Breathing has been on our minds lately here at The Flute Practice. We concluded our 14-day breathing challenge a little while ago (click here if you missed it) and will soon be hosting a breathing workshop with Dr. Bridget Rennie-Salonen on fully utilizing the power of your breath (click here to join this amazing workshop).
In keeping with this theme, we’d like to share seven of the most common breathing mistakes students tend to make. Fueled by misconceptions about what breathing actually is, many approach this instinctive process very artificially, thinking they need to make something happen in order to improve their breath. So if you’re still unclear on how you should be breathing, or you think you might be doing it wrong, keep reading. Here are seven common breathing mistakes many students make.
- Lifting your shoulders
Breathing is a completely natural and automated action undertaken by the body. We don’t need to think about doing it and we certainly don’t need to force it to happen. Despite this, many people have the false idea that they somehow need to make their breathing happen. They try to do this by lifting their shoulders. When you artificially lift your shoulders, you are actually adding tension to what is in fact a completely natural action. So – keep your shoulders loose and relaxed.
- Stomach goes in rather than out
When you try too hard to breathe, you may also suck in your stomach, which is exactly the opposite of what should happen when you take a free and natural breath.
As you take a deep breath in, your stomach as well as the chest cavity and area around your back will expand. Instead of feeling like you’re filling up, it should feel like a release. To help you feel this sense of release, try the following: exhale (so blow air out through your mouth) and then tense up your stomach muscles – pretend you’re trying to show off a six-pack! Do not breathe in yet. Without breathing in, just focus on releasing the stomach muscles. Just let them go! As you do this, your body will naturally expand and you will breathe in.
- Closing your throat
Another common mistake is when you close your throat while breathing and take shallow breaths that stay in the throat area. What we want is for your throat to be open, so breath can freely flow in and out of it.
Of course, the flip side of closing your throat is trying to open it too much again. In so doing, tension is created, which blocks the airflow. So how do we solve this dilemma? Try aiming for a noiseless breath. Keep your throat open and relaxed and simply breathe. There should be little to no sound (ideally!). Of course, the quicker the breaths are, the more noise you may make, but we can work on getting your breathing as soft as possible.
- Forced breath out
A common misconception is that we need to create abdominal support by squeezing in or pushing out our abdominal muscles. While you do need support when you breathe out, this is not created by pressing your muscles together in a forced kind of way.
Creating abdominal support is actually just a controlled and extended release of the air. This is achieved in part by some of our abdominal muscles engaging to stop the immediate exhale, but, the support is automatically activated when we take a full expanded breath and allow the small opening of the lips to create the resistance to slowly release that air. So, while your inbreath is free, your outbreath is supported but also still free. There should be no excessive tension.
- Leaning back while breathing out
Another thing we tend to do is to lean back while we’re breathing out. This might happen when we’re close to running out of air. However, this is actually quite counterproductive. It inhibits our breathing and cuts off our support. As we breathe out, our spine naturally lengthens. To support this, we need to be moving forward and up, not backwards and down.
- Breathing through the nose
When playing the flute (this may not apply to all wind instruments), it is much better to breathe through the mouth rather than through the nose. Taking long, slow breaths through your nose may not cause as much of an issue, but quick, short breaths actually cause your throat to close up. Breathing through the mouth keeps your throat open and allows you to get much more air into your lungs more quickly.
- Thinking about breathing in 2D
Many students of the flute may not even think about breathing much. And if they do, they think of it as more of a two-dimensional process limited to the lungs, instead of an all-encompassing 3D experience that encompasses the whole chest cavity all the way down to the lower back and pelvic floor.
Breathing should be open, free and natural and cause everything inside of us to expand. Once you have laid this kind of foundation for your breathing, you will find that your sound and tone will improve as well.
Happy breathing!
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