Right now, you're breathing. I hope you're breathing. If not, seek out medical attention. But you were breathing and you weren't even thinking about it until I mentioned it. That's good, right? But in this video, we're going to talk about how we breathe and the problems we run into with breath control and speaking. And then finally we'll talk about how to breathe properly for good volume and projection. So to begin with, what's going on here when we breathe? The obvious bits are we have lungs that take in oxygen and they send it to our blood, but the lungs just don't push the rib cage around. We got two really important sets of muscles here. We have the diaphragm, and this is a thin muscle that separates the chest and abdominal cavities, and then we've got the intercostal muscles, these are the muscles in the spaces between your ribs. So when we inhale, the intercostal muscles pull up and the diaphragm pulls down. And this creates more space in the thoracic cavity, the chest cavity, and then the lungs can fill with air. And that's all pretty automatic. So why do people run out of breath when they give a talk? Well people run out of breath for a couple of different reasons. One you might be nervous, so your breathing might increase with your heart rate or your breathing faster. Your chest and your neck muscles might tighten up a little bit and that makes it harder to breathe deeply. But more than that, breathing in a speech or in singing for that matter is kind of different. So if you're sitting around watching TV, you inhale and exhale for about the same amount of time. But in speaking, we inhale for less time and we exhale for longer. We're just doing more stuff with that air. And this often resulted in a couple of pretty predictable problems. So first, shallow breathing. This is where you inhale a lot but the diaphragm isn't actually moving that much. And so it limits how much oxygen you can actually draw in. So you take in a couple of breaths or two. Or, [SOUND]. You're panting. You're just getting a lot of air in there. But it's not really activating that muscle much. You do that too much you black out, right? Our second problem is not exhaling fully. So there you're sort of retaining air. So here the problem is you're not pushing the air out when you speak. So you might take a breath in, push out a little bit, and then you go for that second breath and you can't take in a bunch of fresh oxygen because your lungs are already kind of full. And the problem is without good breath control, speakers can speak too softly. In some cases, a lack of good deliberate breathing can make your voice sound what I would call wavy like you're about to cry. You're not pushing enough air across the vocal folds so you're like I just want to thank everyone for coming today, that nervous sounding voice. So we don't want that. What do we want to be doing for good breath control? Well, we want to inhale a good volume of air and exhale it deliberately and we talk about this as diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is popular with actors and opera singers, so Like an opera, they have to do really big vocal projection with sustained notes, and you need diaphragmatic breathing for that. Diaphragmatic breathing is also pretty popular with yoga and meditation because it can help with relaxation. So what is this thing? Well, to begin with, you are not actually breathing from your diaphragm, that's impossible. It's not your lungs, but in diaphragmatic breathing we are trying to be very deliberate about moving the diaphragm down, and intercostal muscles out. So, try this. This is a way of getting the physical sensation of deep breathing. Stand and put your hand on your stomach, or you lie down on the floor and put a book on your stomach. The goal is to expand the stomach while you breathe. What's happening is you're pulling the air in, and that triggers the diaphragm to activate. This is sometimes why diaphragmatic breathing is called belly breathing, because your belly is moving in and out. And I will usually do diaphragmatic breathing exercises as warm-ups before I give a speech. But we can do that right now. So go ahead and stand up, if you can, and push your hand on your stomach. And what we're going to do is we're going to take a deep breath in, and your hand should go out. Maybe not that much, but your hand should go out. Your shoulders shouldn't move too much, we don't want shallow breathing. We want good deliberate breathing and then once you have that air in, you're going to push the air out forcefully. We're going to do in for five, hold for five, out for five. So take a deep breath, in for hive. [SOUND] Hold for five. And this should be comfortable. And then push out. [SOUND] So you're squeezing that air out, don't let it just sort of vomit out, okay. Let's do it again. In for five. [SOUND] Hold for five. And out for five. [SOUND] So that's an exercise. Obviously you don't do that in the middle of your speech. You're not like so my research focuses on three key insights. [SOUND] So first, right, you're not doing that but that activity gives you the general sensation you should have as you're speaking. So if the goal is to inhale this good volume of air and use it efficiently, you need to be standing properly. So try this, stand up again, if you've sat down, and standing up, really slouch. Just aw, you're just awful, life has no meaning, so sad, all right, and while slouching, try to take a deep breath in. [SOUND] Okay, it's harder, right? Because you're preventing your chest cavity from fully expanding. And you're probably also not really activating that diaphragm. So stand up straight. Your mom was right the whole time. You slouch too much, okay? But stand up straight and when you speak you take in a quick breath of air and then you use that air deliberately. So when I'm speaking and pushing that air out, I often feel some tension, not like an uncomfortable amount. But some tension in my trunk as I'm speaking to large audiences. That means I'm just really pushing that air out when I speak. So in conclusion, good airflow is vital to speaking. Breathe in deeply, activating that diaphragm, and then push the air out deliberately to give your voice more energy and projection. [MUSIC]
