Diaphragmatic breathing

Breathing is the foundation of voice. Voice starts with breathing. We often hear about "throat voice" or "diaphragmatic voice", but in reality the voice is always produced by the phonatory apparatus and supported by the flow of air produced by the diaphragm.

Diaphragmatic breathing and natural breathing

Everyone is born with the inborn ability to breathe. Perfect breathing, in other words, with maximum energy efficiency: maximum results with minimum effort. Around the age of 3/6 years, when our mind starts to grow more relational and less instinctive, the brain starts to take over and start unconscious processes that override the natural ones, and that are obviously much less efficient.

At that age you unconsciously abandon the correct posture and natural breathing to move to more contracted and rigid ones. In fact, one of the first "discoveries" of each of us is that by stiffening the posture and the diaphragm, not coincidentally also called emotional muscle, the perception of emotions and deepest fears is lessened. This is why we often say "from the gut" when we want to express having received a strong emotion.

The more a child is "frightened" by his/her internal feelings, without someone explaining to that it is normal to perceive them and reassure him/her that nothing bad is actually happening, the more his/her vocal expressiveness will be sacrificed in order to stop "listening" to these bad feelings.

Where is the diaphragm located and how it works

Too often we hear breathing explained and managed in terms that are even absurd. We have had to deal with the victims of those who teach that the diaphragm is a voluntary muscle or those who teach that the diaphragm is capable of producing sound.

It is easy to identify the phonatory apparatus: it is the one that you feel moving every time you swallow, but it is not so easy to identify the diaphragm since it is located inside our body, in the torso, and separates the cardiopulmonary area from the viscera area.

Sometimes people place it in other parts of the body, the strangest ones, other times curious questions come up, for example "how do I know if I'm using my diaphragm?". The answer is very simple: if you are breathing, you are using your diaphragm. It is our respiratory muscle: we have no others!

How to breathe with the diaphragm

With voice, the problem is not IF you are using the diaphragm, but HOW you are using it. This is a fundamental point that highlights how little education there is about this precious muscle. You won't find this distinction in any other site or book: everyone claims to teach breathing, without caring that we are all already breathing!

Almost all of our competitors are only concerned with managing the air to support the vibration of the vocal cords. At Inborn Voice, we are concerned with the amount of air available to us first. In fact, the secret to good voice is knowing how to control and direct the air that supports the words we speak. Depending on errors in the amount of air or in the more or less strong adduction of the vocal cords, all possible existing phonatory defects are created.

Benefits of diaphragmatic breathing with the Inborn Voice method

Once it is understood that breathing is something instinctive, unconscious, uncontrollable by the mind, especially in conditions of relaxation or high stress, the revolution brought by the Inborn Voice method is evident. If the assumption is that we are all born with a perfect breathing, our work will not be focused to "teach", to add new breathing techniques that then you will not be able to use, we will simply remove bad habits and bad postures that prevent the return of natural breathing. Only in this way will the benefits of breathing be available 24 hours a day and ensure a deeper sleep, a more relaxed posture, a more ready and elastic vocality and finally a higher endurance.