In Gillyanne Kayes's book 'Singing and the Actor' she describes an exercise based on the Accent Method (Ch. 4 Ex. 1 on p. 29 in the 2nd edition); you 'put your hand over your abdomen' with your thumb 'roughly over your navel, with the rest of the hand lower down'. You breathe out on 'PShhh' and 'use your hand to send the abdomen right back towards your backbone', then allow your abdominal wall to relax. Your abdomen bounces outwards and you breathe in. She calls this elastic recoil.

This seems a good way to teach breathing technique, focusing on the out breath and allowing the breath to 'drop in'.

However, I was reading the following article by Karyn O'Connor online:

http://www.singwise.com/cgi-bin/main.pl?se...thingForSinging

The section entitled 'Belly breathing' criticises 'misguided and ill-informed teachers' who 'have their students place their hands below their navel when practicing their breathing exercises or singing'. More info in the article itself. When I deliberately push my lower abdomen outwards I can feel muscles tensing that are not tense when doing Gillyanne Kayes's exercise; I assume that Karyn O'Connor is referring to these muscles when she talks about incorrect 'belly breathing'?

I just wanted to check that Gillyanne Kayes's method is safe and sensible? It seems to make sense to me but I don't want to pass on anything dangerous!

Thanks.

Hi Baritone, welcome to the forums.

Gillyanne does not teach to push out your belly on the inhale. It is just a relaxation. I'm confident that Karyn O'Connor is not criticising Gillyanne's relaxed recoil in her article.

I find Gillyanne's approach very safe and sensible.

Thanks!



Her approach seems to make a lot of sense, so I just wanted to check!

I guess Karyn O'Connor must be criticising the idea of pushing outwards during intake...

Thanks.

I hope so - the idea of pushing the abdomen out during inhalation can only be achieved, as far as I can see, (unless I am misunderstanding you), by causing undue downward pressure on the diaphragm which can lead to diaphragmatic hernia.

I think she actually refers to the process of pushing outwards during exhalation/trying to keep the abdominal wall in an inhalation-like position for as long as possible - it is a technique still propagated by some very old school teachers. I always call it "loo support", because it gives you the feeling of pushing out and down, if you get the drift. It really gives you nothing apart from quite possibly hernia

O'Connor somewhat worded it a bit unlucky, because there is essentially nothing wrong with placing your hands below the navel - it is what you are actually doing, not where your hands lie to check. I very often have students put one hand below and one above their navel to check correct support, but if the lower hand moves outwards instead of in during the exhalation process, it's wrong.

I totally agree with ExpressYourself - the process of elastic recoil Gillyanne propagates (and I can say this from personal experience) has nothing to do with pushing outwards in any form.

I guess it just shows that we can't really learn to sing from a book or written stuff alone, there is always scope for misunderstandings and insecurities

Thanks for your responses. The elastic recoil exercise in Kayes's book does seem a very sensible way for pupils to feel proper breathing technique.