Chapter 4

Discovering How to Breathe Well

In This Chapter

Beginning with your breathing

Finding your diaphragm

Getting into the flow

Linking your breath to sound and words

I want to give you some good news: you’re the owner of a fine wind instrument – for that’s what your voice is. Your vocal apparatus doesn’t look particularly like a wind instrument because the moving parts are hidden inside you, but your voice works much like a trumpet or a clarinet. The first step towards having a great voice is to know the basics of blowing your instrument, and that takes air in the form of breathing.

Making a Sound: How Your Voice Works

Your mouth and throat are complex and multi-purpose, involved in eating as well as in speaking, singing, shouting, crying or laughing. But the basic sound-making process is straightforward, and it all starts with air.

Demystifying your breath: It’s just hot air

The part of your voice that creates sound is really small. Your vocal folds (also called vocal cords) are a couple of bands of muscle stretched horizontally across the larynx in your neck. They’re tiny – approximately one to two-and-a-half centimetres long – and shorter in women than in men. These muscles vibrate to produce your voice.

You produce sound when air passes across these folds and creates a vibration, like the wind whistling through trees. That’s all your voice is – just warm, vibrating air. I say ‘just’; your vocal folds are very active, vibrating at least 100 times per second, sometimes much more. Your vocal folds need to be free from tension in order to vibrate freely. If your throat is tight, your vocal folds can’t vibrate naturally and experience tremendous physical stress. Freedom of your vocal folds is crucial if you want to make good sound, and that means that you need to relax. In Chapter 5, I share ways to relax your voice and body so you can produce the best sound possible.

Amplifying the sound

Instruments always have some means of amplifying the sound. A bell rings clearly because the sound echoes around inside its concave form. A clarinet is bell-shaped at the end to augment the sound. The old gramophone had its sound trumpet. (Remember pictures of ‘His Master’s Voice’ with the dog listening to a wind-up gramophone?)

Your tiny vocal folds certainly need a bit of help to ramp up the sound they produce, and that’s where your body comes in. When you speak freely, your voice resounds in your head and echoes in your chest and other parts of your body. Your voice’s volume is amplified many times. Your whole body is involved in amplifying sound, from head to toe, like the body of a guitar or a double bass. That’s how you create a great voice.

The greatest difference between people with wonderful voices and people with weak voices is in how they use their breath and resonating spaces.

When Maria Callas, one of the greatest sopranos in history, was studying her craft, she used to watch her pet canary to see how it breathed. She was captivated by the way the bird used its whole body and energy to create its wonderful song, and she imitated this technique in creating her own sounds. You can see a similar whole-body engagement if you watch a baby cry, a dog bark or a chimpanzee make sounds to protect its territory. In the following section, you discover how to engage your whole body too.

Getting Started with Breathing

I don’t imagine you normally worry much about air when you speak. If you’re like most people when they talk, you merely think and out come the words – or possibly even just the last bit! Developing the ability to speak well is about rediscovering air.

You’re something of a breath expert. Think about it. What authority in any other subject has pursued his field of expertise since the day he was born? But you have. From the moment you uttered your first cry, you’ve been breathing. When you were born, that first wonderful breath and that first cry were free and full.

Breathing is everything when you speak. Specifically, breathing:

Gives your words power

Brings life to what you say

Sustains the sounds you make

Creates interest and makes people want to listen to you

Provides the basis of emotional intensity in your voice

Provides subtlety and shades of meaning

Serves as the life blood of your inspiration when you communicate

Breathing has quite a lot going for it! Taking the time to get your breathing working well before you utter a single sound makes all the difference to your progress as a speaker.

Fortunately, you already know how to breathe. Chances are that you breathe really well when you’re asleep. However, in the stresses and tensions of living, your breathing may have become shallow or restricted. The following section helps you reconnect with your breathing.

Becoming aware of your breathing

If you aspire to having a great voice, you simply need to rediscover your breathing by bringing it to your conscious attention for a while. The following activity brings your breath into focus. I run through it on Track 3.

1. Sit or lie calmly for a while in a quiet place.

You can sit on an upright chair or lie flat on a bed or on the floor. If you’re lying down, put a small cushion under your head. If you’re sitting, don’t slump; instead find a position that is comfortable. Take a few moments to settle into the peace and quiet.

2. Observe the wave of your natural breathing with a sense of idle curiosity.

Consider what is actually happening as you breathe in and out. You’re not trying to change anything at this stage. No judging! You just want to note what happens. Ask yourself:

• What parts of my body am I most aware of?

• Which parts of my body gently move as the air moves in and out?

Are you aware of the upper chest? Does your belly move? What about the ribs – are they involved? Is there movement in your back? Do you sense the air entering your nose? Does your throat make itself felt?

3. Mentally scan your whole body and pay attention to the areas that are taking part in your breathing.

Just be aware, that is all. Continue for a couple of minutes or for as long as you remain curious.

Observing your breathing without trying to control it is a great practice for your voice. While you work through the various activities in this chapter and book, you will be thinking consciously about breathing, but breathing is a natural reflex and therefore consciously trying to impose firm control over your breathing doesn’t improve it in the long run. The most useful thing you can do to improve the ease and capacity of your breathing is to remove tensions; then your natural reflexes are able to do their work.

Thinking low

When you breathe correctly for speaking, many different parts of your body are involved in the process in an easy co-ordinated way. However, when you’re just starting to pay greater attention to your breathing, you may be tempted to over-emphasise any instruction to use a particular part of the body. When you do, the breathing process gets distorted and you end up more constricted than before. If for example I say, ‘Take in a really big breath!’ or ‘Push your ribs out!’, you may put so much effort into those actions that other, more subtle, but important parts of breathing are lost.

That said, I can offer one instruction that you’re likely to find particularly useful. As you focus on your breathing, think low – in a friendly, curious way. Pay attention to your abdomen and all the lower part of your body. This invites the muscles that are most useful for supporting the voice to come into play, and at the same time leaves the area around your vocal folds free from getting involved in the breathing process.

Repeat the breathing awareness practice in the preceding section, preferably lying down, although you can also do it in a chair. Breathe gently in and out through your nose for a few moments, and turn your attention to different aspects of your breathing. I walk you through this exercise in Track 4:

1. Turn your attention to your belly.

If you like, place your hands lightly on that area. For a few breaths, pay attention to how you can allow your belly to rise gently with the in-breath and fall again with the out-breath.

Feel how this soft part of your body goes comfortably up and down with the breathing, moving your hands up on the in-breath and down on the out-breath.

2. Imagine that your belly is a balloon and let it gently expand and then go back to its original position again.

Repeat breathing in and out in this manner several times. Keep everything simple and easy. You’re breathing beautifully – this is how you need to breathe when you speak.

3. Continue to breathe in through your nose and begin to breathe out through your mouth in a sigh – a sigh of comfort and pleasure.

Think of an evening when you arrive home after a busy day, and you sink down in the sofa, put your feet up and sigh. Aahh, this is goo-ood!

Breath in, and out again, with a contented sigh, making an audible ‘Aahh …’.

Repeat a few times. Feel how each out-breath naturally becomes fuller and longer and in the process causes a fuller, deeper in-breath. Don’t force it. Just observe how it happens naturally.

If you feel dizzy at any point, just pause for a few moments until the dizziness passes. Feeling dizzy is quite natural, especially if you’re not used to breathing deeply. You’ll soon get used to the breathing practice and will no longer experience dizziness.

Breathing for speaking is the same as for living, only instead of the in-breath and the out-breath being much the same length, your out-breath needs to be longer because sound is produced only when you’re breathing out. You make this longer out-breath naturally when you sigh.

Engaging your diaphragm

Books about voice often make the process of breathing sound complicated. As I describe in the preceding sections, breathing is actually not difficult. (Of course, I do have more to say on the subject in this and following sections.)

When you speak in normal conversations, you’re often speaking to someone close to you and don’t usually talk in long, extended sentences. Your need for air is not very great. But if you want to project to a larger audience or say something more protracted or emotionally charged, you do need to take larger breaths. And as an added bonus, you sound better when you breathe more fully.

The power of your voice depends on the power of your breath; the quality of your voice depends on the quality of your breath.

When you feel your belly taking part in the action of breathing, your diaphragm is coming into play. Actors and singers are aware of the important role played by the diaphragm. The sidebar ‘Your distinguished diaphragm’ examines this amazing muscle in greater detail.

Using your diaphragm well is not about blowing yourself up alarmingly with air. In the BBC series of the children’s story Five Children and It, released in the US as The Sand Fairy, the psammead or fairy grants wishes by stretching out its eyes, holding its breath and swelling alarmingly. Some speakers look much like this psammead when they take a breath. Fortunately, breathing for speaking is much simpler and gentler than this!

Don’t be misled by the often-repeated phrase ‘Breathe in.’ You aren’t aware of your body moving in when you take in air. Instead, you feel your body expand out.

My friend Anne brought her colleague Sally along to lunch, and the three of us had a lively time together. Sally is a large woman with a mischievous look in her eye. At one point, she told a joke that was so funny we all burst into paroxysms of laughter. Sally’s whole body wobbled as she laughed, which made us laugh even more. When we eventually calmed down a little, Anne turned to me with a smile and said, ‘You know how you speak about breathing from the diaphragm in your coaching? If people want to get the idea of every muscle being involved, get them to laugh their heads off. They’ll certainly feel every single one then!’ So I am passing her excellent tip on to you!

Keep your diaphragm mobile and flexible! If you aspire to be fit with a flat, hard belly, you may carry a lot of tension in that area which constricts your diaphragm so that it’s unable to move. Over time, you lose the habit of keeping your diaphragm flexible. That affects your breathing – both in and out – which in turn affects your voice and eventually even your health and well-being. If you pull your belly in, you can’t breathe in deeply, and you have a harder time making good sounds. Allow your belly to expand outwards as you take a breath to speak. Enjoy its ability to move – it has the potential to move comfortably 12 or even 15 centimetres up and down.

Try the following practices to get the correct sensation of breathing when you engage your diaphragm. Practise just two or three breaths at a time to get the feel of the low breath.

Stand facing a wall. Place the palms of your hands at about shoulder height against the wall. Then lean a little towards the wall with your weight, with your arms slightly bent, and push firmly. As you push, breathe in and out. Release your shoulders as you breathe, without letting your arms collapse. As you release your shoulders more and more while continuing to push, you increasingly feel the lower breath. This practice gives you a solid sense of the connection between your breath and the power in your lower body.

Stand in a balanced position with your legs shoulder-width apart, toes pointing forward. Cross your arms snugly across your chest and hug yourself tightly with your hands clasping your back. Bend forward from the waist until your back is horizontal, still clasping yourself tightly. Keep your knees soft and neck relaxed. In this position, breathe. Feel the movement in various parts of your lower body, including your back and solar plexus. Come back to a standing position gently.

Taking full breaths

Although the diaphragm is the most important muscle for breathing, other parts of your body are involved in the process as well.

The following activity gives you lots of information about your breathing and stimulates your whole breathing apparatus at the same time.

1. Stand up tall and relaxed and sigh out firmly and quickly through your mouth, making the sound ‘Hoo’ or ‘Whoo’, until you’ve expelled all your air.

Doing so gets rid of all the old air in your lungs and allows you to take a fuller in-breath. Don’t collapse or slouch in the process.

2. When your lungs are empty of air, shut your mouth and hold your nose closed with your fingers.

Raise your rib cage and stay in suspension for a moment or two without stiffening up in your throat. You’ll begin to feel the pressure of a large vacuum growing inside you.

Don’t push yourself until you become dizzy or feel weak, but do wait until your body wants to take in air.

3. Release the fingers holding your nose and keep your mouth shut.

Allow air to rush in through your nose, filling the vacuum.

Notice how you don’t have to breathe in deliberately; the air rushes in naturally to fill the space. Become aware of how the air fills the space in every direction – most obviously in your abdomen at first, but also low down, in your back and your sides.

Become aware of some or all of the parts that become involved in the in-breath, including your:

• Belly

• Ribcage

• Lower chest

• Upper chest

After doing the preceding activity a few times and feeling the muscles that take part in breathing, stand tall and open with your feet about a foot apart.

1. Enjoy a steady in-breath, raising your arms out to the side and up above your head as the air fills you. Feel as if the breath filling you is actually raising your arms rather than the other way about.

In your imagination, stay connected with the base of your body grounding you as you raise your arms and fill with air. Notice how the parts of your body you used in the previous breathing practices come into play here too, starting with the lower muscles, then you raise the ribs, and finally top up with air higher in your chest. Enjoy the smooth sensation.

2. Breathe out steadily while lowering your arms. Reverse the process. First release the air from your upper chest, then gradually lower your ribs, and finally release your lower muscles. Hear the sound of air being expelled.

Become aware of the column of air making its way up through your body and out through the mouth without any restriction as you lower your arms.

All the activities in this section help encourage good breathing for speaking. Choose any practices that deepen your breathing easily and organically. There’s no ordained way to do it. If you find that you’ve a favourite, practise that one more than the others.

Breathing to Communicate

After working on your ability to breathe deeply and with your entire body, the next part of the process is to breathe out steadily so that you can express yourself in words.

When you read a sentence on the page, it consists of lots of different words

with a gap between each.

But when you listen to a spoken sentence, you hear an unbrokenstreamofsound, which your brain divides into individual words and turns into sense. The following sections link your breathing to actually putting across your message.

Producing a steady stream of air

As you communicate thoughts and feelings, sound ebbs and flows with expression. This process requires a steady stream of air.

Imagine that you’re sitting in front of a cake with one candle on it. You take a breath and blow the candle out – whew! So far so good. Now imagine that the cake has 25 candles on it and you’re going to blow them all out in one breath. You take a nice deep breath and keep blowing and blowing until every candle has gone out. Whooooooooooooo. If you blow with great force at the beginning, you run out of breath before you reach the last candle. If, on the other hand, you deliberately hold your breath back, you’ve insufficient air power to extinguish the candles. Your breath has to last until the very last candle is extinguished so you need to allow it to flow steadily and keep its momentum to the very end.

Your breathing for speaking needs to work in much the same way as blowing out a lot of candles. You take a good breath in and then allow it to come out in a steady stream, which then lasts to the end of your statement.

Have you ever made a sound from a blade of grass? Choose a fat blade of grass and hold it tightly between your thumbs, nails facing you, and find the little gap between the thumbs halfway down. Stretch the grass across that gap and blow through the gap to make a sound. (The blade of grass stands in for the vocal folds and illustrates how they work.) The sound produced when you blow through the grass is loud and piercing and continues for as long as you continue to blow. You can hear clearly whether your breath is nice and steady. And if you’re out in the open, people near and far will turn to find out where the piercing sound is coming from!

Rather than whistling through a blade of grass, you can try:

Whistling using your lips, producing one note with a single steady sound

Playing a long sound on a recorder or a penny whistle; these small instruments only make a true sound if you aren’t too forceful

As you blow out air, imagine that the sound you’re producing is travelling physically away from you in a shallow arc like an arrow in slow motion toward a target in the distance. Focus on the destination of the arrow – the end of your long sound. If you’re whistling, try moving your hand from close to your face gradually and steadily out into the distance as an accompaniment to aid you in making a steady sound.

Hissing is another great practice for steadying your sound. Take a breath and then breathe out steadily on the sound ‘ssssssss’. You can hear clearly the bumps and interruptions in the sound. As before, think of the sound moving physically. Raise one hand to chest height, and as you start to hiss, move your hand from one side to the other in a smooth horizontal line, and focus on matching the smoothness of your sound to the movement of your hand. After you try hissing on ‘sss’, you may like to repeat the technique using ‘fff’ and ‘shshsh’ for slightly different sensations.

You aren’t using your actual vocal folds to make a sound in this practice. The sound is created entirely by the escaping air, not by your voice box.

Speaking on air

In order get the sensation of air moving in your speaking, try forming words with air in a whisper. I’ve chosen lines from an early 20th-century poem called ‘Ghosts’ by Fanny Stearns Davis to suit the mood. Whisper the text with a steady stream of air, taking breaths only at the end of each line. I’ve left the original punctuation, but take just one breath per line, and let the breath flow without any hiatus while keeping to the sense of the words. Allow yourself time to take a fresh breath at the end of each line, but not so long that you lose the flow of the poem. All you hear is wind – no voiced sounds at all – but someone listening to you should be able to make out the words clearly. Listen to Track 5 and enjoy the ghostly atmosphere!

I am almost afraid; though I know the night
Lets no ghosts walk in the warm lamplight.
Yet ghosts there are; and they blow, they blow,
Out in the wind and the scattering snow.
When I open the windows and go to bed,
Will the ghosts come in and stand at my head?

Now try speaking the words again, but this time even more emphatically in a stage whisper, saying everything dramatically as if you were telling the start of a horror tale. Make sure that the end of each line of poetry is just at full and exciting as the beginning.

Of course, you aren’t aiming to train your voice to whisper. This exercise is just a way to practise using plenty of air and to feel it moving.

Turning breath into sound

Turning your breath into speaking is what breathing work is all about. After developing your breathing capacity and consistency, you link your breathing to speaking by using all that air to make continuous full sounds. Join in to Track 6.

1. Take a breath and begin to hum on the sound ‘mmm’ with your lips gently closed.

The experience is similar to the blowing and whistling exercises in the earlier section ‘Producing a steady stream of air’, with the addition of sound.

2. Continue to breathe and hum for several breaths while gently moving your head, face, jaw and neck.

Turn your neck gently from side to side. Move your jaw as if you’re chewing. Allow your tongue to explore the sides and roof of your mouth. These movements should have no effect on the continuous humming sound as you keep your lips gently closed. Notice how little effort it takes to make the sound.

3. Take another breath and allow the hum to open out into vowel sounds.

Start with a hum for a second or two, then open the sound out into ‘ow’: ‘mmm-ow’. Imagine that you’re going to intone slowly, ‘How now brown cow?’ but without the consonants apart from the initial hum – ‘mmm-ow-ow-ow-ow’. Or think of it as ‘mmm-aaa-oo-aaa-oo-aaa-oo-aaa-oo’. Intone the vowel sounds on one comfortable note (that means singing, but you don’t need to be able to sing!). The sound doesn’t have to be beautiful. Just create a long sound.

Keep your breath constant and don’t allow any gaps in the sound. Your mouth stays open for ‘aaa’ and just narrows a little for the ‘oo’ sound.

4. After a few practices, eliminate the hum and start with ‘a-oo-a-oo- a-oo-a-oo’.

Try ‘mmm-aaa’ a few times, then ‘aaa’ on its own a few times. The ‘aaa’ should feel the same with or without the hum before it.

When you launch straight into the ‘a-oo’ sound, make the onset really smooth, as similar in quality to the hum as you can. You may be tempted to start the ‘aaa’ with a glottal sound – a little percussive kick from the vocal folds – but don’t! After a few breaths, you’re ready to turn sound into actual words.

5. Return to humming again, but this time open up into smooth spoken words: ‘How-now-brown-cow’.

Try saying the phrase without the initial hum. Keep the sound flowing by maintaining the long ‘ow’ sounds and lengthening the consonants ‘h’, ‘n’ and ‘r’. Think of ‘Hhaaoo-nnnaaoo-brraaoonn-caaoo.’ The short ‘b’ of ‘brown’ and the ‘c’ ‘cow’ are crisp and clear and don’t disrupt the flow of sound.

Become aware of everything that happens as you’re making the sound. It’s not about getting things right; it’s about getting curious. Notice how you feel the hum playing around your lips. Notice how your hum suddenly breaks into more volume as your lips pop apart.

Don’t take this practice too seriously! Give it inner life by having fun. Imagine that you’re asking a brown cow a solemn question! Then try speaking the same words:

Loudly and joyfully

Quietly and purposefully

Growing louder and building towards a dramatic flourish at the end

Getting quieter towards the end, but making the end sound as important as the beginning

After you’ve exhausted the drama and excitement of ‘How now brown cow’, try creating the same feelings in a phrase that you’re more likely to use in an everyday setting. Here are a few ideas:

This is the way!

That one for sure!

Down on the ground!

This is for you!

You can also choose your own short sentence – one that makes sense to you in some context. Remember to draw out the phrase with no gaps in the sound, and speak it with meaning.

Play-Acting with Sound and Breathing

The practices in this section all work better when you approach them in a spirit of play. Enjoy them and don’t worry if things go wrong; that’s all part of the process.

Getting big and theatrical

Continue to explore your dramatic mode by combining the breathing practices I describe in the earlier section ‘Taking full breaths’ with an energetic sentence. Gradually raise your arms out to the side and up above your head as you fill with air, first in your belly, then your ribs and back and finally your upper chest. Imagine that as you raise your arms, your excitement is building, and when your arms reach the highest point, give them an extra flourish and burst straight into some joyful sentence – one of the following or any sentence of your own that rings out with confidence:

I’m on the top of the whole world!

That’s the way it’s going to be!

Listen to this, it’s loud and important!

Here’s to you and me and everyone!

Ensure that the breath leads straight into the words with no hiatus between in-breath and vocal sound. I explain more about how this technique helps your vocal tone in Chapter 10. The words should coincide with the flourish of your hands above your head.

Surprising yourself

The in-breath happens easily whenever you’re shocked or surprised. You can do the following practice with a friend or colleague. You need to get into a light-hearted frame of mind – no trying too hard!

Stand or sit facing each other, a few feet apart. Person A claps his or her hands. At that very moment, Person B notices something about Person A or the surroundings and acts suddenly surprised or shocked, speaking immediately and spontaneously. After saying a statement, Person B gets to clap and Person A reacts immediately. A conversation (of sorts) ensues.

This practice may run something like the following:

Person A claps.

Person B: You’ve cut your hair!

Person B claps.

Person A: You’re looking amazingly well!

Person A clap.

Person B: What’s happened to your desk?!

Person B claps.

Person A: You’re wearing blue today!

Person A claps.

Person B: You’ve got rid of your Ferrari!

The idea of the clapping is to make the next comment happen suddenly. Don’t worry about the comments making sense and feel free to act over the top. You can wait a few seconds before clapping if you like, to keep the other person on his or her toes. As your ‘conversation’ continues, listen to the freedom of the sound when you burst into speech. This practice reminds you that there are many different ways to take a good breath. I look at more of them in Chapter 10.

Declaiming like an actor

Communication involves more than random short phrases and exclamations. You also need to test your breathing in longer sentences, as Track 7 illustrates. Shakespeare is a great source for this type of material. Many speeches in his plays are written in iambic pentameter verse – consisting of lines with five stresses in them. Because the lines are of similar length and the breaths happen at more or less equal intervals, Shakespearean speech makes good practice for breathing.

The basic rhythm in iambic pentameter verse is di dum di dum di dum di dum di dum. The rhythm isn’t always quite as regular as that, but you always find five stresses in each line.

Although you can recite Shakespeare in many different styles, as a breathing exercise declaim the lines in a full voice with joined up sounds similar to the way you practise saying ‘How-now-brown-cow?’ in the previous section ‘Turning Breath into Sound.’

Imagine that you’re a famous actor at the height of your powers. Stand up, give yourself airs and put plenty of drama into the words – both for your enjoyment of the experience and because doing so helps your breath!

Find your own favourite 10- to 15-line passage spoken by a character in a Shakespearean play, or use the following, where King Richard speaks in melancholy mood in Richard II.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

For the practice, take a breath at the end of each line. Don’t read the whole speech at once the first time you practice; just work on three or four lines at a time. Use all your air in each line so that you feel that you need the fresh breath for the next line. When the sense runs over from one line to the next, still take the time to breathe at the end of the line, but keep the thought continuing in your mind through to the next line. If there’s punctuation half-way through a line, feel the pause by taking your time, but don’t take a new breath.

Pushing the boat out

If you watch news clips or video of a lifeboat being launched down a ramp, there’s a moment when the boat, having gathered speed down the runway, goes into the water and forward in a powerful movement. The point of hitting the water provides no sudden jolt; its impact is just the central part of a powerful smooth movement.

Think of this image as you start each line of Shakespeare. Each line moves inexorably towards its end, with a strong word or words near the end of the line. As you speak, aim mentally for the words in bold, and when you reach those words, don’t jolt them, but stroke them firmly as if your ‘lifeboat’ had farther to go. The words in bold remind you to aim for the end of each line in your mind.

If it helps, mark the lines as I have, with a tick at the end of each line to remind you to take a breath, and a line under the punctuation in the middle of a line to remind you to sense the little pause but allow the air to keep flowing without a breath.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Shakespearean language is heightened and dramatic and may not seem much like the way you speak every day. But take that Shakespearean strength and direction into everyday statements, and they can sound more powerful rather than overblown.

Remembering to breathe!

Of course you’re going to remember to breathe before you start speaking! But it is surprisingly easy to forget to breathe regularly at the end of each line or sentence.

In the previous practices using Shakespearean verse, you take a breath at the end of each line, whether you need it or not. For this exercise (and in real life), your breath needs to be part of the rhythm of the whole, so you don’t have all the time in the world as you do at the outset.

Just like the vacuum you create when you breathe out and hold your nose with your rib cage still open (see the earlier section ‘Taking full breaths’), you want air to enter your lungs easily and rapidly when you need a breath in speaking – without any necessity to deliberately breathe in. You need that skill here.

When you say the last word of a line and have used all your air, your rib cage is still open and you haven’t tensed up. At the moment you complete that last word, you can open the passageway of your nose and mouth, and air floods in, ready for the next line. This technique takes a bit of practice but it’s a skill well worth acquiring.

When you’re empty of air with your rib cage still open, it feels like a vacuum inside you. At this point, just allow yourself to fill again with air because your body wants to. Breathing in this way feels more like releasing than deliberately making an effort to breathe in.

Rather than random statements or Shakespearean verse, say something you’re likely to come up with normally in the course of your day, maybe at a meeting or while giving instructions to someone. Take the same good breath when you see a tick, join up your sound and aim towards the end, just as you did with Shakespeare in the preceding section. Come up with your own statements or use the following:

I’d like to warmly welcome you all to today’s meeting
on the new company policy and direction.

You’ll find the growing number of new aps
will help you to keep better track of your records.

Now take a longer passage from some familiar material, such as a report, or a passage from a newspaper or magazine. Mark in with pencil ticks where you’re going to breathe, and apply the technique you used for Shakespeare.