The Belt of Noses
As a young girl in ballet class, I remember being frustrated that, no matter how hard I tried, my leg would not reach as high as Linda’s, who stood in front of me at the barre. With my frustration replaced by an image of the wind sweeping from beneath my thigh all the way through my ankle as my toes brushed the sky, I was able to watch my leg effortlessly ascend higher than ever before.
My last post had an example of the same idea: “drawing” an ‘ah’ vowel across your eye line with an imaginary paintbrush. It’s the overall modus operandi of my technique: mindful imagery and physicality that replace the observational, judgmental thinking that dissociates the psyche from the body. This post continues that journey into acquiring and RETAINING fundamental skills relevant to excellent voice production.
Here is another one of these auxiliary imaging hacks, or “thought guides”: the belt of noses. This mental shorthand not only works for voice production, it also beautifully replaces the “shy judge monkey” in your head (the one that’s been trying so hard to keep you from making a fool of yourself behind the mic).
It works with subglottal pressure, an aspect of respiration (breathing) and a fundamental part of voice production. So many students arrive insisting, “I need to work on my breathing.” Now why would anyone need to work on something they do every day, every second, awake or asleep, to stay alive? What’s different about breathing to live and breathing to optimize voice performance?
When we think of breathing, we usually consider the act of an inhalation and an exhalation. In voice production, our goal is the retention of air without holding the breath. Retaining consistent air pressure in the lungs stabilizes the air beneath the true vocal folds, and the pressure of that air is called subglottal pressure. Subglottal pressure is part of the phenomenon called phonation. Any lack of consistency in subglottal pressure leads to inconsistent vocal output.
But there is no one correct level of pressure. It is always changing, so this mechanism needs to be dynamically responsive, not static. Different phonations require different subglottal pressures, and the plosives exercise in my Starter Toolbox lets you notice that. The process of subglottal pressure is completely intuitive and is created at the same time as the intent of the communication. So how can we regulate something that isn’t, and shouldn’t be, regulated to begin with?
Here’s how. Imagine a belt around your waist. On that belt are 12 noses.
- Pretend you have no nose on your face and can only sniff through the 12 noses around your waist.
- Without mobilizing any muscles above your breastbone, sniff into your belt of noses. Notice how the floating ribs on either side of your body expand, without you necessarily commanding them to.
You can watch me do it here.
Your awareness of the physical state of that expanded rib cage is an ongoing sensation you can keep while you’re considering a multitude of other things, without distraction. The same rib expansion engaged when inhaling is maintained while exhaling. This is key to air retention in the lungs, and so to subglottal pressure. That stability of the rib cage disallows the uncontrolled release of the diaphragm, the muscle responsible for inhaling and releasing air from the lungs.
So you can’t regulate subglottal pressure by commanding it. You give your body an image, the way the wind lifted my leg at the barre, and let your intent to communicate do the rest.
The plosives exercise is one of the 2 in my free Zen of Screaming | Starter Toolbox. If you don’t have it yet, the video runs under 5 minutes.
Melissa