diaphragmatic exercise question

logik418

 I just bought the Volume 1 series. My question pertains to the diaphragmatic breathing exercise: are you completely exhaling with each pitch or do you hold one breath throughout the entire scale? I see your stomach contract with each pitch, but I'm not sure if that means you're exhaling completely or simply relaxing while retaining some of your breath.  Thanks!

highmtn

The breath pulses with each note, but these pulses are not the entire exhalation.  They are small divisions of the larger, complete exhalation.

You want to make it through an entire progression of a scale on a single exhalation.  Then relax the diaphragm momentarily, then another sip of air into the belly breath, then do another iteration of the scale.

In other words, Ken plays a chord.  You sing that scale on one breath, pulsing on each noted of the scale. Relax. Take another breath, Ken plays another chord, up a notch this time.  You then sing that scale on that breath, and so forth.

If you're talking about the ha ha scales, you go ahead and do more exaggerated pulses on that exercise, because it is a workout specifically to strengthen your diaphragmatic engine.  You rest between pulses on that one, but only instantaneously. 

Bob

Kokonuht

Now that you mentioned it, I might be doing it wrongly. On the Ha-Ha exercise, We do one whole scale only on one breath?

This is what I do
1. Inhale
2. HA (with support)

3. Relax support
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3

Though Ken does it so fast that it sounds like I'm doing
1. Inhale
2. HA (exhale + relax)

Or are we suppose to do this in one breath for one chord? I inhale before every HA.

highmtn

If you listen carefully to the last track on the Volume 3 Audio Workout, you will hear Ken pause to take a really quick, short breath just a couple of progressions down from the top scale, in other words OVER HALFWAY Through the Exercise.  He takes a breath at the beginning, and ONE breath in the middle.

Throughout the exercise, there are micro inhalations refreshing the lungs only slightly, but OVERALL it is one giant exhalation, pulsed, with mitigating micro inhalations that help the MACRO exhalation to last longer. 

When I do this exercise, I try to not take in a macrobreath until Ken does.  I can usually make it, but sometimes I have to do it once or twice to get warmed up enough to manage it.

Bob