The flute choir that I conduct had planned a study day this week. We had invited a breathing coach who came to give a workshop on breathing. ‘What do you think about breathing?’ was one of her first questions. This group consists of flutists who have all been playing the flute for a number of years and have reached a reasonable level. A nice conversation ensued. One of the comments that stuck with me was: ‘my teacher absolutely did not let me move my ribs’. For this flutist, that had become a kind of mantra. She had also become very good at (almost) not moving her ribs.
During the workshop, breathing was observed and discovered. Four ways of breathing were discussed: via the abdomen, the ribs, the back and the chest. Each way of breathing was briefly discussed and we were given exercises to become aware of these ways of breathing. Videos were shown of a skeleton with a moving diaphragm and we watched a video of Maria Callas to see the different ways of breathing that she used while singing. What I found a really fun exercise was the scarf exercise. First you had to wrap the scarf around your belly. Then you had to pull the scarf tight without tying a knot in it. The assignment was to observe the low breathing. Then we had to wrap the scarf around our ribs and again we had to pull the scarf tight without tying a knot in it. Now we had to observe the movement of our ribs.
By observing this we all became much more aware of what actually happens during breathing. In short, the conclusion was that the four ways of breathing (belly, ribs, back and chest) have to work together. Actually it is not possible to use only the belly, because for example the diaphragm expands to the sides during an inhalation and therefore automatically pushes the ribs to the sides.
Although it was a very interesting afternoon and it was great to hear a colleague’s breathing story, I went home with a different conclusion: in addition to all the fun exercises and the interesting story about breathing, we had mainly been working on awareness. That is what I like so much about playing the flute and for this magazine specifically, working with extended techniques. You can play the flute and do exactly what you need to do; play scales, play pieces, produce a extended technique, or whatever you want or need to do. It becomes so much more interesting when you do all that with attention. Feeling what happens in your body, feeling what effect an adjustment has in your body. Where does tension or relaxation arise when you do or don’t do something? Maybe it is the recognition of the fact that the flute is not the only part of your instrument, but that your own body is also a very important part. That is the layer of making music and playing the flute that makes it extra interesting for me.
