeper breath, they'll go for a darker back vowel. And it's interesting if you've just sung the word, key, and then you go key *oh*. And you change the whole mouth space. And then you're going to sing another word, which begins with ee
Gillyanne Kayes
I loved that audible sucking in of air, well done.
Jeremy
I mean, in a way, there's a lot more to the whole breathing mechanism than we think there is.
Gillyanne Kayes
I think that's right. While we're on the subject of of nose breathing, talking about nose breathing for general health. There are other factors that we could take into account for instance, people who are habitual mouth breathers. Let's have a look at the disadvantages of mouth breathing from this article. Remember, this is not about singing.
Jeremy
Yeah, I read this list and I went, Yes, there's a couple of those on there that I know about.
Gillyanne Kayes
Chronic mouth breathing may contribute to chronic over breathing. And obviously, this is something that you see with people who have a lot of respiratory infections, people who suffer from asthma, people from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a disorder, COPD, probably people with long COVID people with heart conditions I speak for myself that I've noticed. I am often breathing through my mouth these days when I don't need to, I'm not having to consciously reset that. I'm only putting the kettle on. I do not need to breathe through my mouth. So chronic over breathing and more likelihood of snoring and sleep apnea. Bad breath apparently. dysfunction of the jaw joint Okay, yeah. Now narrowing of the dental arch Jordan palate, and this is something that dentists talk about if children who had problems with their tonsils, enlarged adenoids, etc. Become mouth breathers during childhood that suddenly you get this deformation, if you like, of the dental plate, and that can be quite an issue. Yeah. dysfunction of the muscles around the jaw and lips loss of lip tone. Not guilty. Yeah, noisy eating. I would say as well, that's something I've noticed, I've noticed. And this came from the work of slightly Maverick focal practitioner, the late Angela Kane, who worked with one of my own students. And he and I had quite a long discussion about her work. And what she found was that if people had grown up as chronic nose, chronic mouth breathers, they actually had weak tongue muscles, in particular, the muscles that are raising the tongue is if you think about the whole larynx, you know, and other multiple connections to the hyoid and how the tongue is connected to that. And the tone essentially sits on the lamb. So if we want to have a balanced system there, it's not about the muscles not doing anything. It's about the muscles working in harmony. Yeah. So if the muscles that are raising the tongue are weak, then you're going to have problems. Also, those people have difficulty with their nasal oral competence. So that if you're constantly breathing through your mouth, your soft palate is in more of the raised position. So you're going to have difficulty using the nasal consonants. So there could be problems with your speech. Okay. Yeah. And I've also found that there's people there's difficulty with building up the intra oral pressure for some of the plosive consonants.
Jeremy
Interesting. I would also imagine that you might get swallowing difficulties as well.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah, they say that. And, you know, I don't know if you remember, but a while back when we did quite a lot of teaching in Spain, we had a few students in Barcelona who had difficulties with articulation. And granted they were singing in a foreign language. But they had that those issues also in Catalan and Castilian. And so I started using some of Angela Kane's exercises, tongue clicking, which Ron Morris also recommends tongue clicking where you kind of make a suction between the tongue and the roof of the mouth. And we've written about that, haven't we in this is a voice. Yes. So that's going to activate the muscles that raise the tongue. So playing around with that, I did soft palate exercises as well. I also had them kind of holding that you're into just a very stable position, not very open. And using the tongue clicking there humming and doing nasal breathing.
Jeremy
Okay, knee. Yeah, yeah. So you're, you're actually separating tongue actions as well.
Gillyanne Kayes
Absolutely. And then the other thing, which is great fun, I don't if you heard me practising it earlier, singing while brushing your teeth, so that you have to move the tongue around. And I gave a series of those exercise as well as voiced plosives. So I would do a nasal consonant followed by a voiced plosive. So to facilitate opening the nasal port, closing the nasal port, and they had to do these, you know, several times a day, five minutes three times a day, working in front of a mirror, and it massively improved their artic articulation, and their vocal fold. Tone for want of a better word.
Jeremy
This amazing, there's a couple of myths that I just want to bust for a moment before we move on to the next question, which is, the nose is open, the nose is closed, the door is open, the door is closed? Well, no, there's actually quite a lot of interims in there. So it's the idea that when you breathe in through your mouth that your nose is closed and nothing's going in, and not necessarily not unless you check it.
Gillyanne Kayes
You could do both. You can do both. And you can vocalise with both
Jeremy
Yes. So that's the first one and the second one and this is so prevalent or certainly has been in classical singing even in my lifetime. When you breathe in through your nose, you are raising the soft palate. No,
Gillyanne Kayes
absolutely the opposite. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had people say but I'm doing that to activate the soft palate.
Jeremy
When you breathe in threes the soft palate Yeah, when you breathe in through your nose, you are lowering the soft palate. In order to allow the air in,
Gillyanne Kayes
and you're bringing the tongue up to watch the soft palate, yes, same time Yeah.
Jeremy
It's just no this, this does not happen, it doesn't happen that you raise the soft palate, when you breathe in through your nose, it is you wouldn't be able to breathe in through your nose if you if you did.
Gillyanne Kayes
The soft palate you know Jeremy, maybe we'll do a whole podcast about it at some point apparentlt it is responsible for so many things in singing. I want to say a little bit more about breathing for well being if I may, I may share something I mentioned earlier, that I had done some work to reset my own breathing pattern because of having developed a heart condition. And like a lot of people who have either heart or lung conditions, you know, we start to get anxious about our breathing. And therefore we tend to over breathe. And I noticed that I was I changed my breathing pattern. And I felt it was affecting my anxiety levels, and also felt it was affecting my voice use. And I think I was right about that. So I got in touch with Anne Coxhead who is an osteopath and laryngeal manipulator, who is a recommended practitioner by BAPAM. And she did some breath work with me, which I have found incredibly beneficial. And I can absolutely attest to doing the right sort of regulated nose breathing as helping to get the parasympathetic to balance the sympathetic nervous system, such that I will happily go to the brink of sleep, and also find it's very good for my digestion. So I had a quick text message with her today. I don't know if you know this. Yeah. And I said, you know, what is it that you do? And, you know, can you just say a few things. So she uses a number of different breathing techniques, one of which is called the two to one ratio. And that is to address the sympathetic nervous system to kind of, you know, get it to switch off. She also uses coherent breathing, so that would be 3344. In and out, which I also do. She uses box breathing with holding to correct the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body and box breathing. I have heard of, yes, square breathing. It's also cool. Lots of people do that. It's recommended by people like Steven Porges, I think, you know, the author of The polyvagal theory. So lots of people talk about that.
Jeremy
And box breathing, if I remember rightly, is Breathe in to a count. Yes, hold for the same number. Breathe out for the same number hold for the same number. Yeah, that's why you get the Foursquare.
Gillyanne Kayes
And lots of people recommend that personally, I don't like it, I prefer the coherent. And you know what she said that it working with breath patterns teaches ownership of your autonomic nervous system, because of course, the key is in the word autonomic. We aren't in control of I was just gonna go there, that cortisol being released as we get wound up, we you know, we can't control our blood pressure. And yet, if we can get into these relaxed states, we can counter the sympathetic system. Okay,
Jeremy
so it's a byproduct. Yeah, the byproduct is to be able to change it. I was just going to get into the whole breathing thing. You know, there are people who say you can't control your breathing and ongoing really, because
Gillyanne Kayes
you can well, it's under conscious and non conscious. Well,
Jeremy
that's the point. It's under both. It's under unconscious control. Otherwise, you die in your sleep. And it's under conscious control. Because we want to take a breath when we're communicating in almost any way we want to take a breath when we're communicating. And even the way that you take the breath is going to inform what then happens oh,
Gillyanne Kayes
let's play a game. No no no. No. Now you do some either with a no or a yes. Okay. I don't know if people can hear.
Jeremy
I'll do the No No. No.
Gillyanne Kayes
I love that one. Everybody. There was another eye roll performed there.
Jeremy
No. No. Yeah. So Interesting, huh?
Gillyanne Kayes
And That takes me to the idea. I know we've got more questions about, we breathe to communicate the thought of the phrase and this is very much embedded in spoken voice work that work of Kristin Linklater and others. So breath is the intention. And I was scrolling on Instagram this morning, and I saw this fabulous quote from the opera singer Thomas Hampson. A breath is a not yet heard thought in the language of music. Love that, isn't that gorgeous? So obviously, you're breathing in with the intent and the emotion of the phrase. And that was quoted by total vocal freedom, who are doing a week on interviews and chats on
Jeremy
breathwork. Neat. So we have some more questions in the side, guys. Yeah, we have some more questions. And I'm just going to play a Franka has actually sent sent to questions Franka's on our Accreditation Programme as well. And I want to play Question one
Franka
oh, this is my chance to pop in a question. We have been talking a little bit already in our group sessions about inner lateral leverage. But I would like to know your definition of inhalare la voce. And I would like to know if you see this only as a breathing thing as in keeping the breath away basically. Or is inhalare la voce a combination of a breathing thing, in combination with a resonance setting? Because I feel that this might be the case as well. So just wondering what your thoughts are about this.
Jeremy
Marvellous. Okay, let me just unpack the question Inhalare la voce - inhale the voice. This is a big thing in classical singing world, and particularly 19th century opera, actually, but 19th century style music in general. And it literally means inhale your voice. And the implication of that is that you sing while you inhale. But in fact, you don't. There are techniques and particularly 21st 20th and 21st century singing where you inhale while you sing. But this isn't one of them.
Gillyanne Kayes
Absolutely. I don't think it means that you inhale while singing. No, it's, it's, it's the voice, it's that you don't blow air at it. That's how I've always understood it. You don't don't blow it blow air at your vocal folds.
Jeremy
Okay, I think that this refers to a feeling. So the feeling is it's almost like although you are singing on an exhalation, it's almost like you are drinking in the sound because that is another phrase that comes up a lot. It's like the sound is not leaving you with force, it's almost the feeling is that it comes back in the moment that you have produced it. Which is a very weird thing. It's a sort of feel flow thing. And I know that Franka's is such a really interesting question, because she's saying, Is it just the breathing mechanism that we're talking about? And to do with that? Or is it a resonance thing as well. And I'm thinking that it's a breathing thing, and possibly a vocal fold thing, but I'm not sure about a resonance thing. And the only reason that it might be is that when teachers, singer teachers, that certainly that I've worked with, and I've worked with a lot, when they talk about inherited the level chain, they will often demonstrate, and therefore they are producing an entire sound output in order to demonstrate to the people what they want. And I think that people will often try to imitate the sound of it. Whereas it is, in fact, in my head, it's a technique, which is you hold the airflow back so that you're feeding a very fine stream of air, and therefore you're controlling the airflow, and you're also controlling the vocal folds activity. And it doesn't matter to me whether you are in a modal or a falsetto, whether you're in an M one or an m two, you are still controlling the airflow to whatever the vocal folds need. And that musical phrase needs. So I'm going to go with it's a breathing thing. And it's a vocal folds thing, but I'm not sure a better resonance.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah, and I have nothing more to say on that.
Jeremy
And it's quite interesting. I have lots I have lots to say on in the latter level. Because it is there is a desired outcome, which is fine control of the sound and the phrasing and the volume and the phrase shape. That's the outcome. That's the that's the desired goal. I think to do it, you take in a fair amount of air, usually quite fast, and then you hold quite a lot of that air back So you are in fact balancing your expiratory muscles and your inspiratory muscles so that it doesn't all disappear in one go. Ah,
Gillyanne Kayes
so that that could be one of those moments when the diaphragm is engaged. Yes, you start to breathe out. So in that sense, you are in a louder level.
Jeremy
No, because if you were inhalareing la voce the air would be going inwards and it's not it's going out. It's but then call me, Mr. Literal, yeah. But what you are doing is you're continuing to activate the diaphragm, instead of releasing it, you're continuing to activate the diaphragm, so it doesn't then go into the breathe out thing, or you're continuing to activate it partly because you are breathing out.
Gillyanne Kayes
I know when you know, I've sort of tried this out with students, or I've been aiming for that, what I think of the sound outcome of that technique. Which I probably wouldn't need to do much with students now because I don't work in the classical style much. But the students have said, but how am I making the sound? I feel like I'm not breathing.
Jeremy
It's a very fine balance. And it really does feel like the air stand still. Yeah, it isn't because you're making a sound. And it's impossible to make a sound without airflow in that circumstance. But the airflow is so fine and so balanced, and you're not pumping, and you're not letting a lot of air out. And the sound is almost always really clean and focused.
Gillyanne Kayes
So it's it's like the outcome of the hover breath that we talk about in this is a voice
Jeremy
it is a continuation of the hover breath
Gillyanne
It's a series of those. Yeah, okay, that's neat.
Jeremy
So that's my take
Gillyanne Kayes
I think, I think that's mine, too.
Jeremy
Yeah. And in fact, him both men and women use it. Sure. So And interestingly, men will, classical men, and we'll use it in M one, the countertenors will use it in m two, classical females will use it in m two, they tend to use it a bit less in M one, because we women only tend to sing in M one in the lower range. So but it's, it's really useful in m two because you are controlling the airflow up to the vocal folds, and the vocal folds are less dense in M two the you know, the muscle is switched off. So therefore, it's going to be easier to blow your vocal folds apart. And one of the ways that you can get that really fine add ducted falsetto is to control the airflow and hold it back.
Gillyanne Kayes
Okay, interesting. I've not thought of it as being well, it's not a function of mechanism, but it may be more useful in one than another. That's what we're saying, isn't it? Okay,
Jeremy
I'm going with that. Didn't Franka send another question in?
Gillyanne Kayes
She did. I'm going to summarise some of it because it's it's quite long. What she's talking about a student she's working with, and their belly stomach area often feels tight, and sometimes painful. I feel tension in the upper area two, I think it's my diaphragm is what the student said. So Franka's overall question was, Is it possible for someone to have a chronic tensed diaphragm. And I should say as well that other information we have about this student is that they have gastric problems. I think that's quite significant. So, um, what I was thinking is, first of all, does the student experience this on the in breath or the outbreath? During singing or not? So in other words, singing as opposed to speaking? Okay,
Jeremy
so you're exploring, yeah,
Gillyanne Kayes
so do some explorations. And then I think where I would go would be for checking for sort of holding on in the epigastrium region.
Jeremy
Okay, you're gonna have to tell me where the Epic is epigastrium region.
Gillyanne Kayes
Okay, right. So when we're breathing and the diaphragm contracts, and flattens and pulls the air in to the lungs, etc. it displaces the viscera, the underneath, yeah, and produces an outward movement of your upper abdominal region, and that's called the epigastric. That's the epigastric. Region.
Jeremy
Okay, so that's basically if you run your fingers down your breastbone to the bottom, which is the xiphoid process that's the, that's where the diaphragm is connected underneath. And everything from there down. Is the epigastric. Region.
Gillyanne Kayes
Not No, it's not very far down. Oh, not very far. Okay. It's in the upper part of the, of the abdominal region. Right. So I mean, it's not a muscle and it's not an organ. And this is quite important because I hear people talking about the epigastrium as if it's either one of those, but it's, it's described here to nice little entry on Wikipedia. It's a zone of activity, where the actions of the rectus abdominus and the diaphragm produce an output bulging of the upper abdominal upper abdominal wall. So When you breathe in, and you see that little bit of bulging in the upper abdominal wall that is the epigastric. Okay. Okay.
Jeremy
So it's it's a, it's a, it's an area,
Gillyanne Kayes
it's a region, yes, that's not a thing. Yeah, you've got to, you've got to think about, you know, you can go on to the internet and do a Google search on the regions of the of the abdomen. And I think there are eight of them, okay, and various organs and bits and bobs in different regions. And I found it quite interesting. That was another rabbit hole today. So what I would be doing, I would be asking her to let the upper abdominal region soften during the outbreath. So that if you're activating the outbreath, you know, the base of the transverse, which is what we suggest using something like the accent method.
Jeremy
Okay, keep talking. And then I want to translate, okay,
Gillyanne Kayes
and then your ad server allow a ripple movement upwards, so that you're slightly softening and pulling in higher up. And I think this is something to check, because some people, particularly if they have gastric problems, they will move the lower abdomen in order to activate the the expiration, but it kind of get stuck and held higher up. Now, we're not using breath down there, what we're doing is we're using the muscles of exploration to assist with the outbreath. But if what we do is we hold in that epigastric region, then in fact, that's not going to happen very efficiently.
Jeremy
That's interesting. I actually discovered this. Several years ago, I noticed that, you know, stuff was moving on my abdominal wall when I was breathing out. And I noticed that I had, it was almost like a two zones, I had a zone from the navel downwards. And then I had a zone that was just underneath the xiphoid process and that slightly upper area
Gillyanne Kayes
of the abdominal basement on the first floor, right?
Jeremy
And what was happening because I'm an ex-oboist, and we were taught to push down to support. So what was happening was that I was actually able to, to move the abduct the belly button. But I had this area, just underneath the bottom of the breastbone that basically stayed there. And I was quite heavily pumping away. And I thought, Oh, hang on, I can do a ripple movement. So I can move the bottom one first and then move the top one in. And then I thought, well, what happens if I don't move the bottom one and then move the top one in? So there, you know, I often do this, I go over on? What can I do? And what if I think what you're talking about is you take a deep breath in. So you've expanded around that front abdominal area. And then as you start to finish, you can start to gently push in the lower sorry, pull in the lower part around the belly button and below. And actually, that's a great place to be aware of, because that's where everything, all the muscles sort of meet. Yeah, we went into that a bit more in the previous episode. But then you can start to ripple upwards and to pull in the area that is slightly higher. And that gives you a very different feel. And it was interesting, you were saying soften and I agree with it. It doesn't feel like you're actually softening when I do it. It feels like I'm just allowing it to be pulled in rather than just being rigid.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah. That I'll say to my students to rippled, ripple up, because you know, they're working really hard. And in fact, the, you know, yes, it's not functioning. I found this happens with brass players, particularly people who, reed instruments, saxophonists, yes. Yeah. Stuff,
Jeremy
wind players are taught that support is bearing down, down and out.
Gillyanne Kayes
So, um, Franka, that would be my advice for that student. Let us know on our circle community, how you get on with it. Okay, that was fun.
Jeremy
We have a question from Jan.
Gillyanne Kayes
We did
Jeremy
Jan has sent one and this is a really interesting one.
Jan
Hi, Gillyanne and Jeremy, this is Jan, I wondered if you could clarify the difference between sub glottal pressure and lung pressure and how they interact. Thank you.
Jeremy
I love it when somebody comes up with a single sentence and you go Well, that's gonna take some unpacking, but we'll do our best. And when
Gillyanne Kayes
we're, I'll just sort of see if I can summarise in a way that's based on science but isn't scientific in terms of pressure, which was a lovely idea that I got from our associate trainer and leather Lindsey Yes. Which is think about somebody treading on your foot with a nice flat shoe. Yep. And therefore the pressure is spread over quite a bit. road surface area. Yeah. And then unfortunately there tread on your foot. It's the same person. It's the same weight, same brush with stiletto heel. Yep. And it's going to cut through your skin, isn't it? Yeah. Right. Okay. So, because of that smaller surface area, the pressure is higher. Okay? That's something important to remember when we're talking about long pressure, isn't it?
Jeremy
This is my take on this germ. And I'm hoping this is going to make sense. If because in a way, you can experience it yourself, if you take a large breath in. And then you keep your vocal folds open, so that you could breathe out or sing or do whatever, at any point, but you hover your breath, you have quite high lung pressure, because your lungs are filled with air and they're expanded, but you have zero sub glottal pressure, because the air isn't moving and the vocal folds aren't closed.
Gillyanne Kayes
So at that point, there is no interaction between the sub glottal pressure and the lung pressure.
Jeremy
And I just want to break down sub glottal pressure, it literally means the pressure that is directly underneath the vocal folds, it doesn't go down any further, any further is going to be one of the causes of the subtitle pressure, but sub glottal pressure is directly beneath the vocal folds. And it's a combination of how much the vocal folds are resisting, and how much air and air speed airflow air volume is coming up from underneath.
Gillyanne Kayes
And I mean, there's been lots and lots of scientific research into this. It can be measured directly by popping a tube in through the trachea. Yeah,
Jeremy
so that's an incision into your throat. Yeah, it's
Gillyanne Kayes
a direct measurement. Yes, it has been done well. So it's measured indirectly, it's actually measured with a mask from using the syllable PA. So obviously, the lips are closed on the PR, so nothing is released, nothing can be measured. And as you go into the app, you keep the vowel stable. dependent on what you're doing at vocal folds level, more air will be measurable at the lips, or less air. So if you're producing a breathy sound, you're going to get a higher airflow coming into the mask, if you're producing a clear sound, you're going to get letter flow. If you're using a pressed sound, you're going to get even less air flow. That In summary, is how it works. Excellent. Well done. Okay,
Jeremy
so what is the difference between lung pressure and sub glottal pressure? sublevel pressure can only exist when the vocal folds are vibrating, and there is air passing through them. Lung pressure can exist at any point.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yes, that makes sense.
Jeremy
So they are entirely separate, but they do interact. Interestingly, you can have lung pressure, and then you can release the lung pressure. But if the vocal folds are open, and the air is just coming out, noiselessly, there is still no sub glottal pressure. Something for sub glottal pressure to occur, the vocal folds have to be either vibrating or closed.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yes. I think that answers the question.
Jeremy
So I hope we got that right, as well, because it makes complete sense in my head. So if anybody disagrees with that, and can can tell me why please do let us know.
Gillyanne Kayes
Okay,
Jeremy
we have an we have a third question. Actually, we have a third question from Franco, which I thought was really interesting. And I want to go here, do you? I do. Okay.
Franka
And my second question is about breathing in different pedagogy views. Sometimes breathing is considered a thing that will follow according to the task you would like to do in your singing. So that would basically mean that the vocal folds do something and then the breath will just come along? Or are we supposed to change our breathing pattern as well? In order to make those focal faults do what they're what we want them to do? I would find it interesting if you guys could shine some light on that. Okay, thank you. Well,
Jeremy
it's an excellent question.
Gillyanne Kayes
It is a very good question. Just referring back to the idea of measuring sub glottal pressure. And the multiple studies that have been done on that, for me, you know, Sunberg has identified a flow for nation pressed phonation, breathy for nation and something that he called neutral, which is just another measuring point, if you like, if you think about sustaining sounds or sustaining a whole song in One of those phonation modes, it's obviously going to be a different breath use from one of the others. So say breathy phonation, compared with pressed phonation would be different. And then flow phonation would be different than breathy. So why would you use the same approach in terms of breathing and how you manage particularly your airflow out? Or the amount of air that you take in? Why would you use exactly the same approach all the time,
Jeremy
you might use exactly the same approach, if you believed that you were making exactly the same sound across your entire range all the time, that there's a belief that gets in the way,
Gillyanne Kayes
do you think it's that it's part of this thing that it's the vocal folds that control the breath,
Jeremy
okay, I want to go here, because I mean, people who know us will know that we have an STL background. And in the STL, model, breathing was de emphasised. And that was Joe's own words. And actually deemphasized, really, to the point where it wasn't taught at all. And it was the vocal folds control everything.
Gillyanne Kayes
phonation is interrupted airflow. Absolutely. So.
Jeremy
And the interesting thing about any model like that, and particularly any model that is packaged and sold, is that they are often done in response to what was already in existence. So it's a historical thing. It's a historical context thing, you know, with Vocal Process context is everything. And this is a historical context. Joe wasn't the first but she was one of the first people to put together a system that really wanted to debunk what she felt was the classical singers monopoly on it's all about the breath, and relaxation and relaxation, and you just let it go. And really all you have to do get out of the way and your voice will appear.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yes, yeah. So you think about the breathing, and you think about the resonance, but Darling, you was never never feel anything in the larynx? That's correct.
Jeremy
And that was I was told, right? Well, that was prevalent in that period. And so therefore, the ESTA model came out of a desire to start debunking some of the myths
Gillyanne Kayes
and also to apply clinical voice knowledge, because of the work that she would have done studying at Syracuse University, to apply some of that information within a singing voice context. And of course, we've all moved on, you know, decades on, we're much more in conversation with our clinical colleagues about this and much better informed. And there is a massive body of work, not only sunbirds work into some glottal pressure, but also all of the work that Thomas Hickson did on breath volumes and breathing kinematics, and lots of research since then, which has combined sometimes those insights. I mean, Ron Morris's PhD, and then the lovely book, if in doubt, breathe out, which unpacks, you know, some of the science in a user friendly way. So, you know, we do know that it's not a one size fits all system,
Jeremy
I think the other thing is, if you're looking at at a layout, if you like a physical layer that says, There's breath, and there's vocal fold vibration, there's resonance, you cannot miss one of those out of the equation. If you're going to teach it, you've got to teach that all three, you've got to teach all three and how they interact, you can't just pretend that one doesn't exist or is not important.
Gillyanne Kayes
Well, if got these three parts of the system, they're always going to be interacting totally,
Jeremy
totally. Yeah. So that so there, for example, is a model that says it's all controlled by the vocal folds. There are other models that exactly as Gillyanne said, that says, it's all about the breath, and you don't need to worry at all about what's going on in your throat. And the answer is context, again, which is what is the task that you want to do if the task that you want to do you are already set up for if you are completely used to singing, I don't know. Brahms lieder, if you're completely used to singing Brahms lieder, then it will feel totally natural to you that you have taken these positions and breathed breath uses and sound systems and resonance shapes that will feel completely natural to you like you are not doing anything. The difficulty is when you then want to change what you do. So I've had people come to me, I had one singer a few couple years ago, who was a working Wagner soprano who wanted to belt and it was really fascinating working out what part of her classical technique could be used and what couldn't, because it was overloading the system and we had to focus on breath. And we had to focus on resonance and we had to focus on changing what she was doing to a different balance. And this is where context comes in. You can, if you if you're quite comfortable doing what you what you're doing, you can carry on doing that for the rest of your life. Although, obviously there are physical changes as you get older. But if you want to change anything, or if you want to teach somebody, if you want to teach somebody else to do what you do, you're not in their body, so you don't know what their patterns are. And there are habitual things that you don't even realise are habitual. So you do them, and then you go, why doesn't that work? Oh, it must be the vocal folds? Well, actually, no, it's the fact that you are not providing enough air flow, or enough sub or glottal pressure to be able to change the task to something else. And that's the issue that I have is if you are if as a performer, you do whatever you need to do to get onstage and perform, because that is a risky business. But if you're a teacher, the one person you're not working with is you your own voice. We're always working with other people. And therefore you need to have a battery of knowledge in all of these areas to find out what you have that can help them and also to be able to analyse what they're doing. You may have guessed, I feel quite strongly about this. I think you need a battery of knowledge in all the areas,
Gillyanne Kayes
Mm. Absolutely. I wonder if we should call that a wrap now, shall we?
Jeremy
Yeah, okay.
Gillyanne Kayes
Hopefully not a rant.
Jeremy
No, it's not a rant. Not at all. Yeah, I think have we have we reached a moment? I
Gillyanne Kayes
think we have reached a moment
Jeremy
we've reached a moment.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yes. That was fun, wasn't it?
Jeremy
Yeah! If you have any more questions about breath and breathing, then we'll do a part three. If not, then we will move on to a different topic.
Gillyanne Kayes
Yeah. Any sort of pedagogical information to share particularly about inhalare la voce, what other people's experiences are, yes. Any speech therapists or breath and body workers listening to this who've got comments about what we've said about mouth versus nose breathing, we would love to hear that. And yes, it's a very, very hot topic at the moment for all kinds of reasons, isn't it?
Jeremy
And then we're just going to flag a couple of things that already exist in our store. The Learning Lounge has various resources on breath and breathing, breath use in different genres, all sorts things. We have master classes that we do. So troubleshooting, Breath and breath awareness. We have lesson plans on that. Go and check that out. We'll put the link in the description.
Gillyanne Kayes
Anything to do with SOVT is also going to be super useful for understanding about the breathing system.
Jeremy
Yes. And we're flagging the SOVT two course. In fact, if you haven't seen our SOVT one course already, then please, we'll put the link in the description. Please go and check it out. It is SOVT one is streaming online. So instantly available,
Gillyanne Kayes
You can watch it now it's half term, go and do it.
Jeremy
Absolutely. We have had some phenomenal feedback from that course. And SOVT One, which you can watch anytime online, is the entry level into SOVT Two, which is the live one with me, Gillyanne and Oren Boder, who's the creator of the SOVT singer straw, and that's coming up in November, we'll put the dates on that as well. And we just want to mention the This is a Voice book. Because This is a Voice has quite a lot of exercises on breath in phonation, breath in singing breath and different singing styles
Gillyanne Kayes
exercises for the tongue. Yeah, and also for the soft palate for those of you who need it.
Jeremy
And a quick shout out to Phoene Cave and the Musical Breath website. This is a Voice is one of the recommended books for her Musical Breath website and some excellent articles and resources on her site, blogs, all sorts of things.
Gillyanne Kayes
Absolutely. And I'm just going to mention Anne Coxhead osteopathic services again and we'll put a link to her website to anybody who's interested in finding out more about her work.
Jeremy
So we are done. And breathe.
This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.