Many of the chronic problems wind instrumentalists and singers encounter with breathing are due, in part, because of misconception.
In particular, misconception of the structure, function and coordination of the mechanisms involved in both natural (passive) and extraordinary (as in playing or singing) breathing.
I’d like to address and clarify a very common misconception here in this post: the size and location of the lungs themselves.
Let’s start by some of the things some musicians think they are doing with their air:
“I’m putting the air down there in my belly.” Or, “I’m placing the air down into my diaphragm.” And other ideas to this effect.
I won’t digress here about why it’s impossible to “place the air down in your diaphragm”, other than to say that the air you inhale never goes directly into your diaphragm.
It enters into your lungs. Simple as that.
The primary function of your diaphragm is to assist in changing the size and shape of your lungs to facilitate inspiration and expiration. It does this in concert with your intercostal muscles (the muscles between your ribs), as well as with other auxiliary muscles.
So where are your lungs, exactly?
Well, they’re higher up and further back in your body than you might have thought. Here’s a simple, animated video from the DVD entitled, Move Well, Avoid, Injury, to help you get a visual on all this:
As you can see, the air doesn’t actually go into your “belly”. The three-dimensional movement of your abdominal area is largely on account of the displacement of the abdominal content, because of the movements of the diaphragm and ribs (and other structures, as well.)
So what’s the possible downside of trying to “put the air down there in your belly”?
Well, in the simplest sense, by trying to do the impossible, you’re most likely also interfering with your natural, optimal breathing coordination.
Whenever I see a wind instrumentalist trying to “put the air into the belly”, I typically also see a stiffening up of the neck and shoulders, accompanied by a downward compression of the head on top of the spine, and a narrowing, or hollowing, of the lower back.
All this tends to prevent the ribs from moving freely enough to sufficiently (and efficiently) transform the internal dimensions of the thoracic cavity (the part of your body including, and inside of, your ribs) that facilitates the movements necessary for full and dynamic breathing.
So take a good look at the video I’ve posted here. Notice the size and the specific location of your lungs, along with the range of movements the lungs go through via the actions of the ribs, diaphragm, and other muscles. By clarifying this misconception, you might very well discover a new freedom, flexibility and fullness with your breathing that had been eluding you in the past. Enjoy!
A good percentage of musicians who seek my help as an Alexander Technique teacher do so because of chronic pain when playing their instruments.
And with some, it might not be because of pain, per se, but because of a palpable sense of strain and misdirected effort as they play.
Though the source of (and solution to) their problems vary, virtually all these musicians have one thing in common that is exacerbating their condition. Specifically, misconceptions about their human design in relation to making music on their instruments.
The thing that still amazes me after all these years of teaching, is that many of these misconceptions (that are causing some serious problems!) could so easily be remedied by taking the time to study and understand some very basic functional musculoskeletal anatomy and physiology.
Serious musicians give great attention to so many details of their craft and art. Sometimes obsessing over finding the best equipment, they also practice and study diligently and passionately, and are always on the lookout for anything to help them do what they do better.
Yet, as I’ve mentioned, far too many of them neglect to take the time to gain an accurate and detailed understanding of the workings of their most essential, primary instrument: themselves.
And that’s too bad. Because it is such a small, easily doable thing, really. In fact, sometimes just clarifying an anatomical reality is all it takes to solve a particular, debilitating problem.
Even spending a few hours studying and better understanding your design can make a significantly positive impact on how you practice and perform.
And if you teach, having this knowledge is not only essential, it is part and parcel of your responsibly to your students. They will have a far greater chance at success when you’re teaching them through the lens of anatomical and physiological accuracy.
So yes, understanding your human design is important. Very important.
The good new is that nowadays there are so many great, easily affordable and accessible resources to help you get the information you need.
I recently came across what I think is perhaps the most essential book on understanding our human design as it relates to any kind of movement and activity (including playing music!)
It’s entitled The Body in Motion: Its Evolution and Design. Written by Alexander Technique teacher, Neurodyamics specialist and scholar, Theodore Dimon, Ed.D, it functions as both an in depth tutorial and reference for how we are designed to move.
The thing I like most about it is that each aspect of our anatomical structure is introduced and described relative to our evolutionary development, and in particular, our unique upright, bipedal design.
The book starts by laying the groundwork for the origins of animal movement, and how a system of muscles and bones came to be. Though this might sound like just an interesting (or not) story, it is much more than that.
By helping you understand how we evolved, based upon environmental need, the author is also helping you build a foundation in understanding how all our musculoskeletal structures work together as an interdependent whole. (This is very important, and can help you to avoid a good deal of dubious information floating about in this day and age of the internet.)
Dr. Dimon goes on to demonstrate and explain the most essential aspect of our ability to produce skilled movement: our upright support. It is this system of support and suspension that serves as the foundation for the complexity of all human movement.
From here, he elucidates upon the various structures essential to this movement: the spine, shoulder girdle, limbs, (including the hands), and then onto the mechanisms of breath and voice and more (including muscular spirals, etc.)
The text is clear and concise, and always introduces new ideas/concepts/chapters in relation to the previous ones, tying everything together under the central organizing principle of our unique, upright human design.
It is written with the layperson in mind, and if you’re new to musculoskeletal anatomy, you won’t be overwhelmed with a litany of scientific terminology. Just essential, practical information.
The book is also very nicely and abundantly illustrated by G. David Brown, so that whatever the author is presenting, is supported by visuals. Part of this visual support includes simplified drawings that demonstrate the mechanical principles of how bones and muscles work together. (This is immensely helpful!)
At only 107 pages, it’s a brief introduction into the most fundamental aspects of this wonderfully efficient design! You could probably read the entire book over a weekend. But the information you glean from it could positively impact you for the rest of your life. Highly recommended!
Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight (put one’s intentions) toward ‘this’response rather than ‘that’one.
-Rollo May, existential psychologist, from his book ‘Freedom and Destiny’
One thing that virtually every musician has to do in order to improve is to change what they are currently doing. This might mean changing your practice regime, changing your understanding of your instrument and pedagogy, changing your perception of sound, changing your quality of attention, etc.
It might also mean that you have to change the postural and movement habits you bring to playing your instrument.
Habits of breathing, standing and/or sitting, how you use your arms and hands, how you balance (or not), how you use your other senses, etc. It’s entirely possible (and even highly likely) that you are sometimes misdirecting your efforts in these areas as you play.
The Alexander Technique is a practical method of helping you to change your postural and movement habits for the better. And one of the most essential tools of the Technique is known as “conscious inhibition” (most students and teachers of the Alexander Technique just refer to it as “inhibition”).
In the simplest sense, inhibition is your ability to consciously prevent yourself from reacting in an habitual, unwanted way. Unwanted tension in your neck. Unwanted rushing of the tempo. Unwanted stiffening in your shoulders, Unwanted gasping as you breathe, etc.
By keeping the unwanted things “in check”, you are free to pursue what you do want in a way that is more in accordance to your human design. You increase your odds for success.
From a neurobiological point of view, all skilled motor activity requires a balance between “volition” (muscles going into the desired, or helpful action) and inhibition (muscles refraining from undesired, or unhelpful action). Most inhibition in skilled activities takes place naturally and unconsciously (as it should).
But sometimes you need to use inhibition in a more constructively conscious way in order to improve things.
Unfortunately, there can sometimes be a misconception about using inhibition consciously. To many people, conscious inhibition means “trying” to stop something from happening. It is exactly this “trying” part that can too often create a whole other set of problems when setting out to change movement and postural habits.
“Trying” sometimes means that you are struggling to stop yourself from doing what you habitually do. As if you have little or no control over it. Here’s something F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technique) said about it:
When you are asked not to do something, instead of making the decision not to do it, you try to prevent yourself from doing it. But this only means that you decide to do it, and then use muscle tension to prevent yourself from doing it.
But that’s not at all the way inhibition is used in the Alexander Technique. Rather than “trying to stop” something, you learn to simply decide not to do it.
I know, I know…more easily said than done, especially when you have a deeply ingrained habit attached to playing your instrument. But still absolutely doable. That’s the skill you develop by studying and applying the Technique.
The first step in learning to use inhibition in a constructive way, is to embrace the pause.
It is within this brief instant before taking action that you can choose to redirect your attention and clarify your intention and effort. In that moment you come face to face with your habitual reaction, and can give yourself a chance to say “no” to it.
You can decide not to do what you habitually do. And that’s where the magic lies.
Because if you decide not to react habitually you leave yourself free to find other ways to react. You move from habit into the realm of choice.
It is the discovery, exploration and embracing of the pause that has given me tremendously powerful tools in managing (which I do quite well!) the focal dystonia in my left hand.
Without using the pause as tool for change, I wouldn’t be able to play saxophone at all any more with any kind of reasonable skill and control. Nowadays, I’m playing better than I ever have, thanks to the power of pausing and redirecting my attention. That simple.
But I gained so much more from the using the pause than improving the functioning of my left hand. Using the pause has helped me to practice everything I practice in a much more constructive, efficient and clearly intentional way.
And as an improvising musician, learning that I can pause, that don’t have to fill every second of my solos with sound, is liberating, and (at the risk of sounding dramatic) has been life changing for me.
I listen at a much deeper level when I play with others than I ever have before. I play with greater empathy, confidence, authenticity, passion, creativity and satisfaction.
All thanks to becoming more and more skilled at pausing.
And to be clear, “pausing” is not the same as “hesitating”. Pausing invites calm, reassured choice, where hesitation invites conflict, misdirected effort and a lack of confidence and clarity.
I use the pause countless times every day that I practice, and I bring it with me to rehearsals and to the bandstand.
When I’m practicing, sometimes I pause between iterations of something challenging that I’m practicing. Just a split second to stop and redirect my efforts makes all the difference.
And even in the middle of a performance, the “imagination” of the pause is always there, reminding me that I have more choice than I might have perviously thought.
So I encourage you to explore the pause. Before jumping right in to “fix” what you didn’t like about what you just played in your practice session (by starting over with the same misdirected effort that led to your dissatisfaction), give yourself a chance to stop, find ease and balance in your body, clarify what it is you want and don’t want, and begin again.
As I’ve said in some of my other blog articles, you’ll never waste time when you give yourself a chance to stop and consciously redirect your efforts. Embrace the quiet power of choosing to pause. Respond rather than react, and reclaim your freedom.
Whether giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a musician, or simply observing myself when I practice, I’ve come to notice one particular postural/movement habit that we all seem to have in common when faced with a potentially “stressful” stimulus when playing our instruments.
This is also something I can see as I watch musicians (and other performing artists) during performance.
When I say “potentially stressful”, I mean to include a wide range of things, from mild to powerful.
For example, a mildly stressful stimulus might be to slightly increase the tempo of a particular etude you’re practicing. Whereas a more powerfully stressful stimulus might be anticipating playing the first note of an important audition for which you’ve prepared.
In either case, there is an almost universal tendency with respect to your movement and posture when faced with these types of stimuli:
You begin to lose your connection to the ground.
It is your connection to the ground that is the basis of support that encourages the freely fluent, agile and powerful movements you need to perform at your fullest potential.
When you lose support, you also begin losing the elasticity necessary for optimal suspension, and ultimately, optimal coordination.
So what does “losing connection to the ground” look like?
Here are a few examples when you’re standing:
You stiffen your feet and ankles, losing the mobility necessary to respond effectively to changes in balance.
You roll to one side or the other of either/both feet (this too, involves stiff ankles).
You hyper-extend (“lock”) your knees.
You clench your buttocks and/or compress you hips, while at the same time “lifting” yourself off the ground slightly.
And even when you’re sitting you can lose this very important connection to the ground. Here’s a few ways how you might do so:
You stiffen your legs, thereby diminishing the necessary contact of your sitting bones to the support of the chair.
You begin to push (or pull) toward one side or the other of your pelvis (and thus, your sitting bones).
You begin to draw your knees up into your pelvis (as your feet come up slightly off the floor).
You lift yourself up from the support of the chair by narrowing your entire torso. (This is something you also might to when standing.)
I should also mention here (with respect to the principles of the Alexander Technique) that when you’re engaging in any of the above listed posture/movement reactions, that you are at the same time stiffening your neck, interfering with how your head needs to freely balance on top of your spine (in order to allow optimal coordination).
And these tendencies are not only potentially problematic to the “mechanics” of your coordination, but are also (perhaps even more important!) evidence that your quality of your attention is less than ideal. It has gone from being flexible, integrating and expansive (inclusive), to inflexible, disintegrating and narrow (exclusive).
(There is always a reciprocal relationship between the quality of your attention and what you do in your body. It’s sort of like, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” In any case, one conditions the other.)
But here’s the good news:
You’re not stuck with any of these tendencies.
Because they are only that. Tendencies. Or “habits” as we would refer to them in Alexander Technique jargon.
And habits can be changed.
Start by paying attention. Notice both when, and how, you lose your connection to the ground.
Notice what types of stimuli (thoughts, circumstances, conditions, etc.) seem to invite you to lose your connection (the “when” part).
Notice what you do with your entire self (including your attention) when you lose your connection (the “how” part).
Once you notice, you can practice pausing to gently redirect your attention, allowing yourself to be easy in your body and regain your connection to the ground. (And allowing yourself to reconnect to your intentions, and with the music itself.)
Finally, there is a difference between being “planted” (stuck hard and fast into the ground) and being “grounded” (surely, but dynamically connected to the ground).
Aim for being grounded, letting your weight pass freely down through your legs, through your feet, and into the support of the ground (when standing), or through your sitting bones as you allow the chair to support you (when sitting).
Then think of yourself as going up lightly, freely and expansively from your supporting surface. Let the earth play its role in helping you make music. Notice the difference.
The word ‘relax’ can be a very dangerous word for some musicians.
–Karl Snider, singer, voice teacher, Alexander Technique teacher
One of the fundamental benefits of studying the Alexander Technique and applying it to musical performance is in reducing or eliminating misdirected effort.
It is this misdirected effort (manifested through muscular tension) that leads to unnecessary fatigue, compromised coordination and skill (including problems with time/rhythm), and even injury.
My Alexander Technique students learn to play their instruments with far greater ease, efficiency, confidence, consistency and satisfaction than they did before studying the work.
Yet if you asked virtually any of these students (musicians from a large variety of genres) if they are more “relaxed” when they play now, compared to before they started taking Alexander Technique lessons, you might be surprised by their answers:
“I wouldn’t say I’m more ‘relaxed’ when I play now, just that I’m freer to move and respond in a way that is more conducive to playing my instrument the way I want to play it.”
The above is a quote from one of my students, an excellent guitarist here in Los Angeles, who’s been studying and applying the Alexander Technique for a number of years now.
(His response pretty much sums up and concurs with typical responses to this question from just about any of my students.)
If you asked this guitarist if he aims to be “relaxed” when he plays, he’ll answer with a resounding “no.”
Why is that? (you might wonder)
“Because (going again to what my student said) saying I want to be ‘relaxed’ is misleading.”
“First of all, it takes a certain amount of energy and tension to play guitar. Muscles are constantly working when I play. They have to. So it’s impossible to be completely ‘relaxed’ in the way most people think of being relaxed, and certainly in the way that I used to define that state of being.”
“Second, aiming for relaxation can often lead to other problems, like under-energized practice and performance. And before, when I didn’t ‘feel relaxed’ in the way I thought I should, I immediately became anxious, thinking I was doing everything wrong. That would lead me to playing with even less freedom and with more strain.”
As my student discovered, it’s this “feeling wrong” if you don’t think you aren’t as “relaxed as you should be” that often leads to even more misdirected effort.
If we go back to what my student does want in his playing (what he has gained from studying and applying the Alexander Technique), it is more freedom.
Freedom to move lightly but powerfully. Freedom to respond in a constructive way to musical impulse. Freedom to use time more effectively.
Ultimately, freedom to choose.
If you were to ask this student what qualities he now seeks and enjoys when playing guitar, some of the words would be: balance, mobility, ease (not the same as relaxation), flexibility, efficiency, precision, satisfaction.
Freedom instead of relaxation.
And this doesn’t even take into account the psycho-physical state of readiness necessary for actual live performance. So many musicians confuse the heightened state of arousal before and during a performance as “fear”, as something to be avoided at all costs.
While there are certainly some musicians who feel “fearful” about performance, the feeling of “excitation” necessary for optimal performance is too often confused with “fear” by many performers.
That’s unfortunate.
Because great performance is exhilarating. It is magical. It is dynamic. It is alive with energy (and even tension!) It is indeed special.
But it is a far cry from anything anybody would call “relaxed”. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it is impossible to be relaxed during an authentically expressive musical performance.
So instead of aiming for “feeling relaxed” during a performance, perhaps you can wish for this instead:
To be free, mobile, supported by the ground, appropriately energized, connected (to the music, to the other performers, to the audience), inspired, curious, generous and loving.
And, perhaps…
You can wish for a light, easy upward and outward dynamic expansion throughout your entire body as you play.
You can wish for freely moving breath.
You can wish for an integrated attention, balancing what you think/feel internally, with what you experience externally.
You can wish for allowing yourself to use time to your advantage, never rushing ahead, instead letting the music unfold into its natural, easy rhythm.
You can wish for buoyant, freely flowing energy throughout your entire self.
You can wish to be graciously receptive of the creative impulses moving through you.
You can wish to be graciously receptive of the presence and energy of the audience and the other performers.
You can wish for economy of effort instead of relaxation.
You can wish for clarity and freedom in thought and expression…
What else would you wish for in practice and performance, if you could have anything you want?
