The Optimal Breathing
Window.
(OBW)
To best manage it, you need to be able to measure
it.
Stop right now and, fighting for EVERY BIT OF BREATH YOU CAN,
while you feel the strain, breathe in as deeply as you possibly can.
Even let your eyes get very wide open, your shoulders raised and
your neck muscles bulged out. THEN
Exhale letting the breath go.
Call that
uppermost in breath a 10. (The uppermost deepest breathing
included in Total Lung Capacity TLC)
Now take
a deep breath but stop when it gets full, but not
strained……………….. (demo
included in the new 176 video to be published
Feb-March 2010 and taught at the speech clinics.) Then breathe naturally.
Science does not have a description for this one but I call it the Optimal
Breathing Window or OBW.
Call that comfortable uppermost in-breath an 8.
Now
breathe into your “8” and just let the breath escape
in a relaxing exhale. So if you were to breathe out more,
you would have to force it.
Then breathe naturally. Call that point a 3.
Now
breathe in to an 8, and let the breath go to 3, then immediately exhale,
forcing
the breath out with your belly muscles like blowing out the candles
on a birthday cake
to as close as you can to no breath left at all. Feel the
strain and tension in your body
from 3-0. Breathe naturally.
Try that again. In to 8 ……then relaxed out to 3, then forced out to 0.
Breathe naturally. 3-0 = Expiratory reserve volume ERV
Call that
uncomfortable lower-most out-breath a 0. 0=Maximum expiration
(10 to minus 2 = TLC Total lung capacity).
SHALLOW and EFFORTED BREATHING
To clarify, many do not
breathe very deeply, so they mostly breathe in to
say 4 or 5 (or overcompensate to 10 inviting accumulating tension,
restriction and eventual shallow breathing).
Then they use
or "spend" 3, 4, 5, or more of the air while speaking or singing,
and end
up
at 0-2.9, in other words, below 3, the point where tension begins.
This causes a great deal
of restriction in the same area as does the abdominal startle response.
Then one is so out of breath, they pull in or gasp the air,
causing friction
and further tension. The cycle keeps repeating and worsening
with every
sentence.
So when I say breathe during practice between the window of 3 and 8 or
3.5 & 7
as a
softer form, you breathe to 7 or 8 and never strain on the inhale,
then
make sure that when you speak you
do not go past 3.5 on the exhale.
In this way you begin to
develop a habit of staying
mostly between 4-7 or 8.
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