Breathing Coordination
Copyright SAN
DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Jan 27, 2003
As a budding opera singer, Karen Saillant Bygott kept hitting breathtaking
notes. None of them by choice.
She had an underdeveloped diaphragm, as it turned out, resulting in the kind of
labored breathing that can undermine vocal range and resonance.
Not that it's uncommon. In fact, it's epidemic in our society, manifested in
chronically shallow breathing and hoarse, flat, strained voices.
But to a singer, it's "bad breath" at its career-threatening worst, compromising
the tonal nuances operatic roles demand.
For Bygott, part of the problem was stress. Part of it was physiological, too,
caused by a rib-cage irregularity known as sternal angle.
Her quest for a remedy ran the usual gamut of better-breathing techniques, many
of them practiced by professional singers. Eventually, she discovered something
called Breathing Coordination, which had been introduced to the 1968 U.S.
Olympic team by respiratory researcher Carl Stough.
It was, in her words, "a transformational experience."
Said Bygott: "My voice had more resonance and better intonation. I was able to
hear better, and I didn't feel a need to push my voice. The rib cage lowers, the
diaphragm rises and you expel the residual volume (of air) from the lungs."
Babies do it naturally. Adults, in most cases, have to relearn it. Bygott, 58
and still singing opera on the East Coast, began learning it from Stough 30
years ago.
Now, as a Breathing Coordination instructor, she is sharing her expertise in
private lessons in the
Philadelphia
area, with an eye on introducing the practice to San Diegans. Dates for a
two-day workshop at the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation in Lemon Grove are
pending.
Essentially, Breathing Coordination develops maximum efficiency in the various
muscles required for respiration -- but with a minimum of effort.
Somehow, something as natural as breathing becomes almost complex when we break
it down to its fundamentals. Because most of us lack the patience to practice
Breathing Coordination, the most receptive audience is the breathing impaired --
asthma and emphysema sufferers, for example.
Stough, who began working with chronically ill respiratory patients in the
1950s, may have received his greatest exposure in working with Olympic athletes.
The Mexico City Olympics, at high altitude in a polluted environment where
oxygen was 30 percent less accessible than at sea level, was the ultimate test
for endurance athletes.
Buoyed by Stough's teaching, U.S. Olympians branded him with a nickname: Dr.
Breath, which became the title of his book. Before he died in October 2000,
Stough saw his New York-based Institute for Breathing Coordination recognized by
the state as a charitable organization for its contributions to health and
education.
"All life begins and ends with the exhale," Stough said, pointing out that
breathing affects every system in the body. "The first sound of a newborn occurs
on the first exhale. That sound triggers the perpetual motion of the diaphragm."
Breathing Coordination practitioners such as Bygott instruct novices to lie on
their back with pillows under the knees and head. This way, the diaphragm is not
working against gravity. No voluntary muscles are being contracted.
Indeed, the hardest part of the lesson is accepting that it isn't work.
When fully realized, Breathing Coordination involves extending the exhale to its
natural conclusion, expelling the maximum amount of carbon dioxide. Then,
theoretically, inhalation occurs naturally.
For more information on this therapeutic technique, visit the Web site:
www.silvermanwellness.com and click
on Stought Breath Therapy.
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