Liberating Your Jaw with Your Voice - 4 - Deep Diaphragm Breathing (Feat. Lizzo and Meghan Trainor)
Dancer from Meghan Trainor “All About That Bass” video
Lizzo 2018 By David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA via Wikipedia
Liberating Your Jaw with Your Voice - 4 - Deep Diaphragm Breathing (Feat. Meghan Trainor and Lizzo)
Another look at quadrant breathing - don’t suck it in!
According to Feldenkrais and early child development master Chava Shelhav, PhD*: a learning baby makes happy sounds; smiling relaxes the cervical spine and thereby the whole body; and softening hands by resting them on your belly allow the brain to think. All relevant to relaxing the neck and jaw with your voice.
By popular demand, a return to quadrant breathing. Previous iterations have included “Carry It Like Audrey,” “Inhale Like Audrey, Exhale Like the Queen,” and “Gestures of Love - Cradle the Heart.”
Continuing in the spirit of “Liberating Your Neck and Jaw” and David Kaetz’s “Listening With Your Whole Body,”” this variation will be focusing on the natural expansion and contraction of the diaphragm, adding the happy, silly sounds of a baby mastering her new body and the healing sounds as taught by Master Mantak Chia. Consider it Voice-O-Meter on mother’s milk.
Lizzo and Meghan Trainor are our inspirations. These women do not cater to any misogynistic fantasies of Barbie doll, anorexic insanity. They have big voices and understand that sucking in the gut IS BAD.
Heart and lungs. source: www.healthimaging.com
Sit or lie on your back for this lesson. It’s a trancey lesson, and you may cool down, so have a blankie and socks. You might want some head or low back support - being comfortable is critical to this work.
No new science nerd candy as we have covered this landscape before. Just for fun, though, you might want to review A 3D View of the Diaphragm.
How You Might Feel After This Lesson: Deep, full breath; Belly soft; Shoulders connected and flat against the ribs; Chest lifted; Taller, more regal,; Balanced front to back, side to side; Tranced out (temporarily).
Dr. Shelhav shared her expertise in applying the Feldenkrais Method to early child development in a recent workshop. I was there, and will be sharing her insights over time. We might even explore some of the ATMs she teaches to parents of young children to help them understand their child’s natural, developmental proces..