Breathing into a Gender Affirming Voice
In music therapy and voicework it is important to support the entire person. One way of incorporating this is through paying attention to the way we breath. Breath support allows for a flexible, stronger and more expressive voice. As with all gender affirming voicework each person is going to have a unique voice but breathing allows everyone to explore and support themselves in a healthier way.
Breath support comes from your body’s alignment. The deeper the breath the more supported your voice is. Deep breath allows expansion of the diaphragm. We don’t have the ability to control our diaphragm so often we have to use posture and exercises to be able to engage deeper breaths naturally.
The posture that allows for deep breathing is often a straight back, open chest, knees over feet, hips over feet and allowing for the natural curves in the body to exist. Include a small bend in the knee to avoid getting light headed. To get an open chest bring your shoulders to your ears, push them back and relax down again. This allows for an open chest that is able to expand. If your shoulders are moving up and down that indicates shallower breath. If sitting being on the edge of the chair and having an open chest is also important. Be careful that the chin isn’t sticking out.
If you want to expand on your breath try buzzing with the lip or tongue and going up and down to the ends of your vocal range while buzzing. If their are points where the buzz stops this indicates a gap in breath. This can be due to a spot where your voice is weeker or transitions from a lower chesty voice to a thinner higher voice. It is normal for most people to have 2-3 gaps but they can be strengthened to allow for smoother transitions in the voice.
One way to help with breath support is engaging muscles using resistance to create a deeper breath. This can be done by pushing against a wall or pushing hands together with palms facing each other. Sometimes our brains need a little trick to get the muscles going that allow for stronger breaths.
Another exercise is breathing using counting. Try to breath out longer than you breath. For example, breath in for four counts and breath out for six. This allows for more consistent breath flow. It can be easy to use breath all at once which leads to running out of breath at the end of a sentence.
Slower breathes also can help engage the parasympathetic nervous system. This allows for our bodies to relax and engage the calmer side of our brain (think sleep, calmness, being able to think logically about a situation). Being able to relax the body can help with dysphoria. While it can be difficult engaging with our body and how it feels is essential in learning to use your voice in a more authentic way.
If there is too much tension in the body it can cause strain in the voice and shallower breathes. For example, tense shoulders make it harder for our lungs to expand. Relaxing the shoulders through stretches, massage or lifting shoulders to ears, back and down allows for more flexibility. Likewise if the chin is out of alignment and sticking forward it can create tension in the throat which makes it harder to use the voice. Tension can cause injury and or cause our voices to loose strength quicker over time (think about your voice after yelling at a game or concert, if it’s hoarse the next day the volume was likely due to tension and didn’t have enough breath to support the volume used.
