BREATHING AND SPEAKING

BREATHING and SPEAKING

The first Posts on this Blog concentrate upon the value of creating pictures in our minds from which to speak and appreciate the predominant gesture about what we are saying. The nature and sounds of the consonants in the English Alphabet are being posted. We are up to L. The vowels will come when the consonants are completed.

Making speech sounds would not be possible without consciously using the air around us. This Post explores our breathing to support our speaking.

Notes taken in 1980 by Christine Murphy of a lecture given by Agathe Lorenz-Poschmann, a renowned actress who studied Eurythmy and Speech Formation, are very helpful in understanding the relationship between the air we inhale and exhale and our speaking.

Taking in - inhaling - deep breaths before speaking is neither necessary or advisable.

In contrast Lorenz-Poschmann described the harmonious manner in which ancient Greeks spoke, being a balance between in-breathing and out-breathing. Texts written in this period created a rhythm of speaking, easy to engage with, being measured and deliberate, enabling pictures created in our minds to be put into words and spoken clearly and imaginatively.

Lorenz-Poschmann speaks of aiming when speaking "to be a sculptor of the outer air forming speech on the out-breath."

Breathing today in relation to speaking is often chaotic: through short hurried intakes of breath, part-way through speaking; becoming hoarse and not being heard by running out of breath entirely.

In contrast, to consciously speak and sing well, encourage air all around us to enter our lungs naturally so that we have out-breath upon which to form speech sounds. Envisage drawing air into the whole space of our lungs like filling a jug with water.  Breathing in and using air in this way enables us take command of what we are doing when we speak. We judge how much air we will need to speak a word, phrase or sentence. By doing this we reduce the risk of not being able to finish what we intended to say and generally increase our ability to be heard properly.

Three laws of speech guide us beautifully here:

First - take hold of it

Second - release it, let it go

Thirdly - go with it, follow it

A good principle to follow if you run out of out-breath is to stop speaking! - take in more air (water into the jug) then start speaking again upon the newly acquired out-breath.

A good practice my singing teacher advocates, to help make our lungs become full, is to "think the air down - towards the floor." Imagining this avoids having only partially filled lungs at the top.

I can hear a cry! - I cannot spend all this amount of time thinking about my breathing otherwise I will never do anything else. Yes, very true, yet as with all practices a little time spent, periodically, in being more conscious about breathing remains with us when having to concentrate elsewhere and when this art is most needed. The best way to do imprint this within us is to:

EXPERIMENT!

Take the word "World" and from experience think how much out-breath you will need to speak this word clearly with full meaning.

Take time to speak this single word because the sounds we make for it need to leave us experiencing, imagining the wide endless expanse of what we understand and feel is the "World."

If you take each letter, the 'r' is an air consonant and has the capacity to fly. The 'L' consonant is renown, as described in the last Post but one, for it's potentially lively, vibrant, flowing, watery nature. The consonant 'd' brings the word to a definite close. Preceding these three consonants and following the 'w', which itself shapes all that follows, the vowel 'o' will be all encompassing and fairly lengthy to render accurately the picture of the World held in our minds to imbue awe and wonder in the listener.

There is a lot here for Lorenz-Poschmann's sculptor "of the sound of a word on the out-breath."
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Practise this "World" word sound. Speak it to another individual - first without giving any thought to breathing then by giving conscious thought to this through your assessment how much out-breath is needed to express the full nature of the word and the consonants and vowels that form it.

Write down what you and the individual listening to you, experience. Listen to yourself and ask for feedback about the clarity, imaginative "accuracy" and impact your speech sounds had on your listener.

Develop this experiment by adding words to make a phrase. For example, after the word "World" add two further words "climate change".

Apply the same preparation for using the out-breath as for the single word "World". Three words will obviously require more out-breath upon which to place the sounds than for one. This will be especially the case as the phrase itself is significant and often creates emotion in both the speaker and the listener. Picture images held in our minds when speaking such a phrase will, as always, play a significant part in the speech sounds delivered. To ground further the importance of speaking this particular phrase imagine speaking it within a lecture being delivered at a major world conference.

The air we use as out-breath for speaking is not ours. It belongs to the universe. As with all natural resources if we look after and use it properly it will reward us. In this arena it will do so with clear, living, imaginative and healing speech sounds.

Please tell me about your experiments.